South Park's lost episodes
The trailblazing, controversial cartoon continues to be censored
This week marked the 10 year anniversary of the attacks on satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Published for over 50 years, Charlie Hebdo had become notorious for its offensive, sacrilegious cartoons spoofing various religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Islamic extremists targeted the magazine’s offices in Paris, killing 12 people. They were angry at the magazine’s repeated offensive depictions of the prophet Muhammad, which is forbidden in their faith.1
The attack sparked much condemnation in the West, but also raised discussions about creative freedom and free speech. While most condemned the violence as unacceptable, some suggested that the cartoons should not have been published, due to their offensive, and sacrilegious portrayal of Muhammad.
The Charlie Hebdo attacks remain relevant for the questions they raise about the state of free speech and creative freedom in the West. While terror attacks over cartoons rarely happen, controversies over offensive material do occur on occasion. One cartoon in America that has triggered similar, although less violent controversies is South Park.
Debuting in 1997 from creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, South Park has achieved both critical acclaim, and garnered much controversy over its crude, offensive, but mostly clever sense of humor. It has developed a reputation for its biting social commentary, and its ability to spoof and skewer social and political concepts. South Park has been an immense success, winning numerous awards, and developing a dedicated fanbase.2
Despite the acclaim is has achieved over the years, South Park has generated plenty of controversy. In a few rare instances, it has resulted in several episodes being censored, or outright banned. As of now, five episodes are of South Park are currently not available on streaming, or on South Park’s website. When the streaming service HBO MAX (now called MAX) launched in 2020, it cut a deal to stream the entirety of South Park, including all new seasons. However, the five controversial episodes were not made available on the streaming service and still are not to this day.3
Most of these episodes generate controversy in part because they mentioned or depicted the Prophet Muhmmad, which is part of the reason they have been banned. Given the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I thought it would be worth taking a look at the five banned episodes.
“Super Best Friends”, Season 3, episode 5
The episode “Super Best Friends” debuted in 2001. It features a parody of DC Comic’s super hero team the Justice League called the Super Best Friends. Rather than being made up of superhero’s though, the Super Best Friends in South Park are made up of various religious figures including Jesus, Krishna, Joseph Smith, Moses, and Muhammad. At the time this episode debuted, it did not generate too much controversy. It even out right depicted Muhammad without much blowback to the creators. However, later controversies generated by the show lead to increased attention, which resulted in a censor bar being placed over Muhammad in later airings.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of this episode is that it was not originally controversial when it aired. At the time, it generated little blowback, and it was not until years later that the studio decided it needed to be pulled from circulation.
“Cartoon Wars Parts 1 and 2” Season 10 Episodes 4 and 5
The next two episodes of South Park unavailable on streaming deal more directly with the controversy surrounding depictions of Muhammad. In a two part storyline, the boys hear about an episode of Family Guy that plans to depict the Prophet Muhammad. The episode was inspired by a real world controversy at time that occurred in Denmark when a paper there chose to publish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.4
These two episode focus as much on spoofing Family Guy’s sense of humor, and its over reliance cutaway gags. In the two episode arc, Kyle and Cartman travel to Fox Network studios to convince them not to air the episode. However, Kyle learns that Cartman is not actually concerned about people getting hurt in the backlash to the cartoon; he just wants Family Guy off the air, and plans to use people’s concerns of safety to chip away at Family Guy’s right to make jokes until it is off the air.
In addition to being a hilarious arc that reveals that Family Guy is written by Manatees, it should be notable that South Park does not actually depict Muhammad in these episodes. The Prophet is not shown, either in his original design, or as a censor bar. These episodes appear to have been pulled, simply for addressing the real world controversy, even though they do not directly participate in it. Ironically, two episodes about the characters of South Park debating whether they should defend a controversial cartoon, became censored itself:
“200 and 201” Season 14 Episodes 5 and 6
The final two South Park episodes pulled are another two part story arc, titled “200” and “201”. In this story arc, Tom Cruise, and several other celebrities that have been spoofed and lampooned by the show over the years band together and try stop the characters of South Park from making fun of them. They discover that one person, Muhammad, was once made fun of by the people of South Park, but obtained the power to avoid it later.
These two episodes also directly deal with the controversy around depicting Muhammad. The Prophet is once again depicted, this time as a censor bar. Matt Stone and Trey Parker use this episode discuss the fact they were previously able to depict Muhammad, but now cannot.
One notable aspect of this episode is that even when it first aired, it was censored by the network. Towards the end of the second episode, Kyle gives a speech which reveals that Muhammad has no special powers that protect him from being made fun off. He is instead, protected by the power of violence. The characters of South Park learn that there is no actual power except violence, and terrorizing people to get what you want works. The speech was intended to be commentary on the use of force to stop people from expressing opinions, but it was ironically censored. Luckily, fans online were able to obtain and post an uncensored version of the speech:
It should also be noted that while South Park’s depiction of Islam and Muhammad is not respectful, it is more harsh than its depictions of any other religion. South Park, from its inception, has always been and equal opportunity offender, going after liberals, conservatives, Christians, and everyone else. It has joked about plenty of taboo topics and nothing indicates that its creators were singling out Islam or Muslims when they made these episodes. There is no hint of animosity or bigotry from these episodes and no reasonable person could view them as anti-Muslim, so the argument that they fall into the vague category of “hate speech” does not hold any water. This was simply the shows creator’s treating it like they would any other religion.
All of these episodes where produced before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but since then, they have all been pulled from circulation. They are not shown on TV, or available on streaming. The only way to watch them is via pirating or through older DVD releases of the show. Thankfully, they have never inspired terror attacks on the scale of Charlie Hebdo, but the censorship these episodes have endured is a reminder that free speech and free expression are fragile concepts.
Even without formal government censorship, they can be curtailed by private entities. This is also once again a reminder of why fans having access to physical media is the only sure way of protecting pop culture when the corporations that hold rights decide they are not worth defending, a concept I have discussed in previous posts.
In 2017, the Huffington Post published an article with a collection of Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of Muhammed, titled “These Are The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons That Terrorists Thought Were Worth Killing Over”.
The website Screen Rant did a full list of the South Park episodes not available on streaming. This Screen Rant article was used as a source of information for this post.
This BBC article from 2006 contains more information about the original controversy in Denmark.
Information from the South Park Wiki, was used for this article. All images of South Park were taken from there and are the property of Paramount.