"South Park Season 19 is behind the times"

InsanityAddict

Let's see, if we go down the episode list we have: 

1/ Mockery of pedestalling celebrities as effigies of one's cause versus ridiculously overblown ploys as a reaction that confirm everything the town's been called out for.

2/ An episode that goes after Trump, also a jab at the smarmy media types who keep giving him free air time in order to mock him.

3/ An episode about renovating a poor district, jabs at gentrification, trickle-down economics and poverty as authenticity. 

4/ An  episode about a leftie fad but also the dictatorship of user reviews (this is a point progressive outlets have repeatedly used as a criticism of Uber) and how it puts a stranglehold on small businesses.

5/ An episode that takes shots at charity mugging, double standards in online harassment, online bile, celebrities with huge platforms casting themselves in a position of a victim equal to a school kid, ridiculously expensive charity dinners and people who get angry about being pointed out how privileged they are.

6/ An episode mocking fetishization of Pure Queerness and no-homo insecurities.

7/ An episode mocking not so much police brutality (they've been doing that for seasons) but petty behaviours of police departments and terrorism panic. 

8/ An episode taking aim at the ever-patronizing internalized X-ism, people who use their politics solely to woo women and native advertising.

9/ An episode that takes aim at gentrification once again.

10/ An episode that lampoons gun fetishism and the elitism inherent in language policing (which, again, plenty of progressive critics have also made). Also, PC Principal is staying, thus pointing out how the status quo has completely changed and echoing the cultural shift taking place in America.

Now look at this list and see how much of it aligns with the fourth paragraph: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/12/22/yes-virginia-there-is-a-left-wing-reform-movement/ (yes, yes, SP is pop culture, I know)

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but the biggest punching bag of this season seemed to be neoliberalism, which is sort of narcissism of small differences, but also the biggest danger to Sanders' surge. 

vandro

Huh. I hadn't seen it like that.

Noimporta

Every time I've seen someone make this claim, they're obviously one of the targets of the mockery. It's usually prefaced by "I used to like south park, but this season..."

>Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but the biggest punching bag of this season seemed to be neoliberalism

85% sure it's wishful thinking.

Stormtroper

Yeh, as from the list you mention I don't see how the biggest punching bag is neoliberalism (or whatever passes for it these days).

InsanityAddict

My definition is mainly taken from this essay: http://www.popmatters.com/post/144141-/

 "Neoliberalism creates its own notion of freedom—freedom of competition—and disseminates it; subjects internalize it and regulate themselves in accordance with it. It is a state-sanctioned principle around which one can form an identity seemingly in accordance with the society one must live in. Transforming oneself into a personal brand can then appear to be an autonomous rational choice of the individual given the “reality” of the world."
Politics becomes a brand, in which not the reality but the appearance matters. Poverty is recast as 'local and authentic', consumers encourage the rat race between small establishments by rebranding themselves as a food critic, news becomes an advertorial, guns as a proxy for identity: in short, people begin to market themselves in order to gain an ideological superior edge over their competition. Do tell me if I'm going full postmodernism here. 

MadassAlex

Better postmodern than neoliberal, in any case. 

Zennistrad

My favorite thing about this South Park season was how all the dudebros got really mad at PC Principal not turning out to be the actual bad guy in the end.

BassFishing

Bump, because someone else noticed this shit:

vandro

I wondered when where you going to post this video