The thing about "transgressive art"---does it really count as offensive when you're trying to offend people other than those who watch your show? How many devout Muslims watch South Park? I guess some rather fanatical Muslims found out somehow that the South Park fellows portrayed the prophet Mohammad on their show. Hard to imagine they were regular viewers, though.
It seems that a website for a group of al Qaeda sympathizers ran a photo of murdered film director Theo van Gogh (great-great grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh) killed after making an anti-Muslim documentary. The website said that the South Park fellows had acted stupidly and that they might face a similar fate.
South Park's attack on Scientology was intelligent and rather brave. The "Church" of Scientology likes to intimidate critics with lawsuits. Their "religion" is copyrighted and they'll sue you for copyright infringement if you try to discuss their beliefs. It's a "religion" that you have to join, be a member of for years and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to before you're allowed to know its basic tenets.
But the attack on Islam revealed nothing new, it didn't directly attack those who would murder them for making the episode. In fact, unless they are targeted for death, it undermines the episode's message that no one can attack Muhammad for fear of being killed. Other than the website telling them that they were doing something stupid, I'm not sure anyone has been especially upset over the episode even though it's been seen by far more people than the cartoons in Denmark.
Islam is like any other religion.
The Catholics in Northern Ireland are a brutally oppressed people, denied the right to vote, forced to live in ghettos, segregated from the rest of society, denied jobs and government services, brutalized and even routinely tortured by police. They launched a non-violent civil rights movement modeled on the one led by Martin Luther King, Jr, and they were gunned down in the streets, bombed, and put into prison camps. It was then that they turned to armed resistance.
The Catholics in the Republic of Ireland, on the other other hand, are brutal oppressors. You want to know how brutal, look at the scandal now over Catholic clergy's treatment of Irish children in their care. There was a case of a 12-year-old girl, pregnant after being raped at knife-point, who was barred from leaving the country because they were afraid she would get an abortion. (Their supreme court finally let her leave.)
So are you with the Irish Catholics or against them?
Muslims in Palestine are facing extremely violent, brutal oppression. The Zionists target Muslim children. They use starvation, not to mention white phosphorus, as a weapon against the people of Gaza.
On the other hand, governments run by Moslems elsewhere can be rather oppressive themselves.
A critique of South Park I read somewhere
They pointed out that South Park had fallen into a trap. They can whip out an episode very quickly thanks to computer animation. It just takes a few days. They can comment of current events as they happen. And they've been taking more advantage of this lately, but not all the episodes have been especially funny.
Isn't there a book out claiming South Park as a pro-Republican show? It didn't surprise me. The show does that have that slant. They had the gay boy scout episode which ended with the gay scoutmaster quitting so as not to offend the gay hating Boy Scouts. The anti-Mormon episode ended with a pro-Mormon message.
They're awfully mealy-mouthed for "transgressive artists".
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