‘South Park’ Season 29 Premiere Renames Town and Mocks Donald Trump
Fresh off an Emmy victory, South Park returned September 16 with a new season, a new town name and another naked caricature of President Donald Trump.
The Season 29 premiere, “South American Biker Gangs,” features a persistent background joke that South Park has been renamed South America.
The gag responds to Trump’s August executive order changing Lake Ontario to Lake America. The episode alters the opening theme lyrics, has characters casually use the new name and ends with a song declaring, “We’ll always be South America. We won’t change for anyone.”
Turning the Satire Dial to 11
“The chief tool of satire is ridicule through exaggeration,” said Ethan Thompson, PhD, professor of media arts at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
“As the absurdity and obnoxiousness of Donald Trump’s real-life words and deeds has grown, South Park has had to turn the satire dial to 11 to keep up,” he added.
The episode also brings back the show’s recurring portrayal of n--- Trump. Although the script does not explicitly name him, the geographic jokes and familiar caricature leave little ambiguity about their target.
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