Fasten your seat belts kiddies, there is a war going on AND it’s not what any of you expected.
Yep, that’s right kids and campers – Once Upon A Time, there was a jihad launched against Comedy Central’s South Park. No joke.
As A.V. Club reports,
[B]ack in 2010 … a radical Muslim group issued a totally rad death threat toward the creators of South Park, hoping to “raise awareness” of the fact that Trey Parker and Matt Stone might be murdered over depicting a cartoon Muhammad in a bear suit? And then a panicked Comedy Central not only blacked out all appearances of the prophet in the following episode, it also bleeped out every utterance of his name and the whole of Kyle’s usual, “I learned something today…” speech? Indeed, we all had a good chuckle about the ironic censorship of an episode mocking censorship, then returned to our lives as Triscuit-eating filth awaiting damnation. But the death wish that is our curiosity about the inflammatory remarks of cartoons has persisted, owing to the fact that “201” has still never been heard in its uncensored version anywhere (not even on the DVD).
On January 31, 2014, the original uncensored version was leaked when it was illegally pulled from the South Park Studios servers and was posted online in its entirety without any approval by Comedy Central. Also, there is a version, below, that was recreated by Animated Anon who set up a Vimeo account last week in response to threats associated with the release of “Interview.”
Going back to the subject of the censorship of this episode, I like the way IndieWire put it when they wrote:
It doesn’t take fanatics with guns to suppress free speech, just media conglomerates with stockholders where their spines should be.
The brutal attacks on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo earlier week, presumed to be a response to their history of publishing comics critical of Muslim fundamentalism makes the story of the censorship of this South Park episode all the more poignant.
Without any further ado, below is the restored version South Park episode 201, followed by a partial transcript, courtesy of A.V. Club.
Oh, and by the way – as A.V. Club reports
At the time of the episode’s censoring, Parker and Stone confirmed Comedy Central’s statement that the bleeping was entirely the network’s decision, and that it was not some “meta-joke” about censorship on their part.
South Park Episode 201: TRULY-UNCENSORED from Animated Anon on Vimeo.
KYLE: That’s because there is no goo, Mr. Cruise. You see, I learned something today. Throughout this whole ordeal, we’ve all wanted to show things that we weren’t allowed to show, but it wasn’t because of some magic goo. It was because of the magical power of threatening people with violence. That’s obviously the only true power. If there’s anything we’ve all learned, it’s that terrorizing people works.
JESUS: That’s right. Don’t you see, gingers, if you don’t want to be made fun of anymore, all you need are guns and bombs to get people to stop.
SANTA: That’s right, friends. All you need to do is instill fear and be willing to hurt people and you can get whatever you want. The only true power is violence.
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