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South Park: the most important artwork this decade?- by Liam Maguire
South Park the American cartoon created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone was always intended for mature audiences. South Park quickly became infamous for its crude, satirical and slapstick ‘toilet humour’ always with a simple concept. But now, into their thirteenth season South Park has leapt forward from its more juvenile episodes in its early series which was made up of simple very funny dark humour landing into genius.

Their new and often controversial episodes have managed to challenge many beliefs, issues and topics around the world; from the portrayal of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, using the 'n' word in the episode “with apologies to Jesse Jackson”, the depiction of Steve Irwin with a String Ray hanging from his chest, denouncing Scientology as "a big fat global scam".

The show has political, biblical, historical, mythological allusions throughout the new series.

Allusions that are so all encompassing that you name any present predominate issue and South Park has more than likely satirised it.

This leaves the show with the definitely deserved title as one of the most controversial and most important piece of art in this past decade.

And many people agree with me.

Because, as many of you would know, even with widespread anger and uproar, the show continuously manages to wrap up many awards and recognitions from many sources.

For instance Time Magazine included the show on its list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time", proclaiming it as "America's best source of rapid-fire satire for the past decade" and South Park has been nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program eight times.

With all this considered South Park has evolved from- don’t get me wrong- a very funny juvenile, toilet humour dominated television series to something much more intelligent.

South Park has become a TV show that is the raising big issues that are not raised anywhere else with so much attention.

This begs the question to the creators of this masterpiece:

"What will they do next?"

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