So in celebration of my completely normal recently developed interest in Saddam Hussein, I decided to re-watch South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut so I could firmly cement it on my list of top 10 movies ever. Alongside the pure glee of watching the movie itself, it reminded me truly how much I hate new South Park.
For those who somehow ended up reading this with knowledge of neither south park's Trump or Saddam, some quick context:
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| Note: notice the disgusting quality increase and how it doesn't look like paper cutouts anymore? |
26 years later, in 2025 South Park debut's its 27th and 28th seasons featuring President Donald Trump depicted almost exactly as Saddam Hussein except with PNGs of Trump's face instead of Saddam's. The show follows with the exact same joke of being a neglectful lover of Satan's, with minimal changes made other than the obvious fact that neither of them are even in hell and Satan gets pregnant.
Even when this season first dropped and I wasn't yet butthurt about an appropriation of a Saddam depiction, I really thought it went without saying that this is beyond lazy and barely funny after the initial "point-and-laugh" at seeing a PNG of trump flap around and spam "relax guy!". Apparently the majority of people didn't share this grievance. I was (and still am) shocked to see a number of headlines, video essays, and Instagram reels talking about "jaw-dropping mockery of trump" and "hilarious plotlines about trump's tiny penis". If the joke itself wasn't lazy enough, they had to spend his entire introduction making sure you remember how funny it was when it was 1999. I shit you not this is the exact dialogue that takes place:
[the instrumental from the intro to Saddam's number in the 1999 movie]
Trump (obscured, on the phone): Uh huh, okay
Pam Bondi: Mr President, the prime minister of Canada is here to see you.
PM: Mr President! why are you placing these new tariffs on Canada? What are you, some kind of dictator from the middle east?
Trump (turns around) : A dictator from the middle east? Heyyy relax, guy! I'm just your average joe, take a rest!
PM: the people of Canada will not be devalued like this!
Trump: Heyyy come on, you don't want me to bomb you like I did Iraq!
PM: I thought you just bombed Iran?
trump: Iran, Iraq, what the hell's the difference? relax guy!
genuinely the amount of exposition (if i can call it that) here is disgusting. its like the first 5 lines alone are "DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE FUNNY?" and then they heinously shoehorn in a reference to a throwaway line from Saddam in a Terrance & Phillip episode.
There's a number of problems with trump even being in the show at all, the least of which being:
- they already did this joke in 2016 with Mr garrison painted bright orange AND THEN DECIDED IT WASN'T FUNNY ANYMORE
- Trump is depicted as a Canadian despite the fact that the Trump-esque "border promise" in the south park world was focused on keeping Canadians OUT
Even ignoring the following 10 EPISODES in which they absolutely flogged the dead horse's skeleton and then threw in about a half a million small penis jokes, trump as a character highlights the problem that south park has had for a really long time now: they forgot how satire works.
Old South park, even if it incorporated a number of pop-culture references, tried to stray from focusing on micro-trends, instead building episodes around broader problems, for example, "do the handicapped go to hell?" and its second part "probably" critique churches that preach on the fear of hell and damnation rather than the love of God and your community, with elements that satirize discrimination between denominations. New South park instead likes to do almost play-by-play recreations of things that happened at most in the last year, and more often in the last few weeks, like the 67 and labubu episodes, and then just over-exaggerate everything (like how they had an episode depicting labubus as demonic ???) so they can still pretend its satire. Ripping on Trump would have been an ok move if their "satire" wasn't just episode after episode of little girls and molestation at Mar-a-lago and "comedic" depictions of ICE raids. Another of their methods for still claiming "satire" is just picking one running joke per episode and running it into the ground so hard you don't even want to admit it was funny the first time, like Mr Mackey joining ice to "get his nut" or Cartman saying "master-debating" or Kristi Noem shooting a dog, all of which get used upwards of 5 times in the span of a 20 minute episode.
New South Park lacks any sort of artistry (given that they revamped everyone's models and completely abandoned the construction paper look in favor of weirdly cell shaded designs) or real humor, which leaves them to reveal the other glaringly obvious issue with South Park now, which is that they can't stay relevant if they're not getting sued or taken off the air. This issue somehow only became obvious to me around 200 and 201 where they have a running bit about not being allowed to depict the prophet Mohammed and then jam in every celebrity they've ever generated controversy with in an attempt to re-provoke them into suing again, but watching stab after boring stab at Trump really made me sick of it. I obviously am not of the belief that Trump shouldn't get stabbed at but the more they drag on and on with these ridiculous plotlines (such 'bangers' as "trump's penis is so small it broke satan's egg and impregnated him so hes trying to abort it) for a number of episodes, the more it becomes a shameless cry for attention that only seems to be 'entertaining' to centrists and libs who post "the south park writers are probably going crazy in the writers room rn!" after 10,000 new documents containing CSAM are released.
On another note, the excruciatingly unfunny Trump revamp takes away from the comedic genius displayed in 1999 Saddam Hussein. The introduction scene alone is probably the funniest sequence in animated history, but his incorporation with the movie (unlike trump's) actually makes logical sense. As where Trump's sexual relationship with Satan is a lazy callback, Saddam's is a comment on how the man was so evil that he'd go to hell and "make Satan his bitch" (which is partially why I also think the joke makes no sense if it isn't in hell). Its a basic but effective subversion, Satan is depicted like a shy neglected boyfriend who is only being used for his body. When the joke has a simple and broad premise, its easier to expand on and it isn't as repetitive when used as a running bit, not to mention it actually drives (and resolves) the plot.
Because I don't know how to write conclusions I'm instead gonna glaze Saddam's song "I Can Change" for the remainder of the rant.
Just as an opener I'd like to speculate that since all the comments are glazing Matt and Trey for using the instrumental for trump's queue and saying they laughed at new episodes, this must mean the movie was just so good that the jingle activated a Pavlovian response and made them think the show is funny. I must conclude this for my own sanity because I don't want to believe that there are real people who i might run into in my life that think seasons 27 and 28 are funny.
So overall i like how this song sounds half-assed, but not in the sense that its poorly written or composed (it is amazingly done on both fronts) but in that it uses these weird rushed, sometimes half-rhymes where he shoves syllables together to get his point across, which none of the other songs do. it really conveys that Saddam does not gaf about changing and hes just trying to get pity points. Bonus points here because the line "my parents were sometimes abusive and they made a prick of me" is obviously very tongue-in cheek "i had it tough i swear" but its actually completely correct. Saddam's many parent figures were all a huge contributing factor to his violent demeanor.
The visuals are so entertaining they somehow take away from how grating it is to hear Saddam speak, I learned this when I had it stuck in my head after days of rewatching the clip and was just gonna listen to it in my headphones and I aborted within 5 seconds because I couldn't do it.
Something I don't like is the motif of the music itself, the string instrument gives off the vibe that someone was just like "shit man sounds like brown people and deserts to me" (which they probably did, it was 1999) because if you asked me to give a nationality which I'd associate with the instrumental, Iraq wouldn't even be top 3, I have this same problem with the women in the background. The whole thing seems a bit too Aladdin-y for me, which is more like a blend of middle eastern/south Asian aesthetics. It probably would have benefited more from a similar style to the song made for Saddams birthday or even if they wanted to keep the acoustic "Arab" sound played the intro with an oud. Though I do like the orchestral break at the end and how it sounds very "villainy" like something from Star Wars, it is a bit jarring that the whole intro motif is completely gone.
I can't complain about Saddam break-dancing for the remainder of the song after saying "watch me change!" and Satan taking him back afterwards because I know people who that would work on lowkey.
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