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Comedy Central censors South Park

Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone say, "In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind."

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Comedy Central has censored South Park following an episode in which Islamic Prophet Mohammed was dressed in a bear suit to avoid his image being shown.

In a  follow up episode this week Comedy Central added additional audio bleeps and his image was blocked out with the word “censored.”

Creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, released a statement in response to Comedy Central’s decision to censor their show.

“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps.

“In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Mohammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.”

A network spokesman said, “I can confirm that Comedy Central added additional audio bleeps after the cut of the episode was delivered by the producers.”

A NY Mulsim group said Stone and Parker risked the same fate as late Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam in 2004.

Parker and Stone have parodied Mohammed before, first in 2001 and again in 2006, though Comedy Central censored the latter bit, which never aired.

A message on the South Park website also states, “We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.”

The show has previously run into difficulties with religious humour before with its “Bloody Mary” episode, yet to air on SBS.

New episodes return to SBS on May 3rd.

Source: NY Daily News, ABC

16 Responses

  2. This is not the first time Matt & Trey have overstepped the mark. I was pretty upset to find out that Mr Hanky the Christmas Poo wasn’t real.

  3. @ Andrew

    The image of the bear costume wasn’t censored, but the image of the subject in question, any verbal reference to said subject and the message at the end of the episode, were.

  5. For those who haven’t seen it yet (ie haven’t obtained it themselves), any mention of the word Mohammed was bleeped, any graphical representation of him had a black square with censored over it … not like the graphic in the article, just a big black rectangle. Then at the end, when Kyle & a few others say what they’ve learned today, as they do regularly, his entire dialog (and the others) are all bleeped.

    I can understand why Comedy Central would do this, even if it is total overkill – but it seriously shows what a ((censored))’d up world we live in when a satirical cartoon can spend years & years making fun of anything, and any other religion known to man … yet mention one name, and suddenly its World War 3, and there are death threats make against those who dare make a joke – even when they show another character – Buddha – snorting cocaine.

    One day comedy shows won’t exist, as anything that makes fun of anyone wont be tolerated :/ Be a bit like the shows in the movie “Invention of Lying” – no fiction, no creativity, just people stating historical facts … because if you make something up, it’ll offend someone somewhere.

  6. This isn’t the first time that Mohammed has been portrayed on South Park. The first time, he was alongside other religious gods. This time, Mohammed is portrayed as being within a bear costume, which might coincidently or purposely allude to the common internet meme of the pedo bear. I think this may have provoked the warning as on the previous occasions when Mohammed was portrayed, it wasn’t controversial.

  7. As a Muslim, this puzzles me. From what I understand, South Park never actually depicted the prophet, and the scene in question sounds rather innocuous (certainly a word that I wouldn’t associate with South Park =P). What’s more puzzling is that they’ve actually portrayed the prophet as a super hero (?) in an earlier episode without any problems whatsoever.

    Frankly, the constant satirical portrayal of Jesus and the Bloody Mary episode should be of a far greater concern to these holier-than-thou zealots seeing as they too are significant figures in Islam (Mary has a verse named after her in the Qur’an).

    Censorship in this case is completely unwarranted IMO.

  9. I just checked and the season containing the Bloody Mary episode comes out on region 4 DVD early next month. Plus Go is up to the same season, so I wonder if they will have the guts to show it?

    Apparently the repeats of “201” were pulled too, so I wonder if it will make it to Australia (legally)?

  10. Surely Comedy Central know by now what they’re signing up for every time they renew South Park. The show has built its reputation on stirring controversy, no matter the subject matter.

  13. “The show has previously run into difficulties with religious humour before with its “Bloody Mary” episode, yet to air in Australia.”

    Wrong. This episode has aired on The Comedy Channel numerous times (the last time being Monday), and I am pretty darn sure I’ve seen it on SBS at least once as well.

  14. “A NY Muslim group said Stone and Parker risked the same fate as late Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam in 2004.”

    How dare this group make a such threat! Outrageous!

  15. What the bear was censored? what a joke! the whole point of the episode is about how ridiculous it is we can’t send up Mohammed but we can Jesus or other religious figures without getting death threats and now they have just totally blown that point..

    I would like to know what “god” would advocate violent retribution killing as something that will get them into “heaven”?

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