South Park: The Return of Chef
Posted at 22:09.40 and filed under Musings, Links and such
South Park Season 10 just started with a big bang, they killed off Chef!
Some of you may have read that the voice for Chef, soul singer Issac Hayes walked out of the show after an episode in Season 9, “Trapped in the Closet”, parodied Scientalogy, which is a religious movement that Hayes subscribed to. He objects to the show’s producers continued parodising of religions and that it is “inappropriate ridicule” of religion. Quoting him:
There is a place in this world for satire but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs begins,
There is of cos nothing wrong with that, but obviously Hayes was offended that his faith got targetted. This is in view of the fact that he did not object to the earlier episodes where various faiths were parodised, including having an image of the Prophet Muhammad and making fun of Mormons. So you are basically looking at a case of “can make fun of others but not me”
South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone saw it as that, but they released Hayes from the show, and also promptly declared war on Scientalogy:
So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!
The duo signed the statement “Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu.”
Episode 1001 was about Chef returning after a 3-month adventure with the Super Adventure Club, and returning home wanting to molest and have sex with children. The boys discovered that Super Adventure Club’s members travel around the world to have sex with children in exotic settings, following the lead of their founder who gained immortality doing that last time.
To cut a long story short, the boys discovered that Chef was hypnotised and they managed to revive him with a psychologist’s help. But later Super Adventure Club managed to capture him again. Later while escaping with the boys, Chef had the opportunity to choose between a normal life and staying with Super Adventure Club.
He chose the latter.
Crossing back across the ropebridge, it broke and he fell into the ravine, falling onto a rock. A mountain lion and a grizzly bear attacked him n killed him.
During his funeral, Kyle has this to say:
We’re all here today because Chef has been such an important part of our lives. A lot of us don’t agree with the choices Chef has made in the past few days. Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can’t let the events of the last week take away the memories of how much Chef made us smile. I’m gonna remember Chef as the jolly old guy who broke into song. I’m gonna remember Chef as the guy who gave us advice to live by. So you see, we shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us. We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains.
Despite the death of Chef in this episode, this is going down as one of the classic South Park episodes, in the sense that war has been explicitly declared on Scientalogy, a clear msg that Parker and Stone would not submit easily to the Scientalogists.
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