When All They Can Do is Pander

South Park seems to be one of the last things that's genuinely allowed to be satirical and, as such, they're starting to get a lot more buzz. Everyone looks to the trusted name to lead us out of the media haze of mass sycophancy. For Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that old '90s tradition of spitting in the eye of convention still seems to be profitable. A couple days ago, they released a new special, "Joining the Panderverse". I liked this one a lot better than their Corona virus special.

How do you talk about the rot of corporate wokeness in Disney and mass media without throwing in with an obsessively contrary faction? South Park wisely takes the route of satirising human behaviour instead of a presumption about the underlying morality of any faction.

In the show's mythology, Kathleen Kennedy has increasingly relied on a magical object called the "Pander Stone" to churn out movies of diminishing quality, driven mad by racist hate mail (nearly all of which turns out to have been written by Eric Cartman).

Meanwhile, Cartman's been replaced by a black woman who insists she's the real Eric Cartman, while the familiar little white boy has been transported to a universe where everyone's been replaced by black, Latina, and trans women (and, in Kenny's case, one Asian woman). White voice actress April Stewart voices all four alternate versions of the four children, which tells us where Stone and Parker stand on woke corporate policy. Yet, the boys are forced to admit the black woman version of Cartman is as deserving of the name when her selfish actions nearly destroy the universe.

I also really enjoyed the B plot about handymen becoming billionaires because no-one has practical skills anymore. That's a joke that sorely needed to be told.

South Park is available on Paramount+.

X Sonnet #1784

A shadow cloud attends the bard abroad.
With walking fast, a hearty cake's a meal.
Provisions plopped above the dripping sod.
Increasing eggs increased the leopard's deal.
You slam the hatch but rubber pirates bounce.
And where'd you get a cannon blank for shot?
The wisdom reels behind the double ounce.
But lo, the lion's mates are what we got.
Persistent stars have changed the case of cakes.
For floating light, the bar was shiny clean.
Another hour left and Sally bakes.
For smarter dreams, a simple brain was keen.
A team of seven playing rattles arrive.
To herald snakes the players duly strive.

The Treacherous Uniform

Sometimes people get so caught up in their jobs they forget what their jobs are for. The word for it is "careerism" and it's rampant in the 1963 British farce The Wrong Arm of the Law in which London's criminal underworld and Scotland Yard team up to catch a gang of police impersonators. Starring Peter Sellers, Lionel Jeffries, and Bernard Cribbins, this film is both razor sharp and completely ridiculous. It also has some surprisingly effective car chase scenes.

"Do you have to put in for a gallon of petrol every time you chase someone, do you?" asks the exasperated criminal called Pearly Gates (Sellers) when his reluctant comrade, Inspector Parker (Jeffries), objects to a point in their cooperative plan to catch the imposters that would require paper work and currency exchange. But the crooks aren't much better. They gather together earlier in the film like it's a union meeting deciding how to handle negotiations with an employer.

Both sides are so comfortable with the status quo that a gang of Australians can foul things up just by putting on police uniforms and driving a stolen police car. They make their profits by catching crooks and taking the loot just like the real cops, and the crooks let them do it because the relationship between cop and crook is so cosy and rote. When a gang of burglars mistake three real cops for the fakes, they start easily beating up the cops. When they realise the mistake, they stop and apologise even though they were winning. Because that sort of thing just isn't done, I suppose.

Despite his high handed talk about rules and principles, Parker is quick to follow any suggestion Gates puts forward if it might get him a promotion. It's pretty broad but I think we've all met a few people who are at least a little like this.

The cast is great right down the line and the tone of the film never breaks from the deadpan, however ridiculous things get. Bernard Cribbins is good playing an Irish gangster named O'Toole with a nervous tick and Nanette Newman as Gates' lover Valerie is sharp and sexy. The Wrong Arm of the Law is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1302

In future floods the pods and phones command.
A washing crew in vicious squads array.
To ancient trees the limbs we must remand.
Forgotten shoes mislead the walking foot.
Confusion's cords connect a thousand phones.
A heft meal replaced a bowl of soot.
Nutritious tubes replaced the empty bones.
Remembered clips return the rented tapes.
Decisions pave the Martian streets in wheels.
The circled square was stomped like buggy grapes.
A hundred guts consumed a heavy meal.
A stolen car is took again in haste.
A copper's van was held in amber paste.

The Unofficial Scramble

Are we laughing at the people in 2018's Death of Stalin or with them? It feels at first like an irrelevant question; hardly anyone laughs in the movie. And when they do, it's provoked by a commonplace sadism or arrogance. But do we see them as our fellow humans or as grotesque exaggerations? Despite the film being banned in most countries of the Eurasian Economic Union on the grounds that it slanders the Russian people, it's an extremely sharp and insightful film when it comes to the humanity of its characters.

Following the frantic machinations of high level officials following Stalin's (Adrian McLoughlin) sudden death, the film shows people having to make profound moral decisions ten times a minute while under constant fear for their lives. Their ambition is laughably shallow but do they have room for much else?

Reversing execution orders "was my idea!" Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) complains at one point when Beria (Simon Russell Beale) seems to be stealing his thunder. The circumstance has given Beria powers that seem little short of miraculous. He brings back a woman believed dead for many years from secret imprisonment, her sudden appearance forcing Khrushchev and her husband, Molotov (Michael Palin), to switch message mid-sentence from condemning her treachery to dismissing the obviously flimsy charges.

The absurdity is certainly realistic and paired with writer/director Armando Iannucci's comedic timing and temperament the story works out to be really funny at times. I've never seen Iannucci's American series, Veep, but I'm a big fan of his earlier political satire, The Thick of It. One thing The Death of Stalin made me aware of, though, was just how much of a contribution Peter Capaldi made to that series. I suspect his foul mouthed, champion belittler character, Malcolm Tucker, is much more charming than Iannucci or Capaldi intended. There's certainly no-one like that in Death of Stalin. When Beria brags about raping prisoners, one naturally feels only disgust.

This is one of the things that makes Khrushchev come off better by comparison but there's certainly so much blood on Khrushchev's hands by the end of the film that the distinction is certainly diminished. As he tells Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) near the end of the film, when urging someone's summary execution, the choice is between revenge from the person in question or his death. It's often hard to say what the right choice for a character might be.

Another writer might try to mitigate the apparent inhumanity of a character by showing him in some other aspect of his life where he's unreservedly warm or virtuous--maybe give Beria a child he deeply cares for, and we sort of get that in the fatherly affection he obviously has for Stalin's daughter (Andrea Riseborough). But in this paranoid ballet, nothing is ever really isolated from scheming.

As usual in parodies of Socialism, Communism, and Puritanism, the moral contrast between words and behaviour is extreme and commonplace, right down to the dictator, Stalin, consistently being referred to simply as "Comrade". Michael Palin's character may be the character with the most authentic feeling, generally coming off as a sweet old man whose ability to lapse instantly into a gratuitous and grandiose praise of the country and its leaders seems almost heartfelt. But at the same time, considering the abruptness of his about-face on his wife, his apparent candour could simply reflect especially extensive experience at lying.

I never laughed as hard as I did when watching The Thick of It but the film's impressive array of comedic and dramatic talent deliver a strange and solemnly effective comedy.