‘You Need to Make a Smarter Joke Today’: ‘South Park’ Writer Pam Brady Quashes Anti-Woke Comedy Hysteria

There’s been a lot of discussion online about how exactly South Park has evaded being taken down by “cancel culture” and “gets away” with their wildly offensive brand of humor, which frequently pushes the boundaries of good taste. 

Well, it could also be that the people who make South Park are wise enough to know that comedy is always evolving.

As reported by The New York Post, in a recent interview, former South Park producer and writer (and Lady Dynamite co-creator) Pam Brady was asked about her history with the cartoon. And she didn’t hold back in terms of reassessing certain jokes, recalling that her worst contribution was a Mr. Garrison line from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. “One character said, ‘I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die,'” Brady explained. “I remember it was just like the most misogynistic frat boy joke that I’d heard of at that point, but we’re reclaiming it.”

On the subject of evolving cultural standards, Brady noted, “I do think you have to be more careful now, what you say. South Park had an episode where they represented… I’m not going to say what it was, but it was just someone you wouldn’t want to represent on a show, and you could do it 20 years ago, but you can’t do it now.”

But while some comedians would vehemently argue that they should be allowed to continue to rehash the same jokes regardless of how it’s received today, Brady took the opposite stance. “I’m sort of of two minds about it, because I think the idea of cancel culture and stuff you can’t say … I think times change, and I think sometimes it’s good that you go, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do something that’s like, a racist phrase that your grandparents would use.’ And that’s sort of just evolving,” Brady stated.

And while comedy isn’t “stifled” today, as some have suggested in recent years, Brady pointed out that “you need to be smarter to make a joke.” Which isn’t a bad thing. “I think that’s the fun of it,” Brady argued. “Nobody wants to feel bad, and you know, we don’t want to do stuff that just makes people feel bad.”

Brady isn’t the only South Park alum to make this point. Bill Hader has also gone on the record as believing that evolving standards in comedy is “a good thing,” adding “I’m never interested in upsetting anybody.”

Even South Park co-creator Matt Stone has admitted that some past episodes seem “totally wrong” in retrospect, possibly containing the “worst joke and dumbest position.” But he doesn’t necessarily believe that the show needs to be politically cohesive as a whole, and that allows room for change. “Whenever we think about it, we don’t think about the show having to have any coherence like that. I just go, ‘What’s funny now, what do we want to make fun of now?’” Stone once explained. “And if it’s different then what we wanted to make fun of then, or we change our mind about something, or it clangs with something like, I don’t care. This is me now, that was me then.”

After all, if South Park wasn’t capable of growing, then it never would have conceded the existence of ManBearPig.