South Park’s Seventeenth Season a keeper

You would think that beyond a decade-and-a-half of consistent production, a cartoon series would begin to look a little stale. But not so South Park, which recently saw its Seventeenth Season saved for posterity on Blu-ray and DVD.

I watched the entire season in one sitting and was amazed at how insistently creators Trey Parker and Matt still had their finger-on-the-pulse of pop culture – and of course the insane state of the world at large.

From the first episode – which focuses on Cartman’s paranoia at possibly being spied on by the government via the Internet – Season  17 screams right here, right now.

The season proceeds to take viewers on a rollercoaster ride of postmodern referentialism, from our fascination with the coupling of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West to references to Game Of Thrones, from ‘murder porn’ television to mega department store sales sprees, vampire culture to the gothic-versus-emo debate, and Photoshop infatuation to international terrorism.

There’s even a piss-take on Japanese Manga, to rub salt into the wound of an animated art-form that appears to take itself way too seriously. Here, Kenny is transformed into a transvestite version of a princess who is then adopted as brand ambassador for Sony PlayStation as competition to Microsoft’s Xbox. Yes, the results are very hilarious, if not verging on slanderous to both brands.

Whether you’ve been downloading/collecting every episode of South Park since its beginnings in 1997, or occasionally come across it on the telly, if there is one season you must own to stick into a time-capsule, this is the one.  Antonino Tati

‘South Park: Seventeenth Season’ is available on Blu-ray and DVD through Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.