South Park‘s Mohammed Episode Censored By Comedy Central

by Jon Bershad | 1:13 pm, April 22nd, 2010

» 21 comments

All this past week, both fans of free speech and those of cartoons with talking feces as characters have been wondering how the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, would handle the death threats they received from Islamic extremists after last week’s episode. Would they continue to show Muhammed (bear costume or no) or would they bow to pressure. When the second episode in the two-part series aired last night, another big question was raised. Muhammed’s appearance was even more censored than last week, his name was now bleeped out in addition to him being covered up by a big black box. This left fans wondering whether this move was made by the creators or if, like an episode from 2006, executives at Comedy Central had added the bleeps against the artists’ will. A post made on the show’s official site this morning now makes it clear that the network was responsible.

For the past few years, Parker and Stone have been streaming every episode of the show for free on their site, South Park Studios. The episodes (which air with ads to recoup losses) are added to the site one day after they air on Comedy Central and run uncensored meaning that every filthy word that comes out of Stan, Kyle, Cartman, or Kenny’s mouth is heard in full. This has been the case for every episode of the past few seasons except for last night’s. When users attempt to view the episode, they instead get the following text:

“We apologize that South Park Studios cannot stream episode 201 at this time.

After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.

We will bring you a version of 201 as soon as we can.”

This answers definitively whether or not there was network interference with the episode. It doesn’t, however, say which audio bleeps were added by Comedy Central and parent company Viacom. In addition to every utterance of Muhammed’s name, the entire last scene, where all the characters explain the moral of the story, was bleeped. It is our guess that the network added the Muhammed bleeps and Parker and Stone bleeped out the last scene in response as a way of protest. However, we won’t know until some kind of statement is made.

The New York Times called Comedy Central this morning and got no more information than what was already made clear by the post.

From the NYT:

“On Thursday morning, a spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the cut delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not giving permission for the episode to run on the studio’s Web site.”

As South Park fans know, Muhammed has been seen in full on the show. Back in 2001, an episode entitled “Super Best Friends” showed a cartoon version of the Prophet and gave him multiple lines of dialogue without incident. An interesting twist to this whole story is that that episode is still available, completely uncensored, on South Park Studios. Why that episode can appear online but last night’s can’t is unclear.

All in all, this whole situation is both a step forward and step back for the freedom of speech and the battle against religious extremism.

Comedy Central, Matt Stone, Prophet Muhammad cartoon, radical Islam, South Park, Trey Parker, Viacom

nunspa

OMG Rly? with all the crazy stuff they have done in the past?
Olby Sucks

I find it very hard to believe that people who practice the religion of peace would ever want to harm anyone, let alone kill them…
Munch

Wow Jon, I didn’t know you wrote here.

Congrats!
Jon Bershad

Haha thanks! Still fairly new and I write a lot of the posts that don’t get tons of comments. I need more Beck and Maddow posts for that. :)
writer

I just can’t picture radical Islamists sitting in their caves watching South Park. Someone must be tipping them off.
Jon Bershad

That’s where the fundamentalist blogs that made the initial threats come in. Besides, you don’t have to live in a cave to be an extremist*.

*That is the most I’ve ever sounded like fascist propaganda.
Grammie

I’m truly surprised that anyone can not see and peg this entire situation without any hesitation as based on a completely justified fear of the principals being the next victim of a machete wielding IslamoNazi jihadist.

Neither this situation nor the near complete dearth of similar products of our “culture” such as Piss Christ or Dung Mary (see link) with Islamic icons is conclusive proof in my mind.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/991008/madonna.html
writer

I didn’t mean to stereotype terrorists by saying they live in caves. I’m sure they’re very nice caves.
Jon Bershad

Touche, writer. Touche.
ImNotBlue

<writer says:
April 22, 2010 at 2:00 pm

Like this?
ex political-media hack

South Park is, by far, the smartest show on TV and the suits at Comedy Channel are a bunch of pansies.
The_Reasonable_Lib

This is a major loss for free speech

@Olby sucks:
You can’t blame the entire religion for the actions of some fools. Just like conservatives get angry at liberals for marginalizing the tea party as stupid kooks, you’re marginalizing all muslims as violent.
Munch

The_Reasonable_Lib says:
April 22, 2010 at 4:32 pm

@Olby sucks:
You can’t blame the entire religion for the actions of some fools. ”

That’s funny , that’s what many liberals are currently doing to the Catholic church.
The_Reasonable_Lib

@ Munch:
Am I one of them? No. Am I religious? Yes. Do I blame the pope? Yes, he’s directly responsible for not addressing this issue.
Munch

And that DOES NOT ALTER my statement.
Technus

Show wasn’t even worth watching, and why did they even bleep the moral of the story??
Helix

Really no major religion should be free of criticism under the guise of either sensitivity or of cowardice, as shown by CC executives. Kudo’s to Trey and Matt for having more guts than their network does. After their sensitive, gentle treatment(gag) of both Jesus and Buddha, we expect Muhammed would be treated no differently. What I want to see is a wanted poster for Muhammed for what we would view him in our century, which is a criminal. In his lifetime he raided Jewish caravans, and married one girl at teh tender age of either six or nine depending on which Koran verses you find more accurate. In addition, he taught(Hadith 4:271) that it is ok to tell a lie to a Jew before you murder said Jew, (apparently one of his “disciples” was having some ethical qualms), but when you bring your loot from said murder back home, tell the truth to the imam and give him a ten percent cut. With morals like these, it is no surprise we have such upstanding and socially well adjusted Muslims in our communities today. The likely reason we have the peace we do(in our society), is that many good people have joined for various reasons a bad religion, and have tried to change it for the better and/or ignore the worst parts of it. Look at Trey’s and Matt’s cartoon and you will see nothing worthy of a violent response. They are no where near as sharp edged as my comments. But if Muslims want to live in our society they will have to learn to take criticism without hijacking an airplane or two, just like the rest of the major religions. The response to the SP episode once again shows that free speech needs to exercised to be of any use. Otherwise we could rename Comedy Central “Dhimmi Central” for their despicable submission.
Olby Sucks

It’s ok to wish death to conservatives on tv and the radio, but, make fun of muslims? Can’t be havin’ that, no huh-huh.
libra blue

So Comedy Central censored the episode just as I thought they would. Kind of takes the edge off of the show to know they can be manipulated by luatics. Less than courageous.
libra blue

corection: lunatics.
Righter8

Comedy Central has taken it even further. Check this link: http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103940/
an episode featuring (an uncensored) Mohammad and the ‘Super Best Friends” is no longer available for viewing! They pulled an episode from 9 years ago because of their fear of nut jobs.