Warning: Spoilers for South Park season 25, episode 4, "Back to the Cold War."
Taking on a topic as contentious and emotionally-charged as the Ukraine/Russia conflict should have been a misstep for the anarchic animated comedy South Park, but the long-running satirical series managed to handle the sensitive subject surprisingly well. It is not easy for adult animation to keep up with the times. For one thing, most cartoons have a lengthy production process that ensures they can’t comment on current events without seeming dated by the time each new episode airs.
However, even shows like South Park (with its infamously fast 6-day episode turnaround time) can drop the ball by commenting on situations that are still unfolding. While the likes of The Simpsons can safely revisit old plots to ensure viewers a nostalgic outing, South Park is expected to have a hot take on every social, cultural, and political event as it happens. This has often resulted in the show taking contrarian stances that aged terribly. While some South Park episodes proved surprisingly prescient, the series can just ass often be impossible to rewatch thanks to the intensely of-the-moment nature of its attempts at satire.
As such, an episode of South Park revolving around the Russia/Ukraine conflict seemed to be in inherently poor taste. However, despite its title, South Park season 25, episode 4, “Back to the Cold War,” didn't even mention Ukraine. Ultimately, this was why the outing worked, with South Park season 25 making a perennially valid point about the nature of war itself through the medium of goofy, puerile gags. The episode’s ending rivaled Rick & Morty’s “Rickdependence Spray” (season 5, episode 4) when it came to offering one of the year’s most disgusting animated images, but the gross-out humor worked since it was in service of a solid anti-war message—a promising development after a few years of South Park displaying some muddled, dicey political takes.
South Park’s “Back to the Cold War” Explained
From the opening scene onwards, the quick-moving plot of “Back to the Cold War” sees Mr. Mackey use the international crisis as an excuse to indulge in casual xenophobia toward a Russian family and '80s nostalgia, while Butters’ attempts to find in his love of dressage are ignored by both his parents and educator who are busy obsessing over their Cold War fantasies. In a subplot that proves a live-action South Park could never work, Butters’ horse is more interested in basic biological functions like defecating and mating than in performing for his dressage competition, but the unfortunate protagonist’s parents are so paranoid about his Russian competitor’s family that they offer their son no help with this embarrassing issue. Meanwhile, Mackey ends up actively stoking nuclear war between Russia and the US because of his desperation to bring back the ‘80s. The principal is so busy revising the music of the era and acting out his spy-movie fantasies that he completely ignores the real-life consequences that his war-mongering antics have on real people’s lives.
Why South Park’s Ukraine/Russia Story Could Have Been A Disaster
In recent years, South Park’s transphobic episode “Board Girls” (season 23, episode 7) showed that the series could be out of touch at times. Where episodes like South Park’s empathetic Britney Spears parody show that the series can be smart, thoughtful, and sincere, outings like “Board Girls” prove that the show isn’t above using weak jokes to back up thoughtless arguments. Combine this with South Park’s earlier missteps, such as the ManBearPig plot, one of few stories the creators actually acknowledged was a mistake, the risk of their topical Ukraine/Russia episode seeming woefully misguided. It would have been easy for the episode to mock the conflict’s victims in an attempt to shock viewers and stoke controversy, but it would have also been an ultimately empty, depthless decision South Park was wise to avoid.
How South Park Avoided Ukraine/Russia Pitfalls
South Park didn’t try to borrow The Simpsons’ knack for predicting the future in their Ukraine/Russia episode. Instead, the episode takes an unexpected route and largely steers clear of depicting world leaders and their political machinations. Other than accusing Putin of being nostalgic for the ‘80s (the last time Russia and the US were caught up in an extended period of saber-rattling), the episode almost entirely ignores the real-life conflict. As a result, “Back to the Cold War” doesn’t make a mockery of the dead, displaced, and affected citizens who fans could reasonably have worried South Park might try to mine some misjudged attempts at humor from.
Why South Park’s War Story Works
By reducing the US and Russia’s rivalry to a pair of dressage horses mating, South Park mocks anyone ing the prospect of international conflict by attaching their ego to national identity. The final image of the episode—a group of unhinged small-town suburbanites, miles from any risk of conflict, rabidly cheering on a horse for having sex while a distraught child looks on in horror—is a potent anti-war metaphor that epitomizes South Park’s original premise; that being to use the perspective of children to illustrate the absurdity of contemporary society and culture). South Park returns to the show’s roots in “Back to the Cold War,” with Butters’ inability to comprehend why his parents hate his Russian opponent so much being a fitting stand-in for a generation who can’t understand why anyone would be nostalgic for the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation that hung over the ‘80s.
Much like Rick & Morty’s Hellraiser spoof worked despite the franchise being an infamous difficult subject to parody, South Park’s take on the Russia/ Ukraine conflict works because it allows the show to criticize people cheering on the prospect of war itself rather than a specific country, politician, or institution. Mr. Mackey’s ission to his mother that he enjoys stirring up animosity with Russia because it reminds him of a simpler time when the world’s morality appeared to be black and white is a solid critique of the impulse to ascribe simple, lethal solutions to complex problems at the cost of innocent civilian lives. His mother’s reminder that “people died” during the Cold War era that Mackey is idolizing encapsulates the South Park episode’s point that, outside of propaganda and posturing, no one should want a return to war—particularly when violent conflict is already a daily reality in dozens of countries worldwide.