Call of Cthulhu Friday: South Park Cthulhu

This new episode of the long running Comedy Central staple has been airing a lot this month. When I saw that it featured our favorite tentacle-faced god-priest, I considered that I might mention it in a post. But I have to admit that the sheer weakness of the characterizing of the Great One really turned me off. Don’t get me wrong, it was otherwise a pretty good superhero parody episode. In it, all the kids of the town follow the lead of The Coon and Mysterion and create costumed identities for themselves (all of them pretty fail). But the intriguing part of it is we find out that Kenny, the group pal who dies so often, actually has some kind of power that grants him this immortality along with an affect that makes others forget that he dies. So in his torment he creates Mysterion and patrols the nightscape.

That’s all good, but then enters Cthulhu. He has arisen due to the BP oil spill, but he isn’t too pissed off to be befriended by Cartman, who takes him on a spree of destruction than includes Burning Man, Whole Foods, and young pop singer and MILF magnet Justin Bieber.

As I said, I was pretty “meh” about it, but today I read on theclicker.todayshow.com where they seem to be asking if the makers of South Park were a little hard on the crooning kid jackhole. Well, that pissed me off, because I thought who they were hard on was Cthulhu. You see, I don’t mind when I see cute Cthulhu plushies or bumper stickers. That is all harmless fun. But the very fact that the South Park dudes just used him to squash things is to me unforgivable. Why didn’t they just use Godzilla or King Kong? Because they are trademarked or something? I mean, the appearance of Cthulhu should include the stars aligning, monsters rising, and people across the globe should feel the awesome psionic affect of Great Cthulhu’s mighty mind clicking into alien high gear. But no, he just crushes Whole Foods and other American conceits.

I think the makers of South Park are smart and funny, but I guess they just don’t really know what Cthulhu represents. I’m guessing they saw the plushies at some point, or a Miskatonic U. t-shirt, and then somebody told them “Oh, Cthulhu is a big monster that sleeps below the sea waiting to awaken and destroy the world.” Nuff said.

C’mon guys, do a little fucking research. This was a great opportunity to spoof the creations of Lovecraft in some meaningful way. But no. Worse yet, South Park has a way of bringing back monsters and things for further episodes, and it will probably just be more of the stupid chickenshit fail they did with Cthulhu in this one.

South Park, this is where you really jumped the shark. May Azathoth take your minds and souls.