Comments on: Shockwave.com & Awe

Shockwave.com & Awe

Dreamghost — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:34:09 -0800

Drawn in the style of a pre-school children's cartoon. But from the sick & twisted minds of the guys from Southpark. Princess, A lap dog who observes the very adult world around her. The sexual content was so extreme shockwave.com halted development of the "webisodes" only after seeing the first 2 of 39 episodes that were contracted. Now you can watch these shorts & judge for yourself. Thanks to the folks at Trio. (username/password required... mefi/mefi)

By: Steve_at_Linnwood

Steve_at_Linnwood — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:40:47 -0800

so very very wrong.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:42:00 -0800

not very funny. their satire is much better now.

By: Hankins

Hankins — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:56:09 -0800

preeeeeeensayce!

By: amberglow

amberglow — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:07:04 -0800

boy, that was really filthy...but funny (too bad the narrator sounds like cartman tho) : >

By: dazed_one

dazed_one — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:17:18 -0800

That was revolting. Oh dear.

By: PigAlien

PigAlien — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:56:04 -0800

isn't this like a triple post? or is it just because I've seen it on every other website?

By: Tryptophan-5ht

Tryptophan-5ht — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:57:21 -0800

good stuff.

By: wigu

wigu — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 21:10:15 -0800

Embarassingly stupid. I may actually stop watching South Park after having seen this.

By: raysmj

raysmj — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 21:27:56 -0800

You mean you all managed to log in? What an infuriatingly slow site.

By: kevspace

kevspace — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 23:01:41 -0800

I think it's worth noting that the unfunny offensiveness is entirely intentional. TRIO aired a documentary about the creation of these shorts, called "Shocked," though I haven't seen it myself. From what I hear, it was fairly clear that Matt Stone and Trey Parker were playing a prank on the clueless execs looking for "edgy portal content," and agreed to create this on the condition it could be as offensive as they wished. So they created something that absolutely nobody in their right mind would enjoy. I think there's more to this story than just "perverts create unfunny cartoons." Early South Park scripts had many layers of self-awareness to them. The movie, in particular, is more a satire of its own reception than a bunch of naughty jokes for their own sake. Plus, anybody who's seen "Orgazmo" or "Cannibal! The Musical" can tell you that, even accounting for the gross-out factor, the duo's sense of humor is actually remarkably gentle. "Cannibal" in general, funded completely independently during their "crazy college days," is probably the least offensive thing in Troma's catalog. My guess is that they just thought the Internet-- or, at least, the particular deal they'd entered into-- was stupid, so it deserved something equally stupid. Perhaps they caught on early to the idea that nobody would get any money from not charging people to go to a website full of dumb things nobody wanted to see. I imagine they were laughing not at what they'd created, but how many people they'd gotten to go along with it. I don't care much for South Park (though I think the movie was spottily brilliant) and I think Stone and Parker's work has been uneven at best. But my sensors indicate that "Princess" was all a pretty funny prank that, apparently, people are still falling for.

By: zpousman

zpousman — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 07:41:54 -0800

I agree with kevspace. That intro is just too over the top for it to be serious at all. It's an Andy Kaufman-style trick on the execs.

By: Ynoxas

Ynoxas — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 07:53:14 -0800

Kevspace nailed it.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:06:55 -0800

The theme song is marvelous. Best use of gibberish since Screamin' Jay Hawkins died. I agree with kevspace too, but -- wasn't a cartoon like this how South Park got greenlit? A fairly offensive lo-fi animation featuring Cartman et al making the rounds by e-mail a decade ago, and someone saw how it could be properly marketed and ran with it, and ten years later they RULE THE COMEDY WORLD? So in that light, maybe this is part of some bigger plan. We'll be seeing "Princess" in Frasier's timeslot next year, mark my words.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:19:43 -0800

I remember when Spirit of Christmas made the rounds of the early Internet. It was the funniest fucking thing I'd ever seen, totally transgressive and sweet and hysterical. Princess is pretty amazing: transgressive without the sweet or hysterical. Princess is to comedy as Stile Project is to pr0n.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:34:53 -0800

That's the one.

By: SiW

SiW — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 11:59:09 -0800

The blurb on this post made it sound quite like a relatively recent Japanese series, Ebichu. But that one's actually funny.

By: crank

crank — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 12:15:37 -0800

For a while South Park's satire was formulaic, pedantic and as subtle as a sledgehammer to the testes, but they've been more clever of late.

By: Down10

Down10 — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 15:28:33 -0800

Highly subversive of Matt and Trey to pull that one over the company, but as it stands, the 'Princess' web show was pretty horrendous. It might have actually been funnier without any offensive stuff at all and had just been the syrupy sweet adventures of a little dog, which had happened to be written by the South Park guys. True, they've gotten more subtle and wittier since then.

By: Mossy

Mossy — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 16:25:42 -0800

Am I the only one with a massive soft spot for Baseketball? I did love that movie :)

By: kevspace

kevspace — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 17:16:52 -0800

I actually liked Baseketball a lot; I didn't include it in my other comment because they didn't write it. I think the important difference between "Spirit of Christmas" and "Princess" is that "Spirit" was funded independently and "Princess" was a commission.

By: donth

donth — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 08:30:42 -0800

The links are dead, looks like it's been taken off of the website.