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evening sitdown
Your evening longread: How shows like The Simpsons and South Park changed culture
It’s a coronavirus-free zone as we bring you an interesting longread each evening to take your mind off today’s news events.
LAST UPDATE | 11 Nov 2020
EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.
And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.
We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.
The Simpsons and South Park had a major influence on popular culture in the US and beyond – let’s take a look at how.
(Vice, approximately 16 minutes reading time)
Though not the longest-running on this list, South Park has somehow remained consistent over its two decades on the air, adapting its humor and philosophy with the times. A profane show from day one, South Park was the first-ever regular program dubbed TV-MA in the US and blazed a trail for the future of television by normalizing unbleeped swearing on cable. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “both sides suck” approach to issues helped to create a generation of “South Park Republicans” who (often incorrectly) assumed Parker and Stone to be on their team.
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