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Buddha snorting coke on South Park
Hey every, just curious if anyone had seen this.
On last week's episode of south park, they showed buddha snorting coke.
Here is the news story and the clip. The context of the clip, is that the boys are trying to convince the gods to show an animated Muhammad (founder of the Muslim faith).
What are your takes on Buddha doing coke in this show?
I actually chuckled as i saw this, and i think its fairly harmless.
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/south-park/most-outrageous-south-park-mom-35915.aspx
On last week's episode of south park, they showed buddha snorting coke.
Here is the news story and the clip. The context of the clip, is that the boys are trying to convince the gods to show an animated Muhammad (founder of the Muslim faith).
What are your takes on Buddha doing coke in this show?
I actually chuckled as i saw this, and i think its fairly harmless.
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/south-park/most-outrageous-south-park-mom-35915.aspx
0
Comments
I think we can shoulder the burden of such blasphemous sacrilege....
Sure, it's disrespectful, but in comparison to what other religions have endured in a similar vein, I think we can bear it.
besides, it shows that Buddhism is gaining prominence and public recognition if the Buddha can appear in South Park!
When we take things personally, we react badly. Take Isaac Hayes for instance; for years he was South Park's "Chef", and a beloved character and recognizable voice. Then he took offense that South Park mocked Scientology and he quit. For all of those years while he was on the show, South Park made fun of Christianity and Judaism, not to mention the Chinese, the Japanese... it's just what they do. It's hypocrisy to laugh except when it's directed at something we've become "attached" to ourselves.
I have no idea whatsoever why they had Buddha snorting coke. Guess that joke went over my head.
Long as I got my plastic Jesus.
Blasphemy is an American tradition.
If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him...
Not just 'some computer AI' but the Master Control Program from Tron. It was a bad mamma jamma of a computer AI
I wonder if the Mormons are unhappy with the depiction of Joseph Smith. Personally I like the fantasy that the founders of the world's religions are all super-best friends who act together to stop people behaving like idiots...
Hilarious.
Yes, and the spineless people running Comedy Central have decided to censor the episode's rerun by bleeping out Muhammed's voice and other things of an absurd nature.
I thought the network prided itself on being edgy? Guess not when you actually start offending people who will kill you for it.
I love it.
not worth it.
I like to think so.
Part Two was last night. Even funnier I thought:
Jesus: "Seriously Buddha, lay off the coke . . . I think you might have a problem."
Buddha: "At least I don't look at internet porn all day!"
Jesus (looking at the computer with his hand down his pants): "There's nothing wrong with internet porn."
So roll over? For shame!
I'm not fan of South Park, but CC has truly proven itself spineless. Had some nickle-and-dime televeangelist threatened to blow of CC headquarters, he would be rightfully lampooned, and South Park would churn out more episodes ridiculing such people and Jesus as well.
Instead, the thugs who made these threats have won this round and free speech suffers a blow.
I too think Siddhartha would have had an open sense of humor about criticism and caricatures. If the Buddha was disappointed in anything, it may be that his discoveries and lessons were used to create religious followings, as religion typically splits mankind into three groups: shepherds, sheep, and heretics. Attachment to religion is attachment to pride is attachment to ego is attachment to non-self, but like with other religions many of the Buddha's founding lessons are completely missed by the students. There is no single path which suits all spirits, which is why Buddhism teaches that all religions have something of value to offer and no religion, including Buddhism, should consider itself right above all others. Reason and ridicule, likewise, can be but different means to a common end.
haha, props for the wicked pun, intended or not
Somehow I dont think the more extream muslims will get the point. The ammount of people and religions that were made fun of in those episodes muhammed wasnt even the main plot line just icing on the cake to ask, why are you so ofended by a simple joke? Especially when its south park.
I was actually a little suprised Buddha was in the episode, was he in a previous episode? Suprised in a good way though, and the little joke between Buddha and Jesus was brilliant
"If you meet the buddha, snort cocaine with him"
The creators of the show themselves are the ones that added the "censored". I believe it was more of a joke acknowledging the threats. They often edit shows up to the very last moment of airing just keep up to date with current events.
The entire episode had no bleeps when it was delivered to comedy central to be aired.
Comedy central added the beeps later.
No joke, Pure censorship.
Bahhahaha!
:winkc:
I saw the episode ! But South Park creators made Buddha snort coke because it wants to make fun of the stereotypical thinking of the ignorant masses -> being a buddhist = coke snorting hippie, attracted to yoga stuff...Or so ...
There's no such thing as a Buddhist. There's no such thing as Buddhism. And there's no such thing as a Buddha.
I don't think we can easily joke about Muhammad at this time, because of all of the ensuing blood shed and war. How much anti-Semitic behavior do we see on South Park?
We have had a play about abuse in a Sikh temple suppressed because of demonstrations and now a comedy show is censored. We even have HMG apologising to the Pope (to the POPE?) for some rather silly jokes about his forthcoming visit to the UK.
We appear to be moving back into a culture of censorship by the powerful. Fortunately, I think they are behaving like King Cnut's courtiers. The Sikhs, by their violent protests, brought the abuse to general notice. The Catholic Church has been forced to admit the foul crimes committed against children and others. And the distortions of the Q'ran are openly discussed.
The actions of the powers-that-be suggest that they are genuinely scared because they understand that they are at risk. They behave like the returning aristos of the Ancien Régime after the fall of Napoleon when they proudly announced that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
I am greatly looking forward to the attempts to arrest Mr Ratzinger, although I think that there is little hope that he will actually end up in a police cell. After all, the war criminal Pinochet got away with it - as are other, more recent and more local, war criminals (verb. sap.).
The historians among us will recall that an autocratic monarch, Henry I of England, was forced to walk barefoot and in a hair-shirt to the tomb of Thomas Becket where he was whipped, in public, because he was deemed ultimately responsible for Thomas's murder. Even the most powerful cannot stand against the tide of public opinion. The power to stop censorship is in our hands, more today than in the past.
Let us make fun of the rich and powerful. They deserve it for setting themselves above us. Their pretensions are just too funny to ignore. Laugh at them: they hate it. They only rule us if we collude with the fiction of the superiority.
You wrote...
" It is becoming apparent that the religious institutions deem themselves above criticism or satire - and governments and the media are going along with it. "
Also...
" We appear to be moving back into a culture of censorship by the powerful. "
And...
" The actions of the powers-that-be suggest that they are genuinely scared because they understand that they are at risk. "
And...
" Let us make fun of the rich and powerful. They deserve it for setting themselves above us. Their pretensions are just too funny to ignore. Laugh at them: they hate it. They only rule us if we collude with the fiction of the superiority. "
I think the infrastructure of the modern world of man has its own leaders, and as such I don't give too much credit to the religious leaders of our day. I'm tipping my hat to the corporate leaders of our day as having the government leaders in their pockets. Of course, I am from the US, where if you want to know what is going on, you need the internet to do it. And they know it - look for ACTA and attempts at locking the web down by way of filtering the traffic through every ISP. I have a response to this, called the Cooperative Assembly (document due out very soon)...
http://coopassembly.blogspot.com
As I see it, at the top of man's infrastructures there are the world leaders. Are you familiar with Joseph Campbell? He was the world's leading mythologist until dying in the late 1980s, and a very important living compendium of world mythology and religion. He would put the leadership over the centuries as first, the church, second, the state, and third, the commercial giants.
We all work for money. A corporate structure is a revenue structure. It doesn't have any people in it. Every member of the staff - right up to the CEO resides in a rotational position. They move from corp to corp. Management moves from corp to corp. The shareholders are absolved of all accountability for corporate decisions, and yet they hold all the shares.
There's no human in the machine. We are under its wheels. I would now like to include one other group that many forget to do. Like the diplomat on "Crimson Tide" said, "I'm a politician, which means that when I'm not kissing your babies, I'm stealing their lollipops". We have to put ourselves in the leader's shoes.
The common man, when off to Hollywood for fame and fortune, is easily destroyed. Most of the undisciplined, unbred, unkempt and morally bankrupt people I know are commoners - regular, peasant class. Go ahead and put any one person into a position of world power, and hand them the day's agenda. I think it's a crazy pipe dream to suggest anything short of the French terror and all of its beheadings when one gives the power to the people. What does one do with that kind of power?
South Park jokes about religion. What about AIG, and Goldman Sachs? What about the WTO? Perhaps that's too serious. Maybe it isn't funny. Maybe it would make people sad. Maybe soon, we'll see Goldman Sachs there. (Now it can be funny) Actually, I think the WTO is an easy enough target, because they are self-forming and they answer to no one. Check the film, "The Yes Men" about it - funny, and true.
Corporate executives are people who must do evil things. If they don't then they will be run under the wheels of the giant machine. They will be replaced by the most evil individuals who can be found - who can generate the highest revenue at the lowest possible cost. They will do everything they can to wipe out their competition. In fact, we're all in it together.
Neil Young said on his website that he couldn't do what needed to be done anymore, and that we need something like an engineer to deal with the world we live in today. Its an enormous machine that no one controls. CEOs are fired regularly. Everyone is under the wheels.
In the US today, check for Sibel Edmonds,who is heading up a project to document the extent of US Intel in US print and media. It's mind-boggling for those who don't know about this. There are over 150,000 Intel agents in the US who work full-time domestically. They pay for what the papers say for cheap. 90% of all US-based media and print are ultimately controlled by five people. I watch Katie Couric to see what the Intelligence community is feeding the general population. Its ridiculous!
The US forefathers had an enlightened idea. Deists and Free Masons all, I believe. Deism is a very interesting view of God for the time and place they were in - people like Thomas Jefferson, who believed that God created everything, and then left.
They also lived in a day preceding the telegraph, in a land with endless, localized printing presses. They couldn't see one person controlling public opinion, so they called it a "Free Press". Well, all of the TV stations and newspapers have been mopped up now into handful of corporate controllers. The news divisions in the US are now literally 1/10th in staffing as they were 15 years ago, because they've been turned into profit centers, whereas in the "before time" they were "loss leaders". Wheel of Fortune made a billion dollars, after the 6-O-Clock news which would typically lose $3-5 Million. "60 Minutes" is the biggest joke in US news today of anything I have ever seen (in news). Its ridiculous! It's a form of entertainment, and everything is being run by "bean-counters".
The purpose of the Cooperative Assembly is to make it possible for the general public to produce its own pubic information, and to secure the public trust when doing so. It's a next-generation Wikipedia. It has a plethora of checks and balances. I can send a copy of the document I have to anyone who wants to see what I have on paper now. The most important check is that it is a decentralized power structure - there is no design for a world-wide Assembly; only for thousands of smaller ones.
The Wikipedia is another one to watch out for. It is a global, monolithic entity that is actually overseen by a handful of people. No school in the US I have heard of allows reference to it for research purposes. It has pages that have been (by wiki sniffers) confirmed to have been edited thousands of times by government agencies.
The Cooperative Assembly is "civil infrastructure". Yes, even in the world, we can do stuff. We need a better machine.
My mother died of cancer. My father has cancer. I have cancer. My sister had a little bit of skin cancer removed. Do you and yours have cancer? It's not unlikely. In 2008, the WHO predicted that cancer rates would rise world-wide (another) 50% by 2020.
I'll bet world leaders are becoming afraid, and I'll bet they don't quite exactly know what to do.
Cheers,
Mark Me
(p.s. Love that Ramana Maharshi, too)
Whichever it is, I think it is vital that satirists make strenuous efforts to go on showing us the absurdity and dangers of the 'owners'. As Fr. Matthew Fox said, once we use the language of the (slave) owners, we become owned ourselves. That this is true is demonstrated by the way in which those who want to assert control hijack the language of liberation and suppress the language of struggle.
The danger, it seems to me, of some approaches to Buddhism is that it engenders a form of quietism and the bovine acceptance of the erosion of individual freedoms on the spurious premise of personal awakening. For me, the more I see the tangles of dependent co-arising, the more I see the need for engagement - but then I saw that in the Christian churches too. A sort of "I'm alright, Jack" attitude or, at best, a "Lady Bountiful". One of the better suggestions in the 'offensive' memo about Ratzinger's visit to the UK was that he should stay in a council house on a deprived estate. It's as likely as the war leaders being put on trial! But it's a great idea and, if the Vatican take offence, that is their problem and they should learn to get over it.
For some, their best hope of maintaining inner stillness is to remain silent. I remember a friend I had who would become so visibly upset she would begin yelling and screaming. At the time, the best hope for personal stillness was to remain silent. If I had engaged with her, I would have become sucked into the samsaric qualities of her world.
However, that is not to say that another couldn't see more directly through her spinning, engage with her skillfully and help her settle accounts. To this end, my teacher often told me (while I wrestled with these moments) that sometimes, our best action is to do no harm.
For some, it is important to remain disengaged from the spinnings of the corporate and political worlds. This does not induce a willingness to be flogged or harvested as mindless cows.... rather it creates an open connection to dhamma, which has an unavoidable gravity. The more directly this natural view of truth is rooted into the minds of the people, the more skillful and direct the minds will be who penetrate and skillfully destroy hypocrisy.
When we are still, the best way for us to impact humankind presents itself.
With warmth,
Matt
" Whichever it is, I think it is vital that satirists make strenuous efforts to go on showing us the absurdity and dangers of the 'owners'. "
There was one other point I was trying to elude to, which was in the direction of saying that our leaders are us, and we are them - we are the world altogether, and act much the same, but in this case, at different levels of power.
Max Weber was the one who noted that if a person sees the news, then they may say that they will ignore it and go on with their lives, but he was the one who then said, "they will not, even in saying so" (paraphrasing). Once one sees it, knowing that one is a part of the world, one will in ones own mind at least endeavor to solve its problems to solve ones own. I think he's right - I think this is a brilliant insight by Weber into the human psyche.
I am also reminded of the period of the founding of the US, where its "enlightened ones" who brought it about had a general philosophy including what was literally called, "a general understanding of the world". Ha ha ha We yearn for nostalgic old days in a simple world. Ha ha ha General understanding of this? Good God (Its so complicated I can't smell my own ass). Believing in the above, I chose to provide my world perspective view, to assist in that very regard - to simplify it. The world hasn't stopped getting more complicated since those people were around.
All that having been said, I agree with your points. It's not free to be restrained on the satire of our leaders.
Thanks,
Mark
p.s. If ever you get the chance, get a copy of PBSs "The Power of Myth" with Bill Moyers' interviews of Joseph Campbell just before he died. Its 6 one-hour parts, and its like listening to someone who knows hundreds of mythologies from cultures around the world and across the ages, synthesizing it into six major themes. Religions too. Campbell wrote atlases of mythology. He was a very spiritual guy. His school was to say "follow your bliss". He also would say that the most non-spiritual thing a person could do was to just turn around and read a newspaper. No doubt! Its a fantastic set; I'd recommend it widely.
I am very fond of Campbell and watched his conversations with Bill Moyers some years ago. You may recall he said that he could not discern a contemporary myth. Surprising really. My own view is that the current myth may be summarised as market-based democracy, where the market is divinised and ascribed a law-making function.
Ah, but he did like star wars!
I also like the Matrix, but that came after his time. I wished he could have seen it. I've used that analogy before. It reminds me very much of Maya. They say they intended it to have no mythological value, but I say, "forget it. That's modern mythology".
Very nice chatting with you, Simon the Pilgrim.
I also remember the SP show where Kenny went to heaven, which was completely populated by Mormons, but god was a Buddhist.
Palzang