Three shows that mocked social issues

• Follow

This is the era of the content revolution. For years, the definition of content has been restricted. Times have changed, and people are now more content-driven and for them, the content has now become non-negotiable.

It is sporadic to spot smart satires on political and social issues. One has to be clever enough to pull off such witty content filled with gags and smart punches. For the ones looking for such sitcoms, here’s the list of three sitcoms that might interest you.

South Park

Number one on the list has to be South Park. This show with almost 23 seasons has attracted eyeballs from all sides of the political spectrum. Its famous dialogue, “There are two choices, and both of them are awful” pretty much sums up the whole idea behind the show.

There are not a lot of intelligent comedy shows that have brilliantly used gags and punches to highlight social issues. Such limited shows have probably been criticized across the political spectrum.

To give an example, when Kyle met his counterpart in South Park, a debate started. Kyle said, “You really think your civilization is better than ours? You people play games by killing animals and oppress women.” Such strong statements coming from a comedy show deserves a round of applause.

A South Park fan Raman quotes an episode on the mass shooting. The episode shows how mass shooting is normalised while children are studying and people are roaming around freely. Stan’s mom was the only one who feels that this is dangerous and people should raise their voice against mass shooting. She starts a protest but no one joins her. On the contrary, people thought that she was on her periods and this is why she is getting irritated. At the end of the episode, Stan’s mom believes that this issue has been normalised and therefore nothing is wrong with this.

Raman asserts, “This episode gave a brilliant message that how we normalise things that are wrong but continue happening for a long time. Just like in South Park, every bad thing that happened was directly and indirectly credited to the mass shooting and no one raised an eyebrow because it was normalised.”

Simpsons

Apart from South Park, Simpsons is the longest-running show in the US. Simpsons has covered a variety of issues like homophobia, immigration, alcohol abuse, environmental issues, corruption, and the list goes on. In the era of fast news, shows like Simpsons spreads information about social evils, especially for the young generation.

Lisa Simpson is credited to be the most intelligent member of the Simpsons family, over the years she has made efforts to bring social justice. Simpsons fan Alisha Rohtagi tells that in one of the episodes where Mr Burns buys all the press so that he can stop the journalists to publish news against him, Lisa opens her very own press The Red Dress because of the poem which Lisa wanted to get published was rejected by Mr Burns. Such episodes ironically still fit in the current scenario.

She said, “From being a part of the tree-hugging protest to tackling body image issues, Lisa Simpson has brilliantly steered clear most of the issues that we are currently facing. Such shows are funny because they show us the reality and reality is funny only if we can’t do anything about it. But at least our young generation knows what’s right through such informative yet funny shows.”

Rick & Morty

The third show no doubt has to be the sci-fi comedy, Rick & Morty. The powerful science fiction that R&M is, balances opinions brilliantly. To quote one incident, Morty along with his sister Summer visits a new universe where men are shown as monsters and women are more evolved and smart. This particular incident highlights gender equality and only Morty and his sister Summer had to go to a new universe to see evolved and intelligent women.

One of its very famous dialogue where Rick tells Morty, “I know that new situations can be intimidating. You’re looking around and it’s all scary and different, but you know meeting them head-on, charging into them like a bull, that’s how we grow as people,” is totally different from his character but truly depicts what life is. Who would want to miss watching such a wholesome show?

Rick & Morty’s ardent follower Abhishek tells that the show is precisely a sarcastic commentary. They never provide a solution but the depiction is strong enough to highlight the contemporary issues.

There was one episode on family counselling in which Morty’s parents Beth and Jerry go for counselling. In this episode, Morty’s grandfather Rick converts himself into a pickle to avoid going to the counsellor. The counsellor tells how his grandfather influences Morty and her sister Summer but Morty’s mom declines this reason and they all go back home.

The episode tells how sometimes with all our consciousness we fail to understand what our kids are going through just because we can never believe that our blood relatives can do anything wrong to our children. In this case, the culprit was Beth’s father Rick who knew this and hence he conveniently converted himself into a pickle.

Abhishek says, “Such issues go unnoticed almost all the time but shows like these make us revisit the problem area so that we can ponder over them.”

These shows might have received a lot of flak from both sides of the spectrum but they are still surviving only because of the truth which they highlight rather sarcastically.