Grid Effect

So, I know rape isn’t funny and I should be sickened by what was displayed last night, but if you can’t laugh at the notion of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg literally accosting and raping Harrison Ford dressed up as Indiana Jones in multiple parodies of famous rape scenes…then I don’t know what to tell you. Go watch Kath and Kim or something tonight.

We will admit that the secondary plot (the one we thought would be primary) actually fell kind of flat for us. The fact it was all for a Cartman anti-Iraq war tangent didn’t really help matters. However It was refreshing to see that Parker and Stone don’t have any real partisan political agenda. In an age where everyone with even a modicum of power is blindly loyal to one side of the other, it is good to see that South Park will still mock Al Gore’s causes just like they will republican led foreign policy. Never the less, the build up to it was pretty underwhelming.

This seemed apropos...

But the primary storyline all but redeemed it. This series usually excels when it deals with the absurd, and having a several flashbacks in which everyone remembers Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull as Indiana Jones being raped in parodies of The Accused and Deliverance (we didn’t recognize Stan’s flashback if it was a pop-culture reference) certainly qualifies as that. The animation, the voice over and the satire is as much as anyone can ask for from a half hour animated sitcom.

We also saw a bit of continuity in this episode as well. Namely with the entire “Free Hat” episode in which they try to rescue Raiders of The Lost Ark from being remade and digitally enhanced after seeing the newly minted Star Wars films. In this episode, we will openly admit that we never saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and part of our motivation was the ungodly crapfest that was the three new Star Wars films (and I’m not speaking of Clone Wars).

But we feel as if we may have gotten more out of this episode than if we had seen it. Our sole mental image of that movie now is of Indiana Jones in implausible situations to advance a ridiculous plot that is so far-fetched in makes Temple of Doom look like Saving Private Ryan. In other words, if it is a good movie, we weren’t burdened by the facts. It was a bit different (In that Parker and Stone seemed to paying homage to the film, rather than besmirching it), but we never saw 300 before the “D-Yikes” episode either, and felt like it enhanced the experience of watching it. It ruined the movie for us later on, but that probably isn’t something we were going to enjoy anyways.

But from what we witnessed in the episodes 1-3 of the Star Wars Saga, then we can’t imagine any objective person, (this discredits people who simply wanted the movie to be good and anyone under the age of fifteen) walking out of Crystal Skull and actually being entertained by the product. We don’t know why George Lucas is so intent on shooting his own legacy in the foot for a few extra dollars that he can’t possibly need. But he does and we are fortunate enough to have this series around to satirize his self-destruction.