You are surely familiar with the story of the "The Emperor's New Clothes," in which a vain ruler, who has been spending the state's money on fancy duds, is convinced by a couple of con men that the nonexistent suit they sell him is fantastically beautiful, but invisible to dopes and fools; not wanting to be thought a dope or a fool, he claims to see it, and all his sycophantic ministers pretend to see it. And when the king goes out on parade, all the people keep their mouths shut — though he is obviously naked — until a small boy, unimpressed by royalty and clearly no fool, calls out, "The emperor has no clothes."

We are halfway through the 27th season of "South Park," with the sixth episode, out of 10, airing Wednesday. But the season was newsworthy even before its premiere: Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who delight in busting naked emperors, had signed a five-year, $1.5 billion contract with Paramount for global streaming rights and 50 new episodes. It came just as Paramount, which had an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance under FCC review, settled a $16 million nuisance lawsuit from President Donald Trump over a "60 Minutes" segment and, coincidentally or not, canceled Stephen Colbert's "Late Night."

For some consumers of topical pop culture, the question of what Parker and Stone would or would not do was top of mind in this moment of "anticipatory obedience," corporate kowtowing and domestic militarization, with a president whose interpretation of Teddy Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" is "be a bully." It was answered immediately by the season's opening episode, "Sermon on the Mount," in which Jesus has become the guidance counselor at South Park Elementary, unwillingly.

"I didn't want to come back and be in the school," he says through clenched teeth to the townspeople, who are being sued by Trump, for $5 million. "But I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount. You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount. You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys got to stop being stupid. Just shut up or we're going to get canceled, you idiots … The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down. If someone has the power of the presidency and also the power to sue and take bribes then he can do anything to anyone."

There will be no shutting up, of course, or backing down.

"Satire," said George S. Kaufman, "is what closes on Saturday night" — meaning the night after a play opened. But sometimes it runs decades, earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As a comic device, a philosophical tactic and a social weapon, it has been around for a long time, going back at least back to Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" and including the 1729 "A Modest Proposal," in which Jonathan Swift suggests that the Irish poor might improve their financial situation by selling their children to the rich for food. There's also Voltaire's "Candide"; Charlie Chaplin's capitalist critique, "Monsieur Verdoux"; Walt Kelly's comic strip, "Pogo," with its animalizations of Joseph McCarthy and Spiro Agnew; humorists Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer and Beyond the Fringe; Mad magazine, the Onion, and on and on.

Satire takes a stance — an elevated, informed, clear-eyed position. (If it's any good.) Random insults and childish sarcasm don't qualify. "South Park" is not immune from childishness, to put it mildly, and there is an element of "worst thought, best thought" in its humor; Parker and Stone are all in on scatology and dumb puns. Yet the show is not easy to dismiss — even when you might be at odds with their point of view, the show so clearly engages the real world, you might well consider it. That there have been longer breaks than originally scheduled between some episodes, which are made as close to real time as possible, might be because there are too many current events; the pace is exhausting, the mind boggles. But it also suggests they're taking care to step right — not in order to avoid trouble because self-censorship is not a curse that seems to have ever afflicted them — but to fine-tune their case. Or perhaps they're just taking longer lunches.

The show is vulgar, profane, provocative, taunting, violent and extreme, while at the same time being an exquisitely timed comedy with something like heart, a sentimentalism that isn't completely ironic. (Eric Cartman, the series' perennially angry, 10-year-old voice of bigotry, misogyny and anti-woke sentiments, is also a sad little boy in dinosaur pajamas.) Heartlessness can only be mocked from a position of compassion. Parker and Stone delight in poking bears and pushing buttons — the nakedness of their gleeful effrontery is kind of breathtaking — but one senses that their topical provocations are more than mere opportunism, that they have a compact with themselves, and their audience, to tell the truth — their truth anyway — with no concern for the blowback. Even among their fans, they offer something not for everybody.

Because the creators expected Trump to drop out of the 2016 election, they substituted him for Mr. Garrison, a South Park Elementary teacher, and when Trump won, they just put Garrison in a wig and made him the president. (If you don't know this history, you'll be confused when the townspeople head to Garrison's house to protest Trump's policies.) This season, there's no confusion, with the president's own photo-animated head — they get a lot of comic expression out of it — on the sort of boxy bodies they use to portray Canadians. It's not coincidentally modeled on their earlier depiction of Saddam Hussein, down to the voice and the "Relax, guy!" catchphrase — and who, like Trump this season, was also shown in bed with Satan. ("You remind me more and more of this other guy I used to date," says the Prince of Darkness. "Like, a lot. Like, you guys are exactly alike.") The vice president is styled as Tattoo, from "Fantasy Island."

The question of whether Trump is "f— Satan," in which the f-word can be read as either a verb or an adjective, is a gag and a plot point. (The show runs with the verb; Satan is pregnant.) Typically, the joke is repeated frequently, as is the matter of Trump's penis, which is pictured, literally and often, as tiny, and Cartman's description of himself as a "masterdebating" "masterdebator." (It works remarkably well.)

Not everything is about the president. There are episodes about Labubu dolls and prediction markets. Guidance counselor Mr. Mackey is fired and ends up joining ICE (styled "the I-C-E"), where he comes face to melting face with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. ("Only detain the brown ones — remember, if it's brown it goes down.") Stan's father, Randy Marsh, whose marijuana farm is in trouble after his Mexican workers are carted off, has what amounts to an emotional affair with ChatGPT in Episode 3. He devises a plan to turn his business into a tech company, which means microdosing ketamine — macrodosing, rather — and in order to get Trump to reclassify marijuana, sends Towelie, the sentient towel, to Washington to get in line with the kowtowers and bootlickers. (Tech CEOs Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg are pictured.) Kyle's mom, Sheila, who is Jewish, goes to Israel to give Netanyahu a piece of her mind. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is the slapstick serial victim of Trump's plots to make Satan miscarry.

It isn't exactly nuanced political analysis, but goodness knows, these are not exactly nuanced times.

Does satire change anything? Sway minds? There's no indication in the Hans Christian Andersen story that the naked emperor's exposure made him a better person or ruler. Disney's World War II Donald Duck cartoon "Der Fuehrer's Face" isn't what stopped Hitler — it was bullets and bombs and bodies — but in some small way it may have helped the home front survive him. You can't shame the shameless, or awaken the conscience of a narcissist, but the idea that such japes might make the target's stomach hurt or his blood boil, may provide some small satisfaction. "South Park" won't change the world, sadly, but it might reassure a viewer that he isn't alone in his thoughts, that he isn't the crazy one.

———

(Robert Lloyd has been a Los Angeles Times television critic since 2003.)

———

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.