141 - Team America: World Police (feat. Stephen Stout)
Added 2024-06-05 06:00:07 +0000 UTCStephen Stout (Puffs) and the lads hop into their red, white, and blue helicopters and completely obliterate France as they cover Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 2004 fraught satire of the War on Terror: Team America: World Police. Topics include Parker and Stone’s origins, the film’s overwhelming racism, and what a movie so steeped in the post-9/11 hysteria of the early 2000s means twenty years after its release.
Stephen Stout: Twitter // Instagram // Spock Hats Twitter
Puffs: Website // Amazon // Broadway HD
Media Referenced in this Episode:
Team America: World Police. Dir. Trey Parker and Matt Stone. 2004.
“Launching a small-scale offensive” by John Horn. The Los Angeles Times. Sept. 12th, 2004.
“Team America-World Police: Down-Home Theories of Power and Peace” by James Gow. Millenium: Journal of International Studies. Volume 34, Issue 2. February 2006.
“Playboy Interview: Parker & Stone” by Playboy Staff. June 2000.
“Puppet Masters - Interview with Matt Stone and Trey Parker” by Heather Havrilesky. Salon. October 12th, 2004.
TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com
Commercial: “TWOAPW, Fuck Yeah (Abridged)”
Comments
Shocked that the Thunderbirds weren't a big thing in the US. They were huge here in Aus when I was a kid, I even have some of the toys still somewhere in a box. Absolute staple of Saturday morning kids programming.
Adam Kelly
2024-06-11 00:01:00 +0000 UTCHoly shit I did not expect an Almost Live reference. I miss when people in ballard actually were old and scandanavian.
Alex
2024-06-09 00:39:50 +0000 UTCOh then that's a failure of my own recollection. I remember getting freedom fries somewhere as a kid and I thought it was a Waffle House. It might have been some small town diner with a similar name to the chain
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2024-06-08 20:20:36 +0000 UTCI don't know where Brian heard that Waffle House changed the name of French fries to freedom fries, but he was deceived. WaHo doesn't serve french fries and never has. They don't equip their locations with deep fryers.
Andrew T. Wilson
2024-06-08 20:02:00 +0000 UTCI reacted to Brian mentioning Kokopelli like it was my activation phrase. It unlocked a deeply repressed memory of the smell of patchouli wafting from a substitute teacher at my elementary school. She was in a muumuu and was the first white person I'd ever seen with dreadlocks... Anyone else have this problem?
Kenzie Traill
2024-06-08 11:13:43 +0000 UTCI was wondering if I should rewatch this movie for the first time in probably fifteen years before listening and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't. Instead, I just got the urge to rewatch Danger 5 again
Sasha
2024-06-07 19:46:23 +0000 UTCsomehow, this is not the first episode where Brian discusses a marionette-based fixation on "The Lonely Goatherd," and somehow the other episode is Pearl Harbor, the exact one that you recommend listening to here
Elah
2024-06-06 21:59:33 +0000 UTCBeen enjoying the reoccurring theme on the show that Colorado is a giant Hitler factory
Josiah Sutton of the Fruitless Podcast
2024-06-06 17:32:47 +0000 UTCI don't doubt there's at least one in the hopper, but almost any Pixar film would make a great TWOAPW, so-called "timeless" or "transcendent" works of art that are in reality very specific ideologically rich time capsules
Elah
2024-06-06 12:47:00 +0000 UTCAll throughout this episode I found myself thinking of The Incredibles, another Iraq war era comedy with stunning art direction, an axe to grind about political correctness, and not-really-sublimated fascism. there's a really remarkable parallel in the way the two films paint necessity of unchecked power as the reasoned, mature position. you can pretty easily map team America's dick-pussy-asshole triad on to The Incredibles' three leads and central conflicts. As you mention these sentiments were everywhere at the time and permeated for more than these two particular artifacts but the connections really leaped out of me
Elah
2024-06-06 12:29:07 +0000 UTC(for real hearing Brian really on one this week was sublime)
Elah
2024-06-06 11:58:59 +0000 UTCThat Brian Alford guy really tells it like it is. He's saying the stuff the lamestream media doesn't want you to hear about.
Elah
2024-06-06 11:56:59 +0000 UTCThere are plenty of things that Parker and Stone poke fun at that require a deeper understanding of the subject than they possess. I think they're at their strongest when they actually do that legwork
John Her
2024-06-06 06:29:07 +0000 UTCAs a Chinese American, I remember being annoyed by the City Wok guy mainly because the character's awfulness as a person wasn't grounded on any understanding of the very real racist conservative Asian business owner archetype I grew up around
John Her
2024-06-06 06:27:13 +0000 UTCA few notes: 1) Learning some new Jore is always good for my parasocial relationship. 2) I felt personally attacked by the ER Clooney haircut discussion. 3) The first scene of the film is discussed at timestamp 44:20
Gorbant
2024-06-06 03:41:28 +0000 UTCIt's the belief that holding sincere convictions is gay.
murt pie
2024-06-06 03:00:35 +0000 UTCThis episode was such a trip! My whole 8th grade class joined the U of M (Minnesota) walkout protesting the invasion of Iraq and I realized while listening to this that I've never really processed the fact that, while thousands of folks of all ages congregated at that and many other protests, I cannot recall any news coverage of those events. What a time. Love you guys.
Vanessa Edding
2024-06-06 02:09:08 +0000 UTCThe bit ware he had a wacky neighbour that just dropped by the whitehouse was pretty funny
Jimmy McMillan
2024-06-06 00:49:37 +0000 UTCI liked That's My Bush
Jimmy McMillan
2024-06-06 00:47:12 +0000 UTCElder Millenial here saying there should be more classic trek talk. Man the pop culture version of Kirk is so wildly off how he is on the actual show - yeah he’s kinda horny but that’s cause he’s kind of all of it. He has SO MANY EMOTIONS and they’re all Right There and he’s more known for his empathy and bursts of suicidal bravery while his more competent, by the books boyfriend is known for his careful analysis and day to day continuity and and…. ….wait fuck is Kirk/Spock just Harry/Kim?
John Leavitt
2024-06-05 23:12:57 +0000 UTCTook me years to realize how fucked up South Park truly is. I barely watched it but my parents were fans for a long time. Glad I dodged that particular bullet
Obi-Won Sherloch Clouseau
2024-06-05 21:20:17 +0000 UTCI grew up watching south park and recently rewatched some old episodes. I was afraid that it wasnt going to hold up due to offensive jokes (there definitely were alot), but more often it didnt age well because the butt of the joke (usually a news story or celebrity they didnt like) hasnt been relevant for 25 years
titus virginia
2024-06-05 20:46:57 +0000 UTCit’s hard to believe from today’s perspective, but there was a time when george clooney was primarily known as a TV actor, rather than as a coffee salesman
Max Johansson
2024-06-05 18:41:04 +0000 UTCYeah, the better episodes are the ones with no villain and just a regular disaster of some kind (big building on fire, bridge fall down, etc). I think it scratches the same part of my brain as the original Thomas the Tank Engine, the TV show as a vague structure to look at cool models.
Amy Godliman
2024-06-05 17:23:21 +0000 UTCThey're also very weird and has the thing from old serials where 9 times out of ten the baddie of the week is a Very very very dated/racist stereotypes, but agree it would be a good thing to break down maybe with a guest who is aware of it prior
S-lappin
2024-06-05 16:56:03 +0000 UTCThose first episodes about transgender people on south park ended up informing my opinion about gender for a long time, probably kept me in the closet for a decade longer than I would have been otherwise, until I met other trans people and learned I can want to be a woman without being a sort of horrible parody of a human being. I hate that show so much, the harm it has done me personally still fucking hurts to think about.
Cinless
2024-06-05 16:31:49 +0000 UTCI went from thinking South Park was kind of funny to just pointing and shouting "Kill him!" whenever I encounter a centrist
Noblesse Oblahaj
2024-06-05 16:07:18 +0000 UTCI wasn't allowed to watch Southpark growing up because of woke
Dergon
2024-06-05 15:15:19 +0000 UTCNot having listened to the episode, yet, I’m curious how you might contrast “The Interview” with “Team America: World Police”, given that, among other things, “The Interview” involved actual Korean people.
Elsie Hupp
2024-06-05 15:07:03 +0000 UTCScott Ruden’t
Elias
2024-06-05 14:41:37 +0000 UTCBrian should watch Thunderbolt Fantasy for some Cool Puppets.
Skelecopter
2024-06-05 14:16:12 +0000 UTCCannot express enough how much more you’d enjoy just watching some old Gerry and Sylvia Anderson shows than this movie. Thunderbirds really does use regular animals as monstrous threats (Attack of the Alligators), the little insert shots of human hands are always a delight, and some of the explosions and effects work is genuinely great (they developed a lot of miniatures techniques that made it into Star Wars amongst other films). If nothing else, take literally 1 minute 20 out of your day to watch the opening credits of U.F.O a post-puppet Anderson production that (yes really) inspired the X-Com series…which was sadly too cowardly to also borrow the amazing costume design. Sorry, had to put all that in, Thunderbirds and the assorted other Supermarionation shows had a long cultural footprint in the uk, with old eps being syndicated and legitimately popular well into the 90s.
Amy Godliman
2024-06-05 13:57:36 +0000 UTCSouth Park brain is my term for that brand of aggressively self satisfied centrism that's somehow persisted for decades now.
Peter Flynn
2024-06-05 09:22:02 +0000 UTCZoomer sounding off that there should be way more original series Star Trek talk in every episode
Zipzapzop
2024-06-05 06:35:16 +0000 UTC
