The New Magisterium

The Transition #6

Part One: The Transition
Part Two: The Sacred Fetish of Academic Freedom
Part Three: The Times They Have Changed
Part Four: The 2020ers
Part Five: Thoughts of a most impure and libidinous character

While censorship went into steep decline in the late 20th century, the human urge to censor never went away. New taboos and speech codes emerged in place of the old ones, and the freewheeling spirit of the Nineteen and Noughties gave way to a new spirit of remoralisation. The period in between was an anomaly, with increasingly vulgar and outrageous art permitted in the absence of a moral authority.

Foul-mouthed cartoon comedy South Park first aired in 1997, becoming especially popular with the young male demographic, and if you were easily offended it was certainly not for you. It would not have been permissible before that period, yet its subject matter was designed to offend both the old and new order, with masturbation and racially edgy humour in equal measure, including use of what is now called the N-word.

South Park could not have emerged even ten years earlier, due to the relative strength of moral majority-type campaigners and their ability to place pressure on studios. By the 1990s their influence had declined and the decade embraced a spirit of moral anarchy, and a strong belief in the right to offend. Comedy in Britain, too, became increasingly outrageous during that decade, a trend that perhaps reached its zenith in 2003 with Little Britain. But that was then.