With last night’s (December 11) airing of its season finale, creators of the animated comedy “South Park” rekindled their parody of Kanye West in the final episode. The show mocked the Hip Hop artist in a 2009 episode titled “Fishsticks.” A trailer for last night’s episode can be streamed below.
In its original parody of the rapper for its fifth season, the show constructed a fictional scenario in which a recurrent character writes a widely publicized joke about fish sticks. As the joke spreads to a national audience and other comedians take credit for its creation, it becomes apparent that the fictionalized West does not understand the joke or its punchline.
The joke plays on a response to the question, “Do you like fish sticks?” and “You like to put fish sticks in your mouth?” When answered in the affirmative, relying in part on how closely the phrase “fish sticks” resembles the phrase “fish dicks,” the teller jokingly asks, “What are you a gay fish?” In the show, West becomes infuriated over the accusations that he does not understand the joke and that he is consequently a “gay fish.” He then embarks on a mission to retaliate before arriving at a moment of self-awareness regarding his own ego. Convinced that he now understands the joke, West incorrectly takes its meaning literally and believes himself to be a “gay fish.” The original episode can be streamed at South Park’s website.
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Kanye West reacted mostly positive to the episode shortly after its release. Writing a statement on his blog, West admitted that, as his portrayal in the episode criticizes, he had “been working on [his] ego.” “South Park murdered me last night and it’s pretty funny,” he wrote. “It hurts my feelings but what can you expect from South Park!…I got a long road ahead of me to make people believe I’m not actually a huge douche but I’m up for the challenge. I’m sure the writers at South Park are really nice people in real life. Thanks for taking the time to draw my crew. That was pretty funny also! I’m sure there’s grammatical errors in this… That’s how you know it’s me!”
After his initial response, Kanye West included a reference to the parody on his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, rapping “choke a ‘South Park’ writer with a ‘fish stick’” on the song “Gorgeous.” West included another reference to the episode on his collaborative album with Jay Z, rapping “’South Park’ had them all laughin’ / Now all my niggas designing and we all swaggin’” on the song ‘Made In America.’”
The original episode is one of the series’ most popular episodes and received a large amount of post-release coverage from the media as well as the other celebrities parodied like Carlos Mencia.
“South Park”’s season finale aired last night (December 11) and is titled “The Hobbit.” The updated parody finds the rapper admitting that he’s a “recovering gay fish” and defending his wife Kim Kardashian from accusations that she is a hobbit.
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“South Park”’s season finale can be streamed in full at the show’s designated website.
