If “South Park” were a person, it would be old enough to vote, though it probably wouldn’t. That scabrous cartoon has been a one-stop shop for anti-partisan satire and blasphemy on Comedy Central since 1997.

如果“南方公园”(South Park)是个人，应该已经到了投票的年龄，虽然它可能不会去。从1997年至今，这部污秽不堪的卡通剧一直在提供反党派政治讽刺和神明亵渎的一站式服务。

Few comedies can stay first-rate for that long. (Sorry, Homer.) Early in the current season, the show’s 19th, the creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to wonder how well the show’s offend-at-all-costs ethos has aged. “It’s like I’m a relic,” a recurring character says. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve outstayed my welcome.”

很少有哪部笑剧能如此长时间保持一流水平。（抱歉了，Homer。）在本季——即本剧第19季之初，剧创特雷·帕克(Trey Parker)和麦特·斯通(Matt Stone)似乎在想，这种不惜一切代价触怒他人的精神是不是已经过时了。“我就像个老古董，”一个经常出场的人物说道。“有时候我觉得，老这么赖着不走已经招人烦了。”

The character in question is a white restaurant owner who believes he is Chinese and speaks in a grossly stereotyped Asian accent. Maybe, that meta-lament seemed to suggest, the show had started punching down in its later years.

此人是个经营着一家餐馆的白人，认为自己是华人，操一口极端符合刻板印象的亚洲口音。平白无故冒出来的哀叹似乎在暗示，也许这个步入暮年的剧已经有些力不从心。

Yet this fall “South Park” has gone and revitalized itself, by telling a more ambitious, serialized story and by asserting that it takes an outrageous comedy to capture an era of outrage.

然而在今年秋天，《南方公园》用一个更宏大的系列故事宣告，要捕捉一个暴戾的时代，需要用暴戾的喜剧。

This season, which airs its finale on Wednesday, is built around an extended satire of political correctness. South Park, Colo., is taken over by a new school principal — named, aptly, P. C. Principal — and his crew of like-minded, jacked-up frat bros, who believe that being p.c. “means you love nothing more than beer, working out and the feeling that you get when you rhetorically defend a marginalized community from systems of oppression!” They meet microaggression with macroaggression, bullying kids and adults who, say, refer to the transgender reality star Caitlyn Jenner as anything less than “stunning and brave.”

于本周三结束的这一季，是围绕着一种对政治正确的全面嘲弄展开的。一位新校长入主科罗拉多州南方公园，他有个贴切的名字——“PC校长”（P.C. Principal，P.C.即“政治正确”[political correctness]。——译注）——还有一帮跟他志同道合的弟兄手足，个个情绪激动，坚信政治正确“就是说你的最爱是啤酒、健身，以及那种在压迫体制下慷慨激昂地捍卫一个边缘群体的感觉！”他们用“宏侵犯”(macroaggression)打击“微侵犯”(microaggression)，任何不认为跨性别真人秀明星凯特琳·詹纳(Caitlyn Jenner)“美艳而勇敢”的人，不论长幼，都会遭到他们的恐吓。

But the season also targeted the rise of Donald J. Trump, a phenomenon who has thrived on a resentment of things p.c., just this week crowing that his plan to ban Muslims from the United States was “probably not politically correct.” A longtime character, Mr. Garrison, begins a White House bid on a familiar-sounding platform of xenophobia against Canadians (recurring boogeymen of “South Park,” going back to the “Blame Canada” number from the 1999 movie musical). Canada, in turn, has elected its own Trump-like figure, with disastrous results. “We thought it was funny,” one Canadian laments. “Nobody really thought he’d ever be president!”

然而这一季还瞄准了唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)，一个因为憎恨一切PC而大红大紫的人物，就在这一周他还得意地说，他的禁止穆斯林入境计划“可能政治不大正确”。在剧中已有些年头的人物“加里森先生”开始为入主白宫而努力，他采用的是排斥加拿大人的立场（也就是那个屡屡被《南方公园》树立为大恶人的族群，这段恩怨可追溯到1999年歌舞片版里那首《都怪加拿大》[Blame Canada]），听上去十分耳熟。而加拿大反过来也选择了自己的特朗普式人物，后果是灾难性的。“我们是觉得好玩，”一个加拿大人痛心疾首地说。“谁能想到他真当上总统呢。”

In reality, Canada has a prime minister. But “South Park” has never cared much about political fine points so much as comedy that deflates zealots and defends the offensive, like an American Charlie Hebdo. It was ahead of the curve in asserting a right to depict the Prophet Muhammad, who appeared in a 2001 episode (though Comedy Central squelched later attempts).

在现实中，加拿大选的是总理。但《南方公园》从来不在乎这些政治细节，它更在乎用喜剧贬损狂热，捍卫无礼，就像美国版《查理周报》(Charlie Hebdo)。在先知默罕穆德形象描绘权的伸张上，它是走在前面的，早在2001年的一集中就已经出现（不过此后的几次企图遭到Comedy Central的压制）。

Now, it was as if our culture had been shining an Eric Cartman-shaped Bat-signal and “South Park” answered. You could see the news from college campuses — safe spaces, trigger warnings — and conclude that America was more radically leftist than ever. You could read a dispatch from the Republican primary — border walls, refugee panic — and conclude that it was more reactionary than ever. The country is deeply polarized, and between two poles is precisely where the quasi-libertarian “South Park” most likes to swing.

此时此刻，我们的文化仿佛亮起了一个埃里克·卡特曼(Eric Cartman)形状的蝙蝠讯号，《南方公园》应声赶来。你也许看到了大学校园传来的新闻——安全空间(safe space)、触发警告(trigger warning)——认定如今的美国出于空前激进的左倾状态。你也许看到了共和党初选的报道——边境墙、难民潮恐慌——认定它比以往更加抗拒进步。这个国家是深度分化的，类自由主义的《南方公园》，恰恰最喜欢在这两极之间摇摆。

“South Park” used to be so anti-continuity — its episodes are often written days before airing — that the show would kill the same character, Kenny McCormick, every week. By shifting toward serial stories, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone have been able to make more complex arguments this season: acknowledging, for instance, that sometimes outrage culture has a basis in actual outrages. An episode on police brutality posits both that South Park’s cops are needed to keep the peace and that many of them joined the force to have carte blanche to beat up minorities.

《南方公园》曾经非常反对连续性——脚本往往是在播出前几天写就——每周都要杀死肯尼·麦考尔米克(Kenny McCormick)。本季转向有连续情节的故事后，帕克和斯通开始进行一些更复杂的论辩：比如他们承认，动辄觉得被冒犯的文化，有时的确源于粗暴的对待。在关于警察暴力的一集中，南方公园的警察被认为是维护安定的必要存在，但同时，他们中的许多人加入警队就是为了可以肆意殴打少数族裔。

And where past “South Park” satires once looked at single issues, this season is sketching something like a grand — if messy — unified theory of anger, inequality and disillusionment in 2015 America.

以前的《南方公园》把讽刺的笔墨放在某个单一的问题上，而这一季里，面对2015年美国的愤怒、不公和幻灭，它选择去勾勒某种宏大的统一理论——虽然谈不上有条理。

Even as the p.c. wars rage, the town of South Park is being gentrified: It’s attracted a Whole Foods and built Sodosopa (South of Downtown South Park), an enclave of hipster eateries and condos built literally around the house of the dirt-poor McCormick family. The townspeople are delighted, until they realize many of them can’t afford to join the few, the smug, the artisanal. Under the town’s chichi new facade is a familiar slurry of resentment (of the privileged, of immigrants, of elites) and fear (of terrorism, of crime, of economically falling).

就在PC战火熊熊燃烧之际，南方公园这座小镇却在士绅化：它迎来了第一座全食超市(Whole Foods)，建造了Sodosopa（南方公园下城南）区，一个潮人食肆林立的地方，贫困的麦考尔米克家四周围全是新建的共管公寓。镇民们十分欣喜，但是没过多久他们就发现，他们无力负担那稀罕、自得、精致的生活。在附庸风雅的新外表之下，这座镇子弥漫着一种熟悉的（对特权阶层、对移民、对精英的）怨恨和（对恐怖主义、对犯罪、对经济滑坡的）恐惧。

And all that, in the “South Park” worldview, drives people to a self-pitying narcissism that extends to politics but also goes beyond it. In the season’s darkest episode, “Safe Space,” the townspeople assign a single child to filter every negative comment from their social media, to protect their self-esteem from all manner of “-shaming.”

在《南方公园》的世界观里，这些会让人产生一种自怜的自恋，它会扩张到政治中，还会向别处蔓延。在本季最黑暗的一集《安全空间》中，镇民们指定一个孩子去过滤社交媒体上的所有负面评论，让他们的自尊免受一切“羞辱”的侵扰。

After the boy nearly dies from the strain of filtering the entire Internet’s hate, an allegorical figure named Reality — wearing a silent-movie villain’s cape and mustache — shows up to scold South Parkers with a lecture that sums up this season’s Swiftian brimstone morality: “I’m sorry the world isn’t one big liberal-arts college campus! We eat too much. We take our spoiled lives for granted. Feel a little bad about it sometimes.”

为了过滤整个互联网的恨意，男孩在沉重的压力之下几乎因此丧命，一个名叫“现实”的寓言式人物随后出场，他穿着默片时代反派人物的斗篷，蓄着胡须，前来责骂南方公园的居民们，他用一场演说总结了这一季中的乔纳森·斯威夫特式道德拷问：“很遗憾，这世界不是一座巨型文科学院校园！我们吃太多了。我们以为生活本来就该这么养尊处优。心里应该偶尔有点过意不去的感觉。”

Affected by his words, the citizens are moved to action: They take Reality to the town square and hang him.

他的言语促使居民们行动起来：他们把现实带到镇广场，将其吊死。

It’s not exactly subtle, nor is the show’s argument entirely focused; the season-ending arc has involved a tangent about deceptive online advertising. (The finale may be more timely. Only a week after the terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the episode promises a story on how “the citizens of South Park feel safer armed”; a teaser video has Cartman getting in an armed standoff with his mother at bedtime.)

这不是多精巧的安排，而它的论述也不见得总能落在正题上；本季结尾的剧情中突然插入了一段讲欺骗性网络广告的内容。（全季大结局可能有更多的时效性。一周前刚刚发生加州圣贝尔纳迪诺恐怖主义袭击，这一集承诺要讲讲“南方公园人民手里有枪心中不慌”的故事；在一段预告视频中，卡特曼在睡前和妈妈发生了一场持枪对峙。）

And by making P. C. Principal and friends white dudes, the show sidesteps the fact that “politically correct” is often a label lobbed by white dudes at women and minorities who’ve faced actual prejudice. Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone anticipate this criticism too, having Cartman tell his schoolmate Kyle, with atypical self-awareness: “We’re two privileged straight white boys who have their laughs about things we never had to deal with.”

剧中的PC校长和他的朋友都是白人男性，这就回避了一个现实：很多时候是白人男性在往女人和少数族裔头上扣“政治正确”的帽子，也就是那些真的在受歧视的人群。帕克和斯通料到有人会揪住这里不放，他们让卡特曼用一种反常的自知之明对他的同学凯尔(Kyle)说：“我们是两个有特权的白人直男，喜欢取笑一些我们永远不需要面对的东西。”

This product of two white guys does have a different vantage point from many of today’s best comedies dealing with identity issues, from “black-ish” to “Master of None.” But in a way, its project and theirs are the same: to deal with tensions by prescribing more conversation, even if it’s uncomfortable, not less.

比起目前其他的一些涉及身份问题的喜剧杰作——比如《喜新不厌旧》(Black-ish)和《无为大师》(Master Of None)，本剧作为两个白人男性的作品，的确占据着一个别人没有的优势。但从某种程度上说，它们的课题是一样的：在紧张的气氛下，它们开出的处方是增加而非减少对话，即便这对话让大家坐立不安。