The Broadway musical, Avenue Q, is a cross between Sesame Street and South Park. It is perverted, dark, it features foul language, puppet nudity, and the Bad Idea Bears, whose idea of a drinking game is to see who can drink the fastest. And all the characters, whether puppet or human, are fictional, except for Gary Coleman, from Different Strokes, who is played by a black woman.
In all its disgusting glory, it is able to stay more on the side of cultural libertarianism, than cultural marxism, a testament to the fact that South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, were cited as the inspiration for Avenue Q by one of the show’s creators, Robert Lopez.
If I could quibble on three points:
1. Shows like this, whether TV, movie, or theatre, for all their perversion, aren’t necessarily “subversive,” as hard as they may try. Although they may flagrantly violate societal norms regarding decency, they still follow standard structures of form, and tend to end up reinforcing healthy human relationships. By contrast, this is what makes the depravity of South Park, Game of Thrones, or MacBeth so ingenius – they undermine all the way to the core.
2. Almost none, if any, of the examples of racism in the song featured in the video below, “Everyone’s a little bit racist”, are actually racist.
3. You get the impression that the musical has to virtue signal throughout the rest of the play in order to get away with its best moments.
Despite these quibbles, I love the fact that this song exists. It carries the message that many human interactions which the politically correct arbiters of human behaviour deem to racist, are actually normal, natural, good aspects of human behaviour. Homest observations about human life and its absurdities builds respect and trust, and makes life one hell of a lot funnier in the process.
Plus, I love the irony that this footage is from The View.
The song “Everybody’s a little bit racist” gets a well-earned XYZ Quote of the day.