South Park Understands Goths! (South Park Video Essay)

As an actual goth who stayed in the scene until now, almost at 30, I really love seeing the kids in south park. They are basically the essence of what younglings are who just discovered the scene, take everything way too seriously and try to gatekeep the scene from others who also just learned about it.

It's always kinda funny that South Park, this rude, crude, and socially unacceptable show, has better representation of certain groups than more 'respected' media. Like when they introduced Jimmy and Timmy, the mainstream tried to say that they were offensive stereotypes but the disabled community loved them. And just how accurately they portrayed tourettes. Gotta love satire.

They really nailed it. Especially in a time when most mainstream media didn't know the difference between goths, emos, and metal heads.

I love that Michael is like a legit friend to Stan. When Stan gets served, Michael goes to help. Stan enlists their help during Black Friday. That's kinda badass

My mom is a life long goth and she absolutely loves the goth kids in South Park. They are extremely accurate and well done.

My mom has been goth her entire life. And she swears to this day that the south Park goth kids are the best representation she's ever personally come across

I kind of wished the Matt and Trey went a little bit more into how goth and emo were started as music subcultures with goth initially being derived from post-punk and and emo being derived from post-hardcore. Eventually both suffered the same fate of having the mainstream divorce the aesthetic from the music to make a buck from moody teens. At the end of the day and despite their differences, they're all punk.

I wish the Goth kids had more time to shine. They're my favorite characters.

One of my favorite bits about the Goth Kids came in a creator commentary (I think it was for Coon and Cthulu episode) where they mentioned how they thought about updating the Kids look. They even went out of their way to lookup more modern goth looks and trends only to realize they're pretty much the exact same as the 90's.😁 Hell in many cases the current goth kids not only dressed the same, they were listening to the same goth bands from 20+ years ago.😂

"We just got Goth-sevred" is probably one of my favorite lines in this entire show

"Is Pete the Kenny of the Goth Kids?" Oh thank God I'm not the only one thinking that

No, the most important thing is not literature. Gothic literature is Gothic literature, not Goth literature. The music is the most important thing such as Goth Rock, Post-Punk, Darkwave etc etc. That's what separates the goths from the emos. Also, the way the Goth kids call everyone a poseur confuses me because the Goth subculture (and many other subcultures such as Punk) usually uses that word to describe someone who tries to be Goth but clearly isn't, therefore they're a poseur. If someone isn't trying to be a Goth in the first place, what are they a poseur of?

legit most of us took on the goth side after getting severely bullied for our looks; without it, instead of getting "satan" shouted at us, we get "fatty, pimples", etc.

Matt & Trey love The Cure, they are basically Goths themselves

It’s weird because South Park made fun of goths, but also made them really awesome. I really respect South Park’s portrayal of counter cultures like goths, because I used to be a Metal Head in High School.

I like to think Goth Michael is possibly the Michael Tweek was referring to in his fake break up with Craig.

I've wanted someone to touch on this so badly in the Fandom. The goths deserve better recognition Also the goth subculture is music based. Mostly post punk and nu wave music.

I'd find the Goth kids are the most underrated characters in South Park

matt and trey loveeeeeeeee the cure i think theyre a little goth at heart

Yeah, as someone who spent a long time on the goth scene, I was quite impressed with these character. Often, South Park's understanding of things is kinda surface level but they really do seem to have a deeper understanding with these character. I esspecially liked watching Goth, Emos and Vamps all outragedly arguing over how different there were whilst the view of them from without is that they're all the same which I've seen so many times amongst the goth community.