Who is the funniest South Park character?

Round One is acceptance, and choosing our character. For this debate I choose Butters as the funniest south park character!

Thanks to Kohai for accepting this debate!

Resolved: Butters is a funnier character than Jesus in South Park

Contention 1: Butters innocence in a world of raunchy characters provides for hilarious situations

Butters as a character, tends to be super genuine and nice to most everyone. He's one of the few characters that while being innocent and a bit naive, tends to get himself in some of the funniest situations. The 6th highest rated episode on IMDB is "Casa Bonita" (1), in this episode, Butters is invited to Kyle's birthday party over Eric Cartman, but they happen to be going to Eric's favorite place, Casa Bonita. Kyle tells Eric the he can only bring 3 friends, and since Stan, Kenny, and Butters are already coming, Cartman can only come if Butters can't come. After several failed attempts to suck up to Kyle and manipulate him into letting him come, he instead decides to trick butters into being gone during this time. This is when absolute hilarity begins to ensue. Cartman manages to convince Butters that the world is ending in an apocalypse, and he attempts hides Butters in a bunker for the duration of Kyle's birthday. Butters completely believes this charade, and when Cartman later has to move Butters to a Junkyard, Butters believes the Junkyard he is in, is the rubble strewn remains of society. He begins rebuilding the town and he even meets the junkyard woman and attempts to "repopulate" with her. This is one of the funniest scenes from south park, considering butters innocence and intentions. (2)

This was one of the earlier Butters episodes that turned him into one of the fan favorites. But following this episode, many Butters episodes made it into the top list of IMDB Ratings, including "Good Times with Weapons" (where butters gets a throwing star stuck in his eye) at Number 5, "Awesome-O" at Number 7 where Cartman tries to manipulate Butters into telling him the secret he knows about him, "The Death of Eric Cartman" at number 8, where Butters believes he can see dead people. Out of the top ten most rated episodes, that means at least 4 Butters episodes make that list, not to mention many many more Butters related episodes in 10-30 as well.

People love an innocent character in a world of 4th graders with potty mouths, Butters is that one believable fourth grader which makes him so loveable.

Contention 2: Butters is loveable, relatable, and easy to sympathize with

Butters becomes a fan favorite, because many people can relate to Butters not just as a character, but a Human Being. Butters generally has the best intentions, even when he is doing something "wrong" it's usually because he was manipulated by Cartman into thinking whatever he is doing is helpful, and Butters always wants to help. He even happily accepts being bullied for "not having kissed a girl" by his fellow 4th graders in "Butters Bottom Bitch". In this episode Butters gets his very first kiss, and decides to turn a profit off of it by hiring girls on the playground to sell "kisses". (3) This results in him becoming a successful pimp. While Butters doesn't realize what he is doing is considered "wrong", it shows how good of a person he is when he offers his "prostitutes" Benefits and Equal Housing, as if they were properly employed in a real job. The girls working under him even think of him as a "good pimp". This is another example of a situation where butters innocence, naivety, and kindness result in absolute hilarity.

Butters parents also happen to be the absolute worst, and will ground him at any opportunity. Many people who have grown up in strict or abusive households can relate and sympathize with butters, which makes moments like him beating up his dad in "grounded vindaloop" not only super hilarious because he is innocently thinking his dad is an illusion, but also satisfying because Mr. Stotch is finally getting a bit of what he deserves.

Contention 3: Jesus himself is more of a punchline than a character

Now for the purposes of this debate, I will argue why I don't think Jesus is funnier than Butters. For one, Jesus himself doesn't really "do" anything funny. He doesn't have many lines that make you chuckle, or character development to make you really invested him. He tends to be brought into situations as a punchline or to make a point about whatever the show's ultimate point is. *spoiler alerts going forward* For example, Jesus is brought back as a recurring character in the newest season of south park season 27. In episode one of the show, Jesus's first appearance in the school auditorium, he greets the south park kids and says Jesus type of things, but none of it is particularly funny. The funny part or the point of the episode is more to elaborate the fact that woke culture (which became a huge thing in 2016) is now kind of dying out, and even characters like PC principal are having to change their view points because the world has changed so much. This leaves characters like Eric Cartman feeling depressed, since before his vulgarities were shocking and invited reactions out of people, and now they are common place. The second real funny part of this episode revolves around the fact that Trump is so rich and powerful that he can just intimidate people by threatening to sue them, and that even Jesus is scared of being sued by Trump. At the end of the episode he whispers warning to the people of South Park not to mess with Trump because of this. While this is a funny situation and makes the point that we gave Trump so much power that even Jesus is intimidated of him, Jesus is more of the punch line of the joke here than the actual Joke. Nothing Jesus really says or does in this episode makes the audience laugh, its more the situation that is caused.

The latest episode featuring Jesus, entitled "Wok is dead" is more of the same. Jesus has now replaced school Councilor "Mr. Mackay" and his job is to help kids and give them advice. In this episode he is more just reacting confused and dis-appointed in the latest Labubu craze the girls in the school are fighting each other over. In this episode he witnesses girls fighting each other and performing satanic rituals all in hopes of getting the newest and coolest toys. In this episode Jesus acts as a hero to stop the Satan and Trump from being summoned from the South Park girls. While its obvious that Jesus would be considered a rival to Satan, this role could almost have been played by anyone if the roles and circumstances were changed after finding out that Satan is pregnant with Trumps baby.

Jesus doesn't really do anything funny or have any funny punchlines this whole episode. Ironically, Butters ends up being a focal point in this episode because he ends up thinking he gets a girlfriend in Red and thinks he's about to be laid on camera with a bunch of people watching and the whole thing recorded. Butters innocence and naivety shines through once again to create a hilarious moment, and ironically he actually outshines Jesus in the humor department for this episode.

Conclusion:

In Conclusion, I think Butters not only makes a better character than Jesus, his personality can be used in more situations that create hilarity overall than Jesus can. Religion is kind of an over played theme in south park as is, and Jesus tends to be more of a symbol to provoke comedy that and accessory to it in this show. While Butters actually just says and does the darndest things and makes you love him more with every episode, while creating laughs with some of his lines. Butters not only is featured in some of the more popular and loved episodes, he also is very relatable to many people, and is one of the 4th graders you can actually believe being a 4th grader. Sometimes that gets lost in the Kyle and Cartman insult exchanges, as you wouldn't expect most ten year old's to have potty mouths like that. The fact that Butters can match that comedic energy without having to result in jokes about racism and body shaming, makes his character one of the more "stand out" characters in South Park

I wish my opponent the best of luck in his responses, I hope this debate proves to be plenty of fun!

Sources:

1: https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?count=250&series=tt0121955&sort=user_rating,desc

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iAhdFi18wI

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImYci3uWXbg

I thanks my opponent for his argument!

For my conclusionary statements, I would like to focus on making points that seperate Butters humor from Jesus, and ultimately set him a part as a better overall character.

R1: Social Commentary and South Park

A lot of my opponents arguments revolve around social commentary that jesus brings up with his character. While true, I'd argue that Butters achieves this goal but also does it for a more wide spread audience. In my previous debate round I brought up "Butters Bottom B1tch" as an example of an episode where Butters becomes a pimp, but this episode also brought up social commentary on prostitution as a whole, and looked into the way woman are treated in the prostitute business. This is explored when many woman start leaving the big prostitutes and going to employ with Butters as their pimp given the benefits he gives them as well as not abusing them. While Butters innocently uses some of the lingo calling girls on the playground "B1tch", he does it thinking its part of the business model and not understanding that he's doing anything negative. This episode also explores how far the police department go into the underworld when they go undercover and often times commit many of the same crimes themselves just to bust these criminals, therefor exploring the hypocrisy of FBI investigations.

Butters is basically able to accomplish the same thing but appeals to more audiences, as he is doing these things in naivety as a 4th grader. There is similar commentary in "Raisins" when Butters believes a waitress flirting with him is his girlfriend, and continues to spend money at her restaurant. This episode mocks how men will spend absurd amount of money at business like Hooters for female attention, when all they care about at the end of the day is that paycheck, but it does so humorously by exploring it through the naivety of a 10 year old boy falling in love.

Rebuttal 2A: Wok is dead

My opponent makes some interesting comments in this point. In particular he mentions this as one of the greatest episodes ever. My response to that is..... really? While I suppose humor is subjective, and the episode is generally good, as are most South Park episode's, I definitely didn't find myself laughing out lout on this episode. At most I exhaled from my nose briefly at a couple punchlines.... But Like I said humor is subjective, and maybe the audience agrees that this episode is "The greatest episodes of all time".

"My opponent gripe that it could be played by anyone; however, that would miss the entire point of the episode. The episode is making fun of right wing Republican states who want to insert Jesus and religion into the public school system. In this episode, South Park runs with that and makes it extremely absurd by putting Jesus literally into school as a public counselor."

I mean I get that obviously, but that doesn't make it much funnier. The point is almost being shoved down our throats then made in a brilliant satirical way by the way Jesus literally just dead pans every single line in this episode. The emotional range of Jesus's facial expression go from "Resting bitch face" to "Mildly dis-appointed". The examples of Jesus in the first couple of seasons you used showed more of an emotional range and comedic scale to the character than the recent two episodes did combined, and he has way more air time in the recent episodes. The point of satire is for these messages to come across humorously, and the writing with Jesus in these episodes is so pointed and narrow that while the point is being gotten by the audience, it's not done in a way that elicits laughs. Again the fact that Butters minor role in the Labubu episode was more poignant and funny than almost anything else in the episode is a point to why Butters stands out so much as a character among the rest of the cast.

Rebuttal 2: Butters can provide comedy in better ranges than Jesus

While it's too soon to really tell, its hard for me to imagine Jesus making it as a long term character in this series without some signficant boost to development. I sincerely hope that comes, and as an avid fan of the show South Park, I know Matt and Trey are capable of creating that with Jesus. It's not there yet however. A couple of the recent episodes almost feel as if they are trying to hard with the Jesus character to accomplish a humorous narrative. Even the Trump humor, while accurate, is done in an odd way. I loved how they previously mocked Trump by using a previously developed character (Mr. Garrison) and adding different layers of development with him. They were able to accurately make fun of Trump while also making Garrison an affable character who you could at least try to sympathize with. Now they are basically putting Trump as a direct copy/pasta of their Saddam Hussein character, and using Jesus as more of a plot mover than a developing character. While I genuinely hope this changes in future episodes, it's not quite there yet. The Jesus character feels more experimental as of this moment, and its leaning more towards the "Miss" than the "Hit" for me at least. They need to give the character more personality, more conviction, and more confidence. It's Jesus for heaven's sake (Pun intended). If Jesus were really present, I am sure he could come up with more than a placcid and confused look when confronted with a satanic craze. Jesus would be actively trying to do something about this, giving advice to the girls, taking a stance. There's a million ways they can do this in a humorful way, similar to when they added PC principal. PC principal came into the show, stated his dominance and place and didn't let characters walk over him, and stuck to his core values while doing it in a hilarious way that made fun of PC culture. The same can and should be done with Jesus. But its not there yet. The latest Jesus episodes don't really show a developmental range, and Jesus's character is there to make a point, which again just feels forced and shoved down the audiences throat.

You don't make an audience laugh by shoving logic down their throats, you do it in a way that makes fun of the thing you want to laugh at, but by also showing what both sides are trying to accomplish fairly, even if the show's narrative is ultimately the side they want you to take in the end. This was done succesfully in "All about the Mormons" where they make fun of the absurdities about the religion, but give it its fair due by making the point that "who cares what they believe in if they are happy" and show Stan to be the asshole in the end for judging his friend by his religion instead of just accepting him for who he was.

This is one of many countless episodes where they are able to achieve satire with character development, laughs, and also making a solid point. The recent Jesus episodes seem more focused on making the point, then making it funny. Then again thats just how I personally viewed them, and I feel like there is so much more potential with the Jesus character than what we have seen so far.

What makes Butters so special as a character in this regard is you can use an innocent naive "Good guy" Like Butters to accomplish so much satire, by having other characters manipulate and take advantage of him. It results in some of the darndest line drops from Butters ever, and hilarious points being made. (4)

I've had a lot of fun in this debate, and I wish my opponent the best of luck going into voting!

Sources:

4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDLRxY8spAA