(Source:Big Cartoon Database)
New Zealand church groups are questioning the country's Broadcast Standards Authority after it declined to pursue 35 complaints against a South Park episode.
The BSA handed down a decision on Wednesday saying that the Bill Of Rights Act of 1990 protected the show's right to satirize religion.
The South Park episode, entitled "Bloody Mary," featured a statue of the Virgin Mary menstruating on the Pope. It aired last February on C4 television network, and spurred the largest number of complaints since the BSA was founded in 1989.
"You would find it almost impossible to find anybody, and especially any woman, who believes that the imagery of a woman spraying menstrual blood in the face of another person is decent or in good taste," said Bob McCoskrie, national director of the Family First Lobby.
The BSA acknowledged that the episode offended many individuals and church groups, and said C4 had promised not to show the episode again. But the BSA pointed out a number of other factors, including South Park's late time slot, its overt AO (Adults Only) classification with both visual and verbal warnings, and its limited target audience.
The Authority also pointed out that the satire in the cartoon was of such a farcical, absurd and unrealistic nature that it did not breach standards of good taste and decency in the context in which it was offered.
"The program was not a direct attack on the Church or on Catholics, although it was deliberately provocative. There is no doubt that aspects of religion revered by devout Catholics were treated in a disrespectful and cavalier fashion, in particular a statue representing the Virgin Mary. But showing disrespect, in the view of the Authority, does not amount to the sort of vicious or vitriolic attack normally associated with the denigration standard," the decision said.
Church groups disagreed.
"If the 'Bloody Mary' didn't breach commonly held standards of good taste and decency, then what does?" asked Catholic Church spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer.
Brendan Malone, of the group Family Life, claimed that the decision shows incompetence and bigotry against Christianity. The episode wouldn't have made it on the air if it had portrayed Allah or the Maori Queen in a similarly obscene manner, he says.
This isn't the first time South Park has come under fire for satirizing religios belief. Isaac Hayes, who voiced the sex-obsessed character 'Chef,' quit the show after it produced an episode that mocked Scientology and Tom Cruise.
