Featured Image Credit: France 3
Topics: France, Racism, Film and TV, South Park
Joe Harker
A recent episode of a French gameshow ended up getting pretty close to an infamous moment in an episode of South Park.
If you've been on the internet, then you've probably come across a meme of a scene in South Park where Randy goes on Wheel of Fortune and gets an answer to a question horribly wrong.
He's asked to provide an answer to the prompt 'people who annoy you' and has filled out all but one of the letters in the word.
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The correct answer is of course 'naggers', but Randy doesn't figure that out before confidently yelling the racial slur live on TV and being very, very wrong.
It's normally the job of The Simpsons to be in the business of predicting things but in this case, South Park has correctly called the future thanks to a recent episode of a French game show where the contestant ended up in much the same situation as Randy.
A clip from the gameshow Slam went viral after contestant Guillaume was asked to provide an eight letter word which would 'name an animal that lives among us', and the sixth letter was 'g'.
The word he suggested was 'etranger', which is French for 'foreign' meaning he essentially said that foreigners were animals that lived among them.
The contestant then realised he'd not given the correct answer and what followed was a silent, shocked reaction from show host Cyril Féraud, who just stared at Guillaume for a bit with wide eyes.
The correct answer was apparently 'mistigri', which is a French word for 'kitten'.
In an attempt to salvage the situation, the quiz show host told the contestant 'I know who you voted for in the presidential election' in reference to France's far-right politician Marine Le Pen.
The episode in question was broadcast in October 2022, but the broadcaster ended up publishing a statement about the incident where they said the answer given could be seen as 'violating respect for human dignity'.
In the statement, it was claimed that the contestant 'did not understand that his answer could be interpreted this way'.
It read: "In the October 3 program, a candidate gave an answer that could potentially be interpreted as violating respect for human dignity.
"The candidate, caught up in the mechanics of the game, did not understand that his answer could be interpreted in this way."
"France Télévisions and all the “Slam” teams recall their attachment to the values of respect for the human person, inclusion and its fight against all forms of discrimination."