Christian Rock Hard

Template:Infobox South Park episode "Christian Rock Hard" is episode 709 of Comedy Central's South Park. This episode originally aired on October 29, 2003.

Plot

When the other boys kick Cartman out of their band ("Moop"), Cartman pulls his own group together to make music for Jesus and the two bands pledge to compete at being the first of the two to go platinum by selling 1 million records. Cartman decides that his band should be a Christian band since it's easy to tweak the lyrics to love ballads to include Jesus' name. Stan, Kyle and Kenny are arrested for downloading music from the Internet, are shown that celebrities must substitute the most extravagant purchases for merely extravagant ones, and subsequently protest illegal downloads before writing a single song. Cartman, Butters and Token rocket to the top of the Christian rock charts with their own messages of faith in their band Faith + 1 and soon after, Cartman celebrates the sale of their millionth album with an expensive award ceremony. Unfortunately, the Christian record label used an alternate scheme for record sale achievements (using Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh) making it impossible for Cartman's band to go platinum. Cartman's expression of frustration backfires once the fans realize he has been faking spirituality, Token strikes Cartman repeatedly for losing the fans and spending all the money they had gotten on the award ceremony, and Butters tops that off by farting in Cartman's face, giving him the finger, and saying "Fuck you Eric!"

Trivia

• The part of the episode when Stan, Kyle, and Kenny are caught downloading free music is a reference to the Napster case before the company was shutdown.
• Cartman's prime example for a successful Christian rock band is Creed.
• Here we learn that Butters has a talent to calculate large numbers very quickly.
• Bands and Artists joining Moop's strike are (among others) Rancid, Ozzy Osbourne, Meat Loaf (all three also playing in Chef Aid), Blink 182, Metallica, Britney Spears, Alanis Morissette and The Lords of the Underworld.
• The newscaster speaks of a "Strikapalooza", a reference to the Lollapalooza festival series.
• Myrrh Records is the name of one of the largest Christian Music labels.[1]
• The creators expressed they were surprised they got away with Cartman saying "Fuck Jesus!" even though "Fuck" is censored.
• The lyrics to the songs that Cartman writes express physical love, rather than spiritual love. For example, "I wanna get down on my knees, and start pleasin' Jesus. I wanna feel his salvation all over my face."
• In the mini-commentary, the creators expressed that they, at one point, wanted to make a Christian Rock band which expressed physical love for Jesus.