The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History

by John Ortved

  TYLER SHORES, creator and former instructor, The Simpsons and Philosophy: I was a student at Berkeley. This was in 2003. Berkeley had a certain gist or open-mindedness that was perfect for a class on The Simpsons and philosophy.

  The premise of the class came from a book, The Simpsons and Philosophy, edited by William Irwin. The purpose of the class was never to find the philosophy of The Simpsons but to be a philosophy course that had The Simpsons in it. There’s a philosophy topic, let’s say Nietzsche, for instance, and there would be an episode that would fit that particular topic, and during the lecture I’d play clips that would illustrate what we were trying to discuss.

  There was definitely a buzz that first semester when it came out, which I’ve never seen or heard since. I can’t imagine it happens that often in academia. Everyone knew about it: faculty, students. It was supposed to be a small class; I thought I’d be lucky if twenty students showed up. But it wasn’t twenty or fifty but five hundred students on that first day, and we managed to fill that school’s largest auditorium for that first class. It was really, really something. The San Francisco Chronicle ended up doing a little feature article on it. CNN asked about visiting us. The Swedish national news station actually came all the way to visit us and take the class.

  It’s in its sixth year now. It’s still a pretty good-size class.

  Mainstream publications have also used The Simpsons to inform their readership on everything from beauty (“Marge Simpson Tells All,” Glamour), to wrestling (“The ‘Bart’ Foundation,” World Wrestling Federation Magazine), to fashion (“The Simpsons Go to Paris,” Harper’s Bazaar), and politics (“Bart for President,” The New Republic). The Simpsons has been the focus of magazine articles on art, dance, feminism, fitness, pornography, math, and music. It’s appeared on the cover of everything from Mother Jones to Screw (also National Employment Review, Esquire, Spy, LA Salsa, Rolling Stone, Contingency Planning and Management, Adweek, and many more).

  JONATHAN GRAY: If you look at the ways people talked about television in many of the preceeding decades, a lot of the discussion was at the level of how bad television is for us. Things like Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and these endless suggestions that school shootings and any kind of violence that happens in the street must be due to television. Television was this very culturally degraded object.

  And so I think The Simpsons is a good outgrowth of that dual tension: being heavily critical of television and television culture and yet doing so with a sense of love (each episode brings in many, many references to different movies and TV shows). It’s clearly criticism coming from a knowing place, rather than the kind of criticism from people who were talking about television as horrific and yet it was quite clear that they had very rarely watched television. The same thing happens today with video games. You hear people talking about video games being awful and it’s very clear that they’ve never actually played a game. They just sort of have heard that it’s bad.

  JOHN ALBERTI, editor, Leaving Springfield; professor of English, Northern Kentucky University: I think there’s something to it being part of an evolution of TV comedy—like Saturday Night Live was taking National Lampoon, sixties underground humor, to network TV. But that was on at 11:30 on Saturday night. There was still a kind of off-the-radar aspect. But The Simpsons was prime time, and its influence has been directly seen in South Park and King of the Hill and all the other kind of animated shows, but I think it’s also very connected to the Daily Show or the Colbert Report. Jon Stewart is name-checking them all the time and bringing the same sort of sensibility. And what’s interesting about it is that it’s ideological but not partisan, if that makes any kind of sense.

  And the writers, of course, will always claim neutrality, but also will acknowledge that Lisa is the point of view of the show, which I guess could be called liberal—but it’s not liberal like John Kerry’s liberal; John Kerry’s liberal in a way that doesn’t seem at all funny or entertaining—in the way Jon Stewart is liberal.

  There is a historical context in which to interpret The Simpsons and its place in culture as well.

  BILL SAVAGE, contributor, Leaving Springfield; lecturer, department of English, Northwestern University: Steamboat Willie was the first soundsynchronized cartoon. It was like a technological marvel. So they had this thing where they do “Turkey in the Straw” playing on an animal of some kind. And audiences said, “Holy God! The sound matches up with the action.” But early Mickey Mouse was not what we think of when we think of Mickey Mouse today. Early Mickey Mouse was raunchy and counterculture, and people complained it was obscene just like they did with Bart Simpson. There’s a real parallel there.

  The show that was once a target of the Christian right is now held up as an example of the values they are crusading for (if you didn’t already know, the Simpsons belong to the “one true church,” the Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism); Britain’s archbishop of Canterbury referred to the show as “generally on the side of the angels.”1 As well, the Family Research Council’s Robert Knightad has commented that The Simpsons’ reality is a moral one, and PRISM, the Evangelicals for Social Action’s monthly publication, has called it “the most pro-family, God-preoccupied, homebased program on television.”

  Orlando journalist Mark Pinsky wrote a book in 2001 called The Gospel According to The Simpsons, which examined the moral and religious quandaries addressed by the show. Later, along with a pastor, he produced a prayer guide, which can be used at Bible study and Sunday school to teach kids and adults the lessons of the Scripture through The Simpsons. In the UK, rumors of a Cult of Ned Flanders prompted a report by the BBC about a group of Christians who, while not necessarily worshipping the nerd-a-rino next door, were tremendously influenced by the Simpsons’ neighbor.

  STEPHEN GODDARD, co-editor, Christian comedy magazine Ship of Fools (on ABC Australia program Enough Rope, April 21, 2003): Well, we discovered that Ned was a bigger popular icon than any other major Christian personality—bigger than Billy Graham in the States, the pope or even the late Mother Teresa … We couldn’t believe this, but we wanted to test it out, so we ran a Ned Flanders night, a tribute to the man and his green jumper … And we had 2,000 people turn up.

  JONATHAN GRAY: That’s one of the things I think is really interesting about The Simpsons—you can see whatever you want to see in it.

  HANK AZARIA, voice actor, The Simpsons: I think It’s pretty safe to say that we are from a fairly leftist, Democratic slant, which makes my heart sing. Look, they’ll evenhandedly take on whatever seems hypocritical or nonsensical—but one of the things I love about the show is that it has a really good conscience. And I think it’s incredibly ironic that a show with such a leftist, Democratic slant is one of the cornerstones of Fox News Corp financially. It never ceases to amaze me.

  DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, media critic: That’s the way you look at it. It’s just a justification for doing countercultural media, even if it’s going to give some money to Rupert Murdoch. But you would argue that Rupert Murdoch’s business now is being used to undermine his values of mainstream corporate culture [through The Simpsons’ subversive satire] instead of promoting them, so it’s a net good.

  And maybe for four or five years, it can be, but the problem is that after four or five years you’ve communicated the message. You’ve sort of said the same thing and it slowly tips toward just really contributing more money to corporate coffers rather than to making new statements or creating progress. The longer Bart stays alive as part of Fox empire, the more neutralized he is. First, just because he exists so long, he’s an institution, so he’s part of the thing. It’s like Ralph Nader or something. It’s like, Who’s really afraid anymore?

  You need new stuff to keep it dangerous. And second, the longer he exists, the more the Bart property is leveraged toward the benefit of the corporate conglomerate and gets away from the subversive effect on youth. So other things, maybe South Park, replaced The Simpsons as the more cu
lturally provocative, dangerous thing. The Simpsons’ economic reality was to create a conservative media infrastructure [aka Fox News], which, in a sense, far outweighs anything that its content does.

  BILL SAVAGE: What people tend to forget is that all that capitalism cares about is the bottom line. I mean, Rupert Murdoch will appear as a character on The Simpsons as a greedy, billionaire scumbag if the ratings are good enough and they make money on it. That’s all that matters. I don’t think any capitalists feel particularly threatened by leftist ideas.

  JOHN ALBERTI: I think it’s significant that The Simpsons started with the machine on the Fox TV network, so there’s a kind of awareness from the beginning that this isn’t some Utopian space that’s uncontaminated. And The Simpsons keeps pointing it out: “Hey you’re watching Fox TV.” There might not have been Fox News if it hadn’t been for the success of The Simpsons, which really helped to establish Fox as a network.

  AL JEAN (to Douglas Rushkoff, 1992): The thesis of The Simpsons is nihilism. There’s nothing to believe in anymore once you assume that organized structures and institutions are out to get you.

  TIM LONG, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1998–): I’d like to think that we prevented the president from invading Iraq and we kept Bush from being reelected. Oh, whoops, we didn’t do any of those things. You can overstate the importance of comedy. At best I think comedians tend to be like that guy standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square—you’re flattering yourself if you think you’re actually affecting anything.

  Viewed in more than ninety countries—it is most popular in the UK, Mexico, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia—the show is sometimes tweaked to fit in with a particular culture’s norms. In 2005, Homer and Bart finally made it to the Arab world, but as Omar and Badr Shamshoon (voiced by some of the Middle East’s most popular actors). Omar had to give up his love of beer and donuts for soda and kahk (Arab cookies).2 While the show did poorly, it’s an illustration of The Simpsons’ universality—and its influence.

  SETH MCFARLANE: It’s like what sci-fi fans say about Star Trek: it created an audience for that genre. And I think The Simpsons created an audience for prime-time animation that had not been there for many many years. It created what you could classify as a wholly new medium. It really is like no other television or feature animation that came before it. It’s just wholly original. In the same way that The Honeymooners created a genre for live-action comedy, I think The Simpsons created a genre for animated comedy that paved the way for many, many other shows to work essentially in that new medium they came up with.

  It was the first sitcom to heavily reference elements of pop culture. The TV and movies we watch and the products we buy are big parts of daily life, and yet prior to The Simpsons, I don’t think you saw a lot of that referenced in pop culture. Everything was more generic. And The Simpsons was the first show with the balls to deal with specifics and make fun of actual television shows, products, movies, elements of pop culture that previously had been genericized.

  WALLACE WOLODARSKY, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1989–92): I see it in a continuum that starts with Martin and Lewis, Your Show of Shows, Honeymooners, early Carson, early Letterman, Get Smart, early SNL, and just keeps moving. I don’t see it as a revolution. I see it as a natural continuum of all the stuff we really loved.

  BILL OAKLEY, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1991–97): The Simpsons has transplanted MAD. Basically everyone who was young between 1955 and 1975 read MAD, and that’s where your sense of humor came from. And we knew all those people, you know Dave Berg and Don Martin—all heroes and unfortunately now all dead. And I think The Simpsons has taken that spot in America’s heart. The humor is a fusion of the people who grew up reading MAD and mid-eighties Letterman, SNL, and also the Harvard Lampoon.

  DONICK CARY, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1996–99): It certainly opened the door for Adult Swim; it opened the door for Family Guy, obviously, South Park, Comedy Central. And I think, in some ways, it also opened the door for the animation craze in feature films.

  BRAD BIRD: My agenda almost as long as I’ve been working professionally is to try to reinforce the idea that animation is not exclusively for kids. And so, for me, The Simpsons was a wonderful way to get on board a ship that was flying in the face of that. The problem with a lot of animated films that aren’t aimed at kids is that they try to declare their “adultness,” and it’s an adolescent way of announcing that you’re not aimed at kids. It’s not truly an adult way. What I liked about The Simpsons was that besides it being really funny, it was smart. It ran the gamut from really base, the occasional butt-crack joke, and then talking about Susan Sontag or something in the next sentence. It has affected things very profoundly. But I think, unfortunately, a lot of people have taken the wrong lessons from The Simpsons and just done the butt-crack jokes, and not picked up the smart ball.

  Bird didn’t name any names, but one could assume he was referring to The Simpsons’ disobedient stepchildren, South Park and Family Guy, which, for better or worse, picked up the rebellious animated comedy reins.

  South Park’s birth was akin to Army Man, in that it was originally samizdat (albeit a video version), which circulated Hollywood. The series focuses on four foul-mouthed fourth graders: Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny. As with The Simpsons, South Park played with the classic comedy tropes (a set group of characters based in a single locale go on weekly adventures and learn a lesson), except that its creators went to much greater lengths to undercut these standards, beginning with the killing of Kenny in each episode. South Park was truly crude, and there was no topic it would not directly attack: abortion, racism, mentally and physically challenged people, Scientology (something The Simpsons has not dared approach, because Bart’s voice, Nancy Cartwright, is a devout member).ae

  The extremes South Park is willing to go to (two handicapped children engage in a “cripple fight,” while the townspeople gleefully observe; Cartman is nearly molested by members of NAMBLA) create stiff competition for “The Simpsons are going to London!” And while The Simpsons have courted celebrities, South Park mercilessly slaughters them. On that series, Tom Cruise and John Travolta are closeted homosexuals; Barbra Streisand is a power-mad, Godzillalike monster; Paris Hilton is a “rich, spoiled whore”; and Al Gore is an attention-seeking fabulist.

  As The Simpsons did for Fox, the enormously successful South Park would brand Comedy Central, flooding the fledgling network with ad and merchandising revenue. Depending how you choose to see it, the series either built on The Simpsons, taking it to new heights, or rebelled against The Simpsons’ middling good behavior and created an animated sitcom that threw accepted ideas of iconoclasm, animation, and good taste right back into people’s faces.

  South Park has framed itself as the anti-Simpsons. While The Simpsons is somewhat democratic with its scorn, if a little liberal, South Park is virulently libertarian, even conservative. And while The Simpsons’ weapons of irreverence include wit, subtlety, and a good grounding in the liberal arts, South Park’s repertoire contains the tools of shock and awe: racial epithets, controversial subject matter, and extreme situations (taking revenge on an older boy who tricked him out of $10, Cartman murders his parents and feeds them to the teen). And yet it is unfair to attribute South Park’s success solely to its risqué content. While it may rely too much on shock value—its more problematic crutch may be its constant reliance on filmic parody for plot structure—this is a show with some excellent writing. It offers a scathing criticism of contemporary society that is absolutely original, even if The Simpsons served as a stepping-stone to getting it on the air.

  MATT STONE: The Simpsons is the bane of our existence. It has done so many parodies, tackled so many subjects, and had so many episodes. “Simpsons did it!” is a familiar refrain in our writers room. Because South Park and The Simpsons are both animated, Trey [Parker] and I are constantly having our little cartoon compared to the best show in the history of television, The Simpsons. Why can
’t we be compared to According to Jim? Or Sister, Sister?

  In the world of twenty-two-minute comedy shows, even in the world of television, I think it’s the best show that’s ever been on TV. It’s not like every episode is the best thing on TV, because there have been four million episodes, but its batting average is pretty high. As a body of work, I think it’s unrivaled, I really do.

  The density of the joke writing is unbelievable. In my life, it seems like comedy has gotten denser. Like Pixar movies and other animated shows, it feels like we have this goalpost of density of animated jokes that you have to get to. We try purposely not to do that, because you can’t compete on that level with The Simpsons’ writing room. Other shows do it, but they don’t succeed; they seem to make you dumber. The Simpsons is just this machine-gun fire of jokes, and it doesn’t talk down to you; it’s like a smart machine-gun fire. It’s frustrating that we’re always compared to The Simpsons, but on the other hand, it’s an honor.

  The same credit for originality credited to South Park cannot be awarded to The Simpsons’ other famous spawn. No less funny than South Park, Family Guy is a slightly derivative though faster-paced product than The Simpsons, geared toward a younger, hipper audience. Its focus is Peter Griffin, the obese, coarse, and cretinous head of a family that includes his lovely, Waspy wife, Lois, his dimwitted son, Chris, his unattractive daughter, Meg, a matricidal talking baby named Stewie, and a hard-drinking, perspicacious talking dog named Brian. Based on shorts for the Cartoon Network made by then-twenty-four-year-old wunderkind Seth MacFarlane, who is also a writer, voice actor, singer, animator, and composer, Family Guy is a gestalt of sex and bathroom jokes, pop culture references, musical numbers, celebrity bashing, and random cutaways. In terms of allusions, the show is like The Simpsons on methamphetamines.