Re the Simpsons:
>... it's possibly the most intelligent, funny, and even politically
>satisfying >TV show ever.
Thanks for this essay, Jim. Absolutely love the show, too. Up to a decade or so ago, I think the Yankophobes were right - that America just wasn't up to looking at its own belly button - maybe a few popsters could aim a salvo at its expansive girth and get away with it - but woe betide a more universal, more explicit medium, should it venture to drag the sacred cows on stage and flay them alive before a huge audience. Guess everyone's doing it now, but Homer et al were first and best. And the left they excoriate warrants precisely the treatment it gets (although the Sideshow Bob declaration is, like so many of the Simpsons' best sledgehammer lines, a shot at the popular acceptance of a myth, I think). And as for this bit:
> Marge: Mmm! No! [pulls gun from Homer] No one’s using this gun! The TV
>said you’re 58 percent more likely to shoot a family member than an
>intruder!
> Homer: TV said that . . . ? But I have to have a gun! It’s in the
>Constitution!
> Lisa: Dad! The Second Amendment is just a remnant from revolutionary
>days. It has no meaning today!
> Homer: You couldn’t be more wrong, Lisa. If I didn’t have this gun, the
>king of England could just walk in here anytime he wants and start shoving
>you around. [pushing Lisa] Do you want that? [pushing her harder] Huh? Do
>you?
> Lisa: [quietly indignant] No . . .
> Homer: All right, then.
Bloody marvellous, I reckon. But what's even-handed about it is not that each standard argument gets a vent, but that the one the conservative constitootionalists use is exposed for its silliness. The idea is not, I think, to oppose people's access to shooters, but to oppose the argument generally used to defend that access. Again, the myth is the target, not the shooters. Same with Apu, whose asides to camera clarify his status as stereotype. He's not a stereotypical Indian shopkeeper; he's a stereotypical stereotype. Yet again, what's being nailed is the myth.
> In a wonderful essay in the December issue of Political Theory,
>University of >Virginia English professor Paul Cantor makes a strong case
>that The Simpsons >celebrates many, if not most, of the best conservative
>principles: the primacy >of family, skepticism about political authority,
>distrust of abstractions. For >example, as Cantor points out, the
>residents of Springfield are more religious >than almost any other cast on
>television today. Springfield residents pray and >attend church every
>Sunday.
Cantor fails to note that, with the worthy exception of the Flanders clan (another steroetypical stereotype), every parishioner is also more venal, hypocritrical and prone to lynch-mobbing than any other cast on television today. If The Simpsons defends anything, it ain't bible-belt conservatism, I reckon.
>Homer's authority is affirmed,
Au contraire. Homer is affirmed, not his authority. There's an important difference.
>Homer: Wait, that's it! I know now what I can offer you that no one else
>can . >. . Complete and utter dependence!
Terrific line. No authority in it for Homer, though - just a recognition of part of what love inevitably is, I reckon.
>Still, its impact on an entire generation can't be overstated. And it
>gives >proof of the axiom that if you think there's nothing good on TV,
>you're not >looking hard enough.
I wouldn't go that far. Dunno if you lot get an English show called 'The Cops' out there (a great one for tugging at the empathy gland, getting the lower lip wobbly, and giving rise to philosophical peregrinations, but the Mancunian accents would leave a lot of Yanks bemused, I suspect), but I still pretty well rely on Simpsons reruns for my jollies. And to take The Simpsons seriously is to take seriously two propositions, I reckon. Firstly, not one of the constitutive myths of American society stands up to an eight-year-old girl's idle musings. And secondly, no-one has offered a plausible alternative. Which two premises are, incidentally, what I reckon punk was all about.
Anyway, thanks again, Jim - a lovely read! Rob.