I like “The Simpsons.”
That actually might not capture my true feelings. Let me try again.
I just read a 430-page book about “The Simpsons.”
Chris Turner’s “Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation” is a discussion of the social impacts of the show, both the factors that brought it to popularity and the reflections of our world depicted in Springfield.
It’s not a book solely for super Simpsons nerds, since Turner gives a enough background with his show references that even those who haven’t seen a particular episode can follow along. Though most of the important points he makes seem to reference Season 7, so maybe watch that first.
His discussion veers into pop/political/tech influences as whole, whether that’s early ’90s indie filmmakers (Tarantino/Rodriguez/Coens), the music of Nirvana or the early Internet culture. At times it’s easy to forget the book is ostensibly about “The Simpsons,” but all of that background helps to give the show a context.
I took away three major arguments from the book — Homer as America, Consumerism is King (or not), and Culture: Reflected or Absorbed?
Homer as America
Homer Simpson is brash, selfish, loud and inflexible in his beliefs. He does what serves his life at that moment the best, or what he thinks is best for those around him. The consequences of those actions on others are not important. He is a force in the town — what he does affects everyone and nobody has a choice in the matter.
Turner argues Homer is an allegory of America. What the United States does (good/bad/well-meaning/successful) has a great impact on the rest of the world, whether that involves economic policy, military action or FCC policy.
More importantly, there is an acceptance of that force, a resignation by the people of Springfield/the world that this is just another factor in their lives that isn’t going to change soon. It’s what Homer’s friend Lenny would call “Homer being Homer.”
But it is the show’s ability to lampoon that type of influence through the Homer character that Turner argues makes it not only popular in the U.S., but especially so abroad.
“The show can look, at times, like a pirate broadcast from inside the palace gates, the work of double agents whose sympathies might well lie as much with those caught under America’s thumb as with the people in charge,” Turner writes. “In the realm of mainstream, mass-market American pop disseminated worldwide, ‘The Simpsons’ is — by a wide margin — American society’s most strident critic.”
Just before this section, however, he also notes the work of a Mexican scholar who says that for those who see life in America as a perfect, unattainable example, the show serves to put the reality of American life within reach.
Consumerism is King (or not)
Besides creating a deep character universe that allows for boundless realistic storytelling, it is the underlying satirical take on many aspects of our culture that keeps the show running. Turner highlights the show’s railing against rampant consumerism and its ill effects. The copy I have is dated 2004, so the commentary is post-dotcom bubble, but pre-financial meltdown.
One interesting thing for me in reading this book is the description of the early years of the show. I was certainly alive in the early ’90s, but I wasn’t exactly plugged into everything that was going on.
In describing the boom in the SUV-driving culture, Turner talks about an episode in which Marge Simpson gets a behemoth Canyonero. It’s the typical over-the-top vehicle for a mom who’s really just driving to the grocery store and soccer practice, yet has the vehicular capability of taking on a small army in any terrain on Earth. The result is a feeling of protection inside her tank-like car, and a mean case of road rage.
Turner argues the me-me-me/SUV culture more or less created a boom in road rage, “which barely existed before 1990.” This struck me as a crazy statement — but being only 7 years old in 1990, I have little reference of what it was like to drive at the time. The statement seemed like one of those short-sighted ideas we hear so often that something today is the best, worst, biggest, most outrageous that has ever been without a true comparison with history.
But I could be wrong.
Another of the show’s examples has Bart visiting the local mall, which is made up mostly of Starbucks stores. He walks into a piercing store and is warned by an employee to act fast, “because in five minutes this place becomes a Starbucks.”
I spent some time working at a mall in a Washington, D.C., suburb that had two Starbucks locations when I started. Those stores are at either end of the same wing, no more than a five-minute walk from each other. Of course, that’s a ridiculous spacing for coffee stores. Good thing they later installed a third Starbucks store, right in the middle.
A final piece of the modern consumer puzzle is the ad gimmick. In Springfield, that is best personified by DuffMan, a character who exists entirely to promote Duff beer. Turner draws a parallel to Budweiser and its early ’90s ad campaign featuring Spuds MacKenzie. We wonder sometimes why we hang onto certain items, but the moment I read that section I felt vindicated in carrying this item from house to house as I moved over the years:
God Bless America.
Culture: Reflected or Absorbed?
“The Simpsons” is a show that at certain times during its run has been criticized by many groups who say it is a bad influence. Turner draws parallels between that thread of argument and the backlash against rapper Emimen. Turner says critics who blasted Eminem’s work “implicitly argued that pop culture was not a mirror of society but [rather] its engine.”
That is, the things artists/musicians/filmmakers/writers create are not a reflection of the values/events of society, but rather the things that drive those events and define those values.
At first, I totally disagreed with that statement. But it was one of those lines I re-read, and thought about for a little while. I would argue it’s much more in the middle, a kind of give-and-take. Art reflects society, which can then shape it, and further reflect it. It’s an on-going process in which both entities feed off one another, like the Moon going around the spinning Earth as both revolve around the Sun.
Turner says one of the factors in the show’s longevity is that unlike non-animated shows, we don’t see the actors in other roles or in real life. If you watch The Office, you see the character Michael Scott. But you also see actor Steve Carrell in movies, on Access Hollywood, on Leno or maybe at Starbucks. Every character he plays carries not only his real persona, but a history of all of his other roles.
With the residents of Springfield, you would be hard-pressed to find people who actually know what the actors look like. It is only the character that we know, and “we will not get sick of seeing them hawking crap on every other TV channel, nor of reading about their on-again, off-again romances with J.Lo or their painful struggles with alcoholism. We’ll never know anything about their lavish estates in the Hollywood Hills.”
Of course, to some members of Springfield, that anonymity is a ridiculous expectation for any celebrity.
Homer: “I believe that famous people have a debt to everyone. If celebrities didn’t want people pawing through their garbage and saying their gay, they shouldn’t have tried to express themselves creatively.”
My only real beef with Turner’s work is in his recreation of a certain scene in which he left out what is one of the show’s greatest lines.
Turner is talking about the characters’ ability to go immediately from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. In this case, Springfield has a bear sighting, and naturally the citizens are incensed that the government/police aren’t doing enough to protect them from bears. When the city creates a bear task force, and an accompanying tax to pay for it, the people are equally angry that they have to actually pay for the service they demand.
Homer (upon receiving the tax bill): “Let the bears pay the bear tax! I already pay the Homer tax!”
Lisa: “Dad, that’s the home-owner tax.”
Homer is by far the most popular character, perhaps because of his logic skills. For me, he’s got nothing on the comedic genius that is Milhouse Van Houten.
And yes, I did write this entry while drinking out of a Simpsons cup:
