The Simpsons x Syndicated Satire

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Hello and welcome to Material Girls, a pop culture podcast that uses critical theory to understand the zeitgeist. I'm Hannah McGregor. And I'm Marcel Kosman. Hey. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little bit fanatical about The Simpsons. So this episode has been a long time coming. Yeah, I've seen your ugly shoes. Before we get into it... Hannah, I want us to define our respective relationships to this incredibly long-running sitcom. Okay, I think that my Simpsons fandom is...

Not as enduring as yours in the sense that I like don't sort of feel drawn to Simpsons paraphernalia. But I think of The Simpsons as... the pop culture that taught me what humor was. Like it was so foundational. We watched it in my household as a kid. Like it was family viewing, which was not.

the case for everybody in my age demographic. There were lots of kids who were not allowed to watch The Simpsons because it was like violent or, you know, the humor was too risque or they didn't like the fact that the kids were constantly defying the adults. But it was like, like so many other people of our generation, my sense of humor is built on a...

foundation of Simpsons jokes. So not only like so many references, like so many lines that are just like, you know, part of my vocabulary, but also like. my sense of humor, like the kinds of things that I find funny is like really built on this, the infrastructure of this show. Cause like I had an older brother who had some real, like, issues with authority.

And then I was the younger sister and I was like a huge nerd. So there was a lot of mapping of that particular dynamic as well. I was a real Lisa kid and he was a real. BART kit. Some real relatable archetypes. Some real relatable archetypes. Not in my parents at all. Like that was not the dynamic. But like that brother-sister dynamic was very familiar to me. Like an urtext.

Yeah. The Simpsons. Oh, my God. Urtext is a great word for it. Yeah. And honestly, I feel very similar. Everything you're describing about like. your understanding of humor and yeah, not just references, but the way that certain kinds of things are made funny. Absolutely. The Simpsons were foundational to that. For listeners, I really also want to stress that like...

Tell me if this is true for you too, Hannah. We don't care about the movies. Oh yeah, no, I'm indifferent to the movies and I haven't watched any Simpsons. Probably like post 2002. Yeah. Like that's when I graduated high school. And that feels about right for like when I fell off the Simpsons train. Totally. So, yeah, we're talking like a solid decade and change of.

content that was foundational. Yeah. Great. And it's still on TV, which is baffling to me. I've got to say people must be watching it, but like nobody who I know who was a fan of the Simpsons. when they were younger, still watches it. So I'm like, who is this mystery demographic of people still watching this show? I think of it as being not for me. And that's okay. It's just it's for someone else. And that's fine.

It clearly is. I'm just, it's not judgment. I'm just genuinely curious who's it for now. Yeah. All right.

It is time for Why This? Why Now? The segment that asks the materialist question, what are or were the historical, ideological, and material conditions for our object of study to become zeitgeisty? Marcelle, explain why The Simpsons was so important. I will. When it comes to The Simpsons, as we've already alluded to… There is nearly 40 years of content that we could talk about, and we just can't cover everything. Not with that attitude, we can't. Hannah, you're so right. I know. Nailed it.

But here's the problem. We have a bunch of TV-related terminology that we have to get through before we can even start talking about content. Okay. This is making me think of our... Twin Peaks episode because we have sort of introduced listeners to some of those necessary terms. For one thing, I think that we did... probably a perfect job of describing what watching TV was like before streaming services. For sure perfect.

Perfect. We also talked about television networks and primetime and broadcast. Yeah, yeah, you're totally right, Hannah. There are just a couple more terms we need to cover, and then we absolutely can tackle four decades of content. Okay, the first term that we need to tackle is the term rerun. Hannah, how would you describe the concept of a rerun to someone who has only ever experienced a streaming service?

TV now is on demand and you can watch it whenever you feel like, but it used to be that TV was only on TV and you had to watch it when TV was happening. At specific times, which you used a small book to find out about. Oh my God, the TV guide. A small weekly book. A magazine, if you will. Probably more appropriate.

Yeah, a weekly magazine to tell you when TV happened. There was the original airtime, the first time that an episode aired, but then it would air again sometimes, maybe on the same channel. later, maybe during the summer when new episodes generally didn't come out. Maybe on a different channel that was doing only episodes of that show 25 times in a row.

Hannah, I'm truly impressed. You nailed it. Yeah, I remember TV. That I would describe as like a poem explanation. I'm going to give you a very boring textbook definition. Boo. I know. Only poetry. But I'll make up for it by saying Wikipedia. Thank you. This is how the encyclopedia of the people, Wikipedia, describes it. Quote, a rerun or repeat. is a rebroadcast of an episode of a radio or television program.

The two types of reruns are those that occur during a hiatus, like the summer that you were describing, and those that occur when a program is syndicated, end quote. I don't want to ask you about syndication, but I'm going to ask you about reruns first. So why is the term rerun so important to our conversation about The Simpsons? Okay, well...

precisely because of the frequency with which the Simpsons have been syndicated. Okay, so now can we define syndicated? Yes, yes, we absolutely can. Syndicated is the second essential term. Here is a quote for you to read still from Wikipedia. Quote, a television program goes into syndication when many episodes of the program are sold as a package. Generally, the buyer is either a cable channel or an owner of local television stations. Often programs are not particular.

profitable until they are sold for syndication. Often about 100 episodes, four to five seasons worth, are required for a weekly series to be rerun in daily syndication at least four times a week. Very popular series running more than four seasons may start daily reruns of the first seasons while production and airings continue of the current season's episodes. End quote. Yeah, that sounds familiar. Yeah.

a textbook definition. Okay, well, listen, I don't want to give away the punchline here, but I have to stress. I have to stress that syndication is essential to my thesis about The Simpsons Dominating the Zeitgeist. That makes sense. I need listeners to understand that there was a period of my life... when every conversation I had was interrupted multiple times by quoting The Simpsons. And I don't mean like a summer. I mean...

years. The Simpsons was the defining culture text of my teens and probably also much of my 20s. So culture text from the episode with Neil Barnholden. That's right. So go back and listen to that one. For this episode, we're focusing on the zeitgeistiness of The Simpsons during my teen years from 1997 to 2003. Marcel, this is shockingly self-centered of you.

Yeah, I'm a very bad girl. But also, listen, it's important that everybody knows that Coach told me we're not allowed to cover four decades of content and that I would have to choose because Coach is boss. Yeah, this was Coach's rule and not common sense. Such a party pooper coach. Anyway, it's like I always tell my research students, when you're dealing with a long-running property, you just have to define your parameters and then explain your rationale.

So my parameters are my teen years, 1997 to 2003. And my rationale is I want to understand the impact that this television show had on me and my peers. That's all I want. That's all you want. That's all I want. That's not too much to ask. I agree. Okay, so let's get into it. Let's get into defining why The Simpsons mattered to you specifically. But before we get into the why, I need you to talk me through the how of this cartoon's impact. Okay, I will.

The Simpsons entered syndication in 1994. When I was a teenager, the show was broadcast every day on multiple channels. And I'm not unique. in this experience. That would be hilarious if it was only broadcast for you. My small town, right? Yeah. My small town of 4,000 people just like had one local station.

Yeah, you had The Simpsons. In researching for this episode, I read one newspaper column published in 1997 that referenced being able to watch The Simpsons four times a day if you lived in Toronto. I, unfortunately, not so lucky. was only able to watch the show three times a day. Outrageous.

Even after I lost interest in new episodes that were airing on Fox, I continued to watch reruns of The Simpsons daily after school, usually for an hour and a half straight. So that's 5 p.m. to 6.30 across two different. channels but here's the kicker because that third episode aired on a channel that was different from the first two that third episode was often the same as one that I had just watched

Okay. And I feel like I can sense what the answer to this is, but did you watch that third episode that was the same as one you just watched? You know I did. You know I watched it. You know I did. And it wasn't just laziness. It was also laziness. craziness. I absolutely watched it. Yes. So are you ready to do some math, Hannah? I'm ready. Because that's three episodes a day, five days a week. 15 episodes a week.

15 episodes a week. What would that be in estimate in a year? What would you guess? In a year, 52 times 15. Sure. Is 500. 750 plus 30. 780 a year. 780. Great math skills, Hannah. Great math. Thank you so much. 780 episodes. In a given year. Not 780 distinct episodes. Discreet episodes. No. Just 780. episodes consumed. Okay. And that is not counting the new episodes that were still airing once a week, which I often did watch up until a certain point, right? Yeah. So now I...

didn't always have a life, but sometimes I did. At some point I like had friends. So let's say for the sake of argument that I missed half of those episodes throughout the year. Okay. Let's say it's unlikely. Because this is one of the core memories of my teenage years. But let's just say I missed half of them. If I only watched half of the accessible reruns of The Simpsons each year, that's still 390 episodes of this one show per year.

And what's extra wild is that the seasons being rerun had to be at least a year old. The Simpsons didn't air its 300th. episode until 2003. So this means that during my teen years, during our teen years, even if we were only watching half of the rebroadcasts. we would have been cycling through a fixed set of like 200, 250. Rewatching these episodes over and over and over again, yeah. Over and over again. Yeah. Yes. So like, even if you did, let's say, somehow watch... all of these 780.

Because, you know. Entirely likely. A lot of millennials and Gen Xers were kind of raced by TV. Sort of plunked us in front of those things. Let us go nuts. If there was only a maximum of 250. syndicated episodes, you could have rewatched the entirety of that back catalog three times in a year. In a year. Yeah, absolutely. Just cycling through. And remember... that often I was watching one of those episodes twice in a day. So that would suggest...

That I could have been rewatching some of those episodes like six or more times in a single year, in any given year. Okay. Good thing that those first 250 episodes slap, huh? Oh, yeah. You're so right. Absolutely. My favorite seasons are 100% seasons four through eight. Hey, Hannah, which episode is your favorite? Okay. I will tell you on one condition.

Which is that you need to give me some theory to bring us back to materiality. All right, deal. Okay, it's the one where they go to work in a model town built by a Bond villain. Yeah, Cypress Creek. Yes, Cypress Creek. Hank Scorpio. I love Hank Scorpio. I know, it's so good. That episode is so good. All right. If let loose, we...

Could, would, have talked about our favorite Simpsons content for hours. But we simply must stick to the format that people have chosen. And that means it's theory time. There are a few different directions we could go. We could talk about high and low culture like we did in our episode about Star Wars.

We could talk about the sitcom format. We could talk about postmodernism. We could even talk about how the content of The Simpsons both reflected and shaped mainstream culture. Marcel, I am on theoretical tenderhooks. here at the end of the day we can't cover everything because coach says so so since the crux of my argument is basically saturation. I think we should consider why the content of The Simpsons was sufficiently satisfying to viewers that...

Cable companies and local stations continuously syndicated the show in like hour-long blocks for years. And so to do that, we have to talk about satire. We are actually going to get to talk about content. Sort of. I know. I just want to talk about my favorite Simpsons episode. I know. We've got a whole segment. We can do whatever we want in that segment. Fuck yeah. So, I found an early article. And by early...

I mean 1994 early, by an actual scholar of The Simpsons named Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry would go on to publish numerous things about The Simpsons, but this is, I think, the earliest. This article is called The Triumph of Popular Culture, Situation Comedy, Postmodernism, and The Simpsons. And it was published in the journal Studies in Popular Culture way, way back in October of 1994.

The triumph of popular culture. That's powerful. This article aims to answer precisely the questions that we're tackling in this episode, but without that added context of syndication. Oh, of course. Of course, because it wasn't syndicated yet. Not until 1994. Cool. Yeah. Yes. Okay.

1994. That's the year the article was published. Yes. Did this article directly lead to the syndication of The Simpsons? That's a good question. Do academic articles often lead to radical shifts in popular culture, Hannah? Yes. What we do matters. Listen, what we do does matter. It absolutely does. But we have so little power. We have so little power. Anyway.

My point is that it's entirely possible that author Matthew Henry got to watch some of these early evening doubleheader reruns like I did, but it would have been way too early in the show's syndication history to know how thoroughly this... Okay. All right. So let's get into this theory. What does Matthew Henry, fake name, have to say about The Simpsons? It's Dr. Matthew Henry to you. Okay, the TLDR of this article is that The Simpsons is a postmodern sitcom.

We're not specifically looking at it through a postmodern lens the way that Henry is, but his analysis is nevertheless really helpful because it helps us get at consumerism and satire. So... Hannah, how about you start us off by reading this first quotation? I think it'll really speak to you and hopefully give our listeners a sense of where postmodernism and historical materialism overlap.

Listeners, buckle up. It's a long one. Quote. Like all forms of popular media in a post-industrial economy, sitcoms are vital modes of image production, and The Simpsons is a premier example. Above all, the sitcom is a corporate product. It is a mass consumption commodity and an expression of the underlying assumptions of the corporate culture that has come to dominate American society.

It is a vehicle for bringing consumers to advertisers in the marketplace. Demographically, sitcoms appeal to the largest buying audience, teenagers and young working adults with disposable income. The Simpsons succeeds as a business because it bridges the gap between these groups and an older, established audience with even more spending power. It has multi-generational appeal attracting boomers and busters.

alike. Thus, The Simpsons is an industry that, by capitalizing upon the immaterial, upon the image, is able to sell phenomenal amounts of merchandise, both its advertisers. and its own, end quote. Hannah. Hannah? Yes? Ask me what Simpsons merchandise I'm wearing right now. Hey, Marcel, what Simpsons merchandise are you wearing right now? It's Crocs. It's Simpsons Crocs. It's Krusty the Clown. Simpsons Crocs.

But that's the only Simpsons merch you own, surely. No, I also own like a bunch of Simpsons by Levi's Apparel. I've got this orange toque with Blinky, the three-eyed fish on it. I've got a fanny pack that's also known as a cross. body bag for gen z i've got these incredible yellow corduroy jeans that are simpsons yellow but they're too small and i just keep holding on to them hoping that i can get them tailored to fit i am a shill

for capitalism. My God. And Henry's article helpfully reminds us that The Simpsons has always been a tool for selling products. Yeah, I also remember being with you in Universal Studios before we started boycotting Universal Studios when you bought a red Duff-branded ball cap. I believe you also have a fake license plate from Itchy and Scratchy Land that says Bort. Yeah, you know what? The listeners, they get the idea. We can just move on to this next quote. My son's name is also Bort.

How is this show so good and so good at selling people things at the same time? We might get there. I'm mad. Let's try. Let's read more. Read this next quote, Hannah. Okay. Quote.

The initial success of The Simpsons was due to the willful manipulation of the image of Bart Simpson, which capitalized upon the archetype of the adolescent rebel. Bart's instantly reproducible phrases... Don't have a cow, man. Eat my shorts and I carumba. were decontextualized, packaged, and sold to the public en masse. Bart's image and words appeared on t-shirts, bumper stickers, baseball caps, beach towels, coffee mugs, and dozens of other items.

The ubiquity of Bart's image has had great influence on consumers to the delight of merchandisers, to be sure. End quote. Can I ask something here and you can tell me if it's a spoiler? Absolutely. Is Barr able to become this kind of reproducible image because the show is animated? Oh, that's such a good question, Hannah. Okay, okay, that's such a good question. It's not exactly a spoiler, but let's circle back to it.

Okay. Okay. Because I just feel like when it comes to the image, right, it's like it's harder to print a human's face on a thing than to print a like quite simple, stylized... image of a cartoon human is like more imagey. Yeah. Functions more as an icon. Yeah. I think that's genius and I want us to talk about it. So Henry goes on to describe a recent.

for a 1994 episode called Bart Gets Famous, in which the episode itself satirizes the same process of commodification that followed this early success of The Simpsons. the show so in the episode bart becomes a pop icon just as he had for the original viewers okay i remember this kind of satire being like pretty constant through the years we were watching at least like

the episodes often made fun of the like mediated systems that the show itself was like subject to and participating in. Absolutely. Yes. Read this next quote and we shall learn more. Here we go, quote. The show's producers know that the irony in The Simpsons depends upon a certain degree of cynicism on the part of the audience regarding commercial television and its mission of providing advertisers with a market.

The episode cited here, this is The Bart Becomes Famous. The episode cited here, thus. ends on a tellingly self-reflexive note. Having found himself suddenly unpopular, Bart is gathered at home with his family, taking consolation. His sister, Lisa, says, now you can go back to being you instead of a wonder... character with a silly catchphrase which in one sense is what he is we then get a rundown of the major character's own catchphrases oh yeah so like then homer says doe and

Marge goes, Maggie sucks her soother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thus, we can see that The Simpsons is simultaneously complicitous in and critical of its role. in the production of popular culture, end quote. Oh, this makes me think about that great one where Lisa makes a feminist doll. Lisa Lionheart! I need listeners to know.

I didn't rewatch any episodes of The Simpsons to prepare for this episode. It's all just in here, baby. It's all just in here. If I get married, I'm keeping my own name. Wait, that should be if I choose to get married. Oh, my God. The show is so good. Okay. So Henry goes into greater detail about the lengths of the show's political and cultural satire and even states that...

There's simply too much material to do it justice in one article. Reminder, this article was published 31 years ago, and the show is still going. What I think is most useful here is Henry's observation that the show's commitment to satire allows its viewers to forgive and maybe... even embrace its existence as a tool for advertising. Marcel, this is sounding a little bit like a thesis. Oh, shoot. You're right. Oh, no. Don't worry. Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez. Oh, no. Am I blowing it? Oh, God.

Sorry, these are actually jokes from BoJack Horseman, not from The Simpsons. Which The Simpsons ran so that BoJack Horseman could gallop. Gallop. You're so right.

Okay, Marcel, I'm ready for a thesis that you definitely didn't spoil in the previous segment. Okay. Well, I just did it in the last 10 seconds, so hopefully it makes sense. In the 1994 article, The Triumph of Popular Culture, Situation Comedy, Postmodernism, and The Simpsons, Scholar Matthew Henry helpfully identifies satire and parody as foundational to the enduring popularity of The Simpsons. But what Henry couldn't have known at the time this article was published...

was how frequently and constantly episodes of The Simpsons would air following the show's syndication. Given the endurance of televised reruns of The Simpsons and the tendency... of networks to air those reruns daily and the frequency with which those daily reruns are aired in hour-long blocks. I think it's probable that The Simpsons was the most watched piece of popular culture, at least among Gen Xers and Millennials in Canada and the U.S.

Based on my own television viewing habits, I could have easily consumed five and a half hours of The Simpsons reruns every week. And I did so, willingly. I must also reiterate... that during my teen years, broadcasters were cycling through the same 250 episodes. at least three times in any given year. The predominance of The Simpsons on local and cable networks ensured that random phrases like, dental plan, Lisa needs braces, or, hi, I'm Troy McClure.

Or, my cat's breath smells like cat food. Or, ow, my freaking ears. Or, you choo-choo-choose me? To name only a few. became downright idiomatic for Gen X and millennials, far outstripping the linguistic cultural impact of any other piece of pop culture. It doesn't really matter that The Simpsons was great. It just matters that it was always on. In this essay...

I will argue. Okay. I actually want us to come back to them being yellow. Okay. Because. Oh, okay. Whoa. Whoa. Okay. I didn't see that coming. Right? So the cartoonishness, right? Like, I'm really stuck on this point that Henry makes about the function of the image. The willful manipulation of the image. And that it is the manipulation of the image that allows that like in the post-industrial economy.

allows corporations to like produce mass commodities and it's like oh then BART becomes this really sort of breakout image that then circulates and it's like The more the image circulates, the more self-referential the image becomes. And we can get more into satire and self-referentiality and how that... plays into like circulation and recirculation but I really think that like it was the first animated sitcom

for adults. I don't think that that's true because it's not adults only, right? It's on prime time. So it's... Yeah, but like not children. Like wasn't it the first animated sitcom? No. The Flintstones and the Jetsons were definitely... But did those play in primetime? Yeah. I thought those were like Saturday morning TV. The way that Henry talks about them is that, like...

Nothing that I've read says that The Simpsons is the first animated sitcom. Okay. Or that it's the first, like, sitcom for grown-ups. Or first animated cartoon for grown-ups. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. It is the most successful. So it's preceded by other animated series that are playing with the sitcom format. Yeah.

Right? Like the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Yeah. Right? You're still playing with the sort of the emerging form of the sitcom and sort of saying like, oh, we can do sitcom tropes, but in more fantastical settings if we use animation. Yes, totally. But The Simpsons, like, it's surreal. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, the characters, they haven't gone for...

and I'm not saying the Jetsons or the Flintstones did, but, like, they really haven't gone for, like, verisimilitude here. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, people have, like... spiky heads or, I mean, they're yellow. They're yellow. They only have four fingers. They only have four fingers. Their heads are all different unlikely shapes.

You know, they don't all have hair that makes sense as hair, you know, and that becomes something that they play with in later episodes is like the degree to which their hair does or does not make sense as hair. But it's like part of the image power. is like literally the design. So it's like, we've got these really sort of iconic, strange looking figures that are thus like immediately recognizable. Nothing else looks like them.

Yeah. One of the things that Henry talks about is the working class dynamic as well. And so I think that like, because it's a working class family, I know people hate it when we talk about relatability, but it's like... they're also relatable to a huge swath of audiences. And so I think that relatability... combined with reproducibility is doing something, is getting to that. That's why people want to see it reproduced because it's both familiar and

alien at the same time. Yeah. And it allows for something. So, you know, the sitcom, like a lot of other serialized genres, finds it sort of... What is so compelling about it is repetition with difference. Yeah. Right. So like this is, you know, it's like a way people talk about magazines or like, you know, serialization in general. The pleasures of reading within genre is like, I'm going to get.

A bunch of stuff I know I can anticipate and then play or difference within those norms. So like the sitcom as a shape is like. We're going to be in the same two settings over and over again, right? We're spending most of our time in the living room because that is the soundstage that was built. So we're just in this living room. You know, we're going to get the same characters.

repeated, we're going to get catchphrases, we're going to get familiar settings. And all of that is set within the sort of imagined universalizable space of like the heterosexual family living in a single owner. Like, you know, living in a separated house. But within that infinite repeatability, there is at least one major structural problem, which is that humans get older.

That's right. Yeah. So you can't infinitely reproduce. Like, at some point, Urkel's an adult. Yeah. And it just doesn't work anymore. That's right. But The Simpsons has this... infinite repeatability. Because it's outside, like, none of the characters ever grow up. Right, right. Except in those Simpsons Into the Future episodes where they imagine the future. But those are not canon. And so they can always change. Yeah, exactly. Possible futures.

We can imagine possible futures, but we always come back to the eternal present of the sitcom setting. And so many of the little pieces of the show are, like, winking at that, right? So, like... the classic opening credits which are identical with like what like three shifting patterns like what bart is writing on the blackboard changes, what song Lisa is riffing on her saxophone changes, and then like what happens when they all arrive in the living room. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, eventually they will change like who they go past and stuff, but it's not a regular change. It's like a major change that they make. Gotcha. Yeah. And then so it always arrives in... the living room so it's like a rival in the familiar locus of the the sitcom right a separate family home um but with this like

constant sort of winky subversion like we're going to change a little bit but not so much that you don't know like the change is predictable and so that familiarity that ability to like really dig deep into repetition is like already built into the animated nature of it and into its sense of humor, right? Like it knows it's playing with sitcom.

It knows it's a sitcom and it's doing stuff with that format. And then you can see how that sort of like the pleasure of this is endless repetition with variation. that is aware of its endless repetition in a clever way, that invites you to be in on the joke, but doesn't disrupt the core tenets of the show, right?

The family will always come back together. They will always continue to own their home. Even if they have financial struggles, they will not end up unhoused. They will not end up unemployed. There's this core sort of stability built into it. And then you take that and then you just start repeating those episodes over and over and over again. Yeah. It's like it just amplifies. All of those things that were already the case with the show.

Yeah, yeah. One of the episodes that Henry talks about in the article is that episode when Homer starts to like Flanders, when he is so grateful to Flanders. Stupid, sexy Flanders. No, not that one. No, I know. I just have to say it when somebody says Flanders. You have to. And how in the show itself, at a certain point...

Like, I can't remember if it's Bart or Lisa. One of them is like, oh, it must be Bart. It's like, whoa, this is really weird. Like, I didn't think that this was going to happen. And Lisa's like, oh, you know, it feels like every week the Simpsons experience some kind of zany antics. But everything always goes back to... the predictable norm at the end and then there is a moment in the show when right like two minutes before the end when bart and lisa are like

whoa, maybe it isn't going to change. Maybe this is just how we go forward forever. And then in that last, in that like last second, there's just a flash forward to another day when Homer's like, shut up, Flanders. And they're like, oh, phew. So really, the show is absolutely basking in that ability to play with the format and to tease audiences with difference. And then reassure everybody with sameness at the end. Yeah. There are major changes in the show.

across seasons, like, the politics of the show change. Like, in the first few seasons, which are ones that I know you and I don't go back and rewatch a ton. Like, Homer... physically assaults Bart a lot. Constantly. Yeah. That's like a running gag in the show. Yeah. It's like him strangling Bart. Yeah. And that really disappears after a few seasons. And it's like...

you can sort of see the show testing, like, the edges of relatability, right? The edges of the familiar versus the unfamiliar. The, like, how... weird can things get before they're too weird? How do we sort of play that line of like, I mean, we know it was an edgy show because a lot of our peers weren't allowed to watch it. That's right. Right? So it's like...

There is this sense of, like, really playing with the lines between familiarity and unfamiliarity, with that boundary between stasis and subversion. And that's like...

I feel like satire is kind of the perfect genre to do that in because you can do something really subversive and then you can always say like, what, it was just a joke. It was just a wacky joke. JK LOL. Do you remember the episode when Bill Clinton was running for president? So Bill Clinton was running against George H.W. Bush, not George W. Bush, who's probably the more familiar Bush to most listeners.

And The Simpsons aired an episode where the Kang and Kodos, the aliens who are constantly like circling Earth, they take over Bush and Clinton and then they just are walking around holding hands and there's... There's a scene where somebody's like, sir, people are uncertain why you're holding hands with your opponent. Like, we're not holding hands. We're exchanging secretions. And that same episode, they have the scene where Clinton and Bush are being puppeteered by Kang and Kodos.

are at a rally, and one of them says, Oh, it must be Clinton says abortions for everyone and everybody boos. And then they say, okay, no abortions for anyone. And then everybody boos. And then they say, okay, abortions for some tiny. Tiny American flags for everybody else. And then everybody cheers. So it's like, I think about abortions for some a lot. So like the show's not commenting on abortion. The show is commenting. on the way that abortion is a hot button issue, a lightning rod. Yeah.

Yeah, and the way it's manipulated, right? The way abortion itself is a symbol that gets manipulated by people. You know, I think too about like one of the characteristics of... the sense of humor of The Simpsons in the years that we're talking about, is its love of pastiche and referentiality and... You know, it loves to, like, make an episode that is entirely about, like, the Twilight Zone or the Music Man or, like, for me as a kid.

cultural touchstones that I was fully unfamiliar with. Oh, absolutely. I had that like reverse experience that I think a lot of us had of like seeing The Simpsons parody first and finding out the thing that it was parodying later. Absolutely. That was my experience with Twin Peaks. I was like, oh! This suit burns better. And there's this sense, right, that like you know that what you're watching is referencing something.

Like you can tell that it's about something and it almost doesn't matter in the first viewing that you don't get. what it's about. It's like, it's the aboutness. It's like, I'm in on a joke. I am moving in the same world of symbols and icons that you are. But then it's like that rewatchability. also is like oh now I get something I didn't get before like now I like oh this was a reference and I get it now and then you're even more in on the joke and so it's like

The cultural capital that the writers are trading in is deep knowledge of pop culture as its own reward. And deep knowledge of quote-unquote high culture also right so there will be like visual gags that you know are referencing something but you don't necessarily know what like there's a brief moment in this one episode when

a big fancy house crumbles to the ground and in front of it is a sign or a placard that says House of Usher. And so you are watching the fall of the House of Usher, which... I haven't read The Fall of the House of Usher, so I don't know. Absolutely not. I have no idea if the house crumbles in it. I assume it doesn't. I assume that's about something else. It's not that kind of fall. No.

But it's the kind of thing where it's like in that same way that being familiar with popular culture allows you to be like, oh, I'm in on this joke. Also being aware of like high culture allows you to be in on the joke. Like Bart as the Raven in the Simpsons adaptation of The Raven, you know, just like chirping never more at Homer, who's gradually going insane, is very funny because Bart drives Homer.

bonkers constantly in the regular episodes. They love Poe, huh? That's also what the Braven does in the poem. Yep, yep. Because also remember that episode. You'll probably know the name where another smarter girl comes to Lisa's school. And the Telltale Heart. Yeah, I don't remember the name of the episode. The Telltale Heart. Oh, it's the beating of the hideous heart. Yeah. Like...

So you're right. It is this mix of high and low. It is this kind of, like, capacious making use of culture that says, like... Absolutely everything is up for grabs, right? Politics, high culture, low culture, camp, tradition. Like, we pull from whatever we want. It's all just material that is here for us to make use of and play with and remix in endless variation. So it's like you get to live in this realm of just pure cultural referentiality.

Yeah, and then because you are a teenager constantly consuming it, then you end up participating in that constant cultural referentiality by saying things like, Dental plan. Lisa needs braces. I've never heard the term dental plan in my life without immediately following it with Lisa needs braces. You wear them till you learn, boy.

I don't know what that's a reference to. Oh, my God. It's Ralph having to wear rubber pajama pants or rubber sheets. You use them till you learn, boy. You use them till you learn. Okay. Yeah. I mean, this is again, right. It's the whole point is like, you want people to have. recognizable catchphrases because then people repeat the catchphrases and

That is the circulation of the image that then draws people back into the show and allows the show to do the thing that the show needs to do, which is sell itself and sell the other stuff that it's selling. And it's so unabashed. in its engagement with commercial culture, it's easy for them to make merch for Duff the fake beer brand because in the show, there's a ton of merch for Duff the fake beer brand and like a character and Duff Girls and like...

You often see, like, Homer watching ads. You watch, like, we haven't talked about Itchy and Scratchy. Bart and Lisa are obsessed with this hyper-violent parody of Tom and Jerry. called Itchy and Scratchy, which is a cat and a mouse who, like, kill each other in truly graphic and horrific ways, which is like... itself playing with this idea of like the heightening of pop culture oh my god the episode where homer becomes the dog poochie and then each episode itself they bring in

Leo or something? I can't remember. Ready? Yes, in the episode, they introduce an embarrassing cool new character while the plot of the episode is Homer voicing. the embarrassing cool new character on the animated series that the kids are watching within the show. Like, hey, Mrs. S. You know? Yeah. This show's so delightful, and I also find it lightly humiliating to recognize that, like, this show knows what it's doing.

It knows how it operates and how it operates on us. And it has worked on me. I mean, it's worked on you more. It's worked on me. I think it's worked on me to a disgusting degree. disgusting. But, but I've got to say that board license plate that I have on the front of my car, the number of times that I've been out in the world and somebody sees it and is like, They're like, they light up. They light up and they say, my son is also named Bort. Bort.

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