The Simpson's

The Simpson's is a stereotypical American family that lives in Springfield, U.S.A, with 2.5
kids, a dog and a cat, a stay at home mother, a blue-collar father, a mischievous son, a brainy
daughter, and a baby.
Many of the characters in the show reflect some cultural aspect that we can relate to, for
instance Doctor Hibbard is a lot like Dr. Huxtable, from the Cosby Show. Barney is the town
drunk, Ned Flanders is the stereotypical christian fanatic, Comic Book guy is fat and lazy,
Abe Simpson is the grandfather who is always ready to tell his when-I-was-young stories.
I could continue, and place most of the characters into certain expected or stereotypical roles,
but the interesting aspect about The Simpson's is that the audience is quite aware that the
jokes thrive on such stereotypes, or the breaking of such stereotypes, as well as social morals
and values, politics and pop culture.
The Simpson's reflect a lot on current events and create their shows out of themes from
movies, television or literature. For instance the episode Who Shot Mr. Burns? demonstrated
how The Simpson's regurgitated pop culture while putting thier own spin on it.
Who Shot Mr. Burns?
In the two-part episode, Who Shot Mr. Burns?, Montgomery Burns' angers all the people of
Springfield, particularly when he steals oil from Springfield Elementary, and then blocks out
the sun so all of the residents of Springfield will have to rely on his nuclear power plant for
energy.
This two-parter takes it's plot from the popular soap opera of the eighties Dallas. On one of
Dallas' season finales a main character, JR Ewing, was shot. The viewers had to wait until the
next season to find out who shot him.
The Simpson's used this popular show's plot and incorporated it into their season finale. When
Mr. Burns is shot at the end of the season finale, Who shot Mr. Burns, becomes the question
everyone wanted answered. In the season premier that question was answered, but not before
employing more popular references.
The Simpson's played on the dream aspect that resolved Dallas' story line, by putting Lisa
Simpson in Chief Wiggum's dream in order to help solve the mystery. Other pop culture
references during the episode was that of the Simpson's DNA, a reference to OJ Simpson, in
which Bart says the Simpson's DNA will not hold up in court. Also, Mr. Burns refers to his
"monopoly" by having bought up Boardwalk and Waterworks, referencing the popular board
game.
References to Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and the movie The
Fugitive are made, as well as the well known saying, "it's like taking candy from a baby,"
which proved to be harder than what Mr. Burns thought.
Throughout the years The Simpson's have taken on a myriad of pop and high culture icons
and issues, like Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, The Raven, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Mike Tyson, President Clinton, and police incompetence. The references and employment of
such cultural items are recognized in society, which creates a bird's eye view of our culture.
By decoding such well known icons and issues, and then displaying them, it allows us to
reflect on our own values and morals within in our society.

Idioms
A number of neologisms that originated on The Simpsons have entered popular
vernacular.
[103][104]
Mark Liberman, director of the Linguistic Data Consortium, remarked,
"The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's
greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions."
[104]
The most
famous catchphrase is Homer's annoyed grunt: "D'oh!" So ubiquitous is the expression that it
is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but without the apostrophe.
[105]
Dan
Castellaneta says he borrowed the phrase from James Finlayson, an actor in early Laurel and
Hardy comedies, who pronounced it in a more elongated and whining tone. The staff of The
Simpsonstold Castellaneta to shorten the noise, and it went on to become the well-known
exclamation in the television series.
[106]

Groundskeeper Willie's description of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" was
used by National Reviewcolumnist Jonah Goldberg in 2003, after France's opposition to the
proposed invasion of Iraq. The phrase quickly spread to other journalists.
[104][107]
"Cromulent"
and "Embiggen", words used in "Lisa the Iconoclast", have since appeared in
theDictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon,
[108]
and scientific journals
respectively.
[104][109]
"Kwyjibo", a fake Scrabble word invented by Bart in "Bart the Genius",
was used as one of the aliases of the creator of the Melissa worm.
[110]
"I, for one, welcome our
new insect overlords", was used by Kent Brockman in "Deep Space Homer" and has become
a common variety of phrase.
[111]
Variants of Brockman's utterance are used to express mock
submission.
[112]
It has been used in media, such as New Scientist magazine.
[113]
The
dismissive term "Meh", believed to have been popularized by the show,
[104][114][115]
entered
the Collins English Dictionary in 2008.
[116]
Other words credited as stemming from the show
include "yoink" and "craptacular".
[104]

The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations includes several quotations from the show. As
well as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", Homer's lines, "Kids, you tried your best and you
failed miserably. The lesson is never try", from "Burns' Heir" (season five, 1994) as well as
"Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically
raise themselves, what with the Internet and all", from "Eight Misbehavin'" (season 11, 1999),
entered the dictionary in August 2007.
[117]

Time included Bart Simpson in the Time 100, the publication's list of the century's 100 most
influential people.
[167]
Bart was the only fictional character on the list. On January 14, 2000,
the Simpsons were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
[168]

They represent the average Caucasian middle class American family with each
character in the show representing another symbol separately. They take from real
life, put a twist on the details and then feed it back to the people so that they seem to
mock and mimic the American Dream at the same time. The Simpsons family strives
for the things we as a society strive for. They represent our society even though they
are just fictional characters. Despite their similarity to human beings, most
of the members of the Simpson family are highly stylized drawings,
really only suggestions of the human form. Nonetheless we do recognize
them as representations of a certain segment of American
society.(Irwin,262) In fact, what the Simpsons truly represent is the freedom of
speech in America . They clearly poke fun at touchy subjects such as politics and
religion but they do so in a tasteful manner that rarelyoffends anyone. In fact:
Social conservatives and some evangelical Christians have also pointed
to the positive role model of devout Christian Ned Flanders, whose
fretfulness is occasionally ridiculed but whose decency never wavers
despite constant provocation from Homer. In several episodes, God
actually intervenes to protect the Flanders family, invoking such
Christian concepts as Divine Providence. As compared with the Simpson
family, the Flanders family is relatively well-off and less dysfunctional,
although they are quirky in their own way, with over-the-top devotion
and their fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible.
The deepest signified meaning behind the Simpsons is the appeal to the average
North Americans needs to be satisfied with themselves for who they are as a person;
aesthetic looks, talents, ethnicity or social standing are all possessions we as North
Americans struggle with daily and the Simpsons address this is several episodes (and
I will address these in a later paragraph as well.) When asked to describe his goal for
The Simpsons cartoon, Matt Groening replied, that his goal in creating the
show was to offer an alternative to the audience, and show them theres
something else out there than the mainstream trash that they are
presented as the only thing.



Irwin, William, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble. The Simpsons and Philosophy,
the DOh of Homer. Chicago : Carus Company, 2001, 262.
The Simpsons. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons