The Simpsons

The universe of The Simpsons is wide. It is formed by hundreds of characters, each one with a very defined profile. Its objective: to parody entirely to the society. We can find for almost any situation a character who gives life to the series.

To analyze the influence of the program The Simpsons in the society is of vital importance, since with this essay it is tried to evidence the unknown contents that are sent to the viewers, in this case to the young people and as these influence in their behavior and their relation with society.

This book looks at The Simpsons' place in the pop culture firmament, from inspirations like Mad magazine to its critical role in the renaissance of animated television. The author recounts the birth of the show, discusses its remarkable merchandising success, and examines the show’s popularity as the longest running episodic program in TV history.

My thesis explores the use of metafiction, or self-reflexivity, in the Simpsons, especially in how the writers use it to position themselves within the genre of the cartoon and the sitcom, and comment on the successes and struggles that come with producing the longest-running animated series ever.

The Simpsons' depiction of the evangelical Ned Flanders has become a well-known stereotype in contemporary American popular culture which has been discussed in academic and popular circles. This article uses a critical analysis of Flanders to challenge journalist Mark Pinsky's assertion that The Simpsons is “funny because it's true” (The Gospel According to the Simpsons: Bigger, and Possibly Even Better! Edition, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007, 226) and Conrad Hyers' theorizing of humor's religiousness by demonstrating that Flanders is a satire who contributes to ongoing political debates in the United States. This is accomplished through a cultural analysis of Flanders in light of political debates since the 1960s in which evangelicals have had a significant role. It is argued that Flanders' actions are simultaneously mocked and praised in a way which denigrates evangelicals and their political participation while supporting the individual acts of piety and Christian morality which do not lead to behavioral prescriptions for others.

نیچه جهان را عاری از ارزش‌های مطلق و فرازمانی-فرامکانی می‌داند. او بر این باور است که فرومایگان و ضعفا از آنجایی که توان مقابله با افراد قدرتمند و والامقام را نداشته‌اند، جهانی ماورای این جهان ساخته‌اند تا با خیال آسوده مطمئن باشند که گرچه در این جهان نمی‌توانند از پس مشکلاتشان بربیایند و زورشان به آن افراد قدرتمند نمی‌رسد، در آن جهان ماورایی حق به حق‌دار خواهد رسید. از نظر نیچه، با این کار ارزش این جهان و این زندگی را به امید رسیدن به خیر در جهانی دیگر نادیده می‌گیریم. حال با پذیرش اینکه ارزشی مطلق و ذاتی در جهان وجود ندارد، به نظر می‌رسد که جهان پُرآشوب و تهی از معنا می‌شود. اما به باورِ نیچه انسان حقیقی و ارزشمند انسانی‌ست که آشوب و بی‌معنایی این جهان را نه تنها بپذیرد، بلکه تلاش کند تا آن را تبدیل به به اثر هنری زیبایی کند که ارزشمند و بامعناست. او چنین انسانی را ابرانسان می‌نامد. هدف مارک. تی. کونارد در این مقاله پاسخ دادن به این پرسش است که آیا می‌توان بارت سیمپسون  در مجموعه‌ی «سیمپسون‌ها» را، باتوجه به شخصیت ستیزه‌جویش که همواره با تمام اولیاءامور به مخالفت برمی‌خیزد، همان ایده‌آل نیچه‌ای، همان ابرمردی که در مخالفت با ارزش‌های پذیرفته شده‌ی جامعه قدعلم می‌کند دانست؟ کونارد پس از بررسی دقیق آراء نیچه به این نتیجه می‌رسد که پاسخ این پرسش منفی‌ست، زیرا بارت سیمپسون شخصیت مستقلی از آن خود ندارد، او صرفاً با همه مخالفت می‌کند، اما در ازاء مخالفتش سازندگی‌ای انجام نمی‌دهد و تلاش نمی‌کند تا از پسِ آشوب زندگی معنا و ارزشی بیافریند؛ بنابراین به هیچ‌عنوان نمی‌توان او را مورد تأییدِ نیچه دانست.

This chapter analyzes the popular animated sitcom The Simpsons in the context of anticorporate protest forms known as culture jamming. Corporate satire, the author argues, has long been a part of popular culture, going back to the magazine Ballyhoo in the first half of the twentieth century, and MAD magazine and wacky packs in the second. As a widely successful mainstay of broadcast television entertainment, The Simpsons complicates notions of culture jamming as genuinely countercultural or anticapitalist rhetoric, and also provides a prominent platform for the humorous lampooning of a dominant culture shaped by brands and corporations.

The academic literature on the use of television shows in sociology education has successfully highlighted the value of the practice, but has not afforded any examples from seminar teaching. This essay contributes to the discussion by demonstrating how The Simpsons, an American animated television sitcom, assists in teaching sociology seminars. The paper suggests that using The Simpsons in group-based, participatory teaching and the learning environments of seminars helps students to understand sociological theories and develop their sociological imagination. It shows the application of the cartoon series to seminars of a Sociology of Belonging module and tests the value of the practice by drawing on responses to student satisfaction surveys and in-class observations. The results illustrate that the cartoon helps to highlight sociological theories and improve students’ sociological imagination. The research concludes that the sociology curriculum would benefit from developing particular ways of using The Simpsons according to course content.

The Simpsons is a popular animated television show suitable for all audiences. The
peculiarity of this programme apart from its longevity and the physical peculiarities of its
characters is how parody is presented in each episode from beginning to end. Thus the aim
of this series is to criticise the American way of life by making use of satire and sarcasm in
every day situations. Taking The Simpsons as reference and using scenes of selected
episodes to exemplify the arguments, firstly the importance of parody as a tool to criticise
serious social situations will be analysed. Secondly, this paper will deal with how these
cartoons reflect aspects of the American culture that also affect many other countries by
examining current social topics such as class struggle, the role of women in society and
religion. Finally, it will be demonstrated how these three topics reflect the true American
society even though the method used is the parody through cartoons, which are not usually
taken seriously. In addition, through this essay the relationship between these three topics
will be examined as they share the research of integration in different social groups.

Since 1990, The Simpsons’ annual “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have constituted a production sub-context within the series, having their own conventions and historical trajectory. These specials incorporate horror plots and devices, as well as general references to science fiction, into the series’ base in situation comedy. The Halloween specials disrupt the series usual family-oriented sitcom structure, dissolving the ideological balances that stabilise that society. By depicting the Family and community in extreme circumstances, in seeing the horror of ‘how things could be’, the Treehouse episode leave us with hanging questions about the nature of social being that bleed into the regular sitcom-style episodes. By breaking from the comparatively realistic social-satire that characterizes the series as a whole, the Halloween specials cast a reflexive gaze back onto “The Simpsons” itself. As a result, the “Treehouse” episodes are valuable as a means of examining the strategies and implications of the series as a whole. Bakhtin’s model of the carnivalesque is utilised to underscore these disruptive traits that characterise the Treehouse episodes.

Here is a rare homage to the art of classic 2–D animation and the time–honored method of hand–drawing characters that come alive on the silver screen. The creator of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," reveals the art of brilliant character design, backgrounds, and prop art in this lavishly detailed handbook that unveils the complex secrets behind the deceptively simple and universally loved Simpsons characters. With creative insights, artists' sketches, helpful insider hints, and step–by–step instructions, enter the imagination of "master doodler" Matt Groening and receive some professional "how–to" advice from many of the animators and directors who have made "The Simpsons" the longest–running animated show and situation comedy in television history. In our technological era when animation has become increasingly digitalized, this unique handbook records the genesis of some of the most extraordinary examples of the art of hand–drawn animated characters.

The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World's Most Animated Family. By Mark Pinsky '70. Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. 164 pages, $12.95. Could Homer Simpson be the patriarch of the most religious family on television? Could he be the lead character in the most religiously integrated and authentic television show? Homer Simpson--who in one episode of The Simpsons sells his soul to the devil for a doughnut?

From the Back Cover: Drawing on the worldviews put forth by three wildly popular animated shows – The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy– David Feltmate demonstrates how ideas about religion’s proper place in American society are communicated through comedy.  The book includes discussion of a wide range of American religions, including Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Native American Religions, New Religious Movements, “Spirituality,” Hinduism, and Atheism. Along the way, readers are shown that jokes about religion are influential tools for teaching viewers how to interpret and judge religious people and institutions. 

Feltmate, develops a picture of how each show understands and communicates what constitutes good religious practice as well as which traditions they seek to exclude on the basis of race and ethnicity, stupidity, or danger. From Homer Simpson’s spiritual journey during a chili-pepper induced hallucination to South Park’s boxing match between Jesus and Satan to Peter Griffin’s worship of the Fonz, each show uses humor to convey a broader commentary about the role of religion in public life. Through this examination, an understanding of what it means to each program to be a good religious American becomes clear. 

Drawn to the Gods is a book that both fans and scholars will enjoy as they expose the significance of religious satire in these iconic television programs.

To preorder the book from NYU Press: http://nyupress.org/books/9781479890361/

The link below will take you to the Introduction

Although many fans have identified the end of The Simpsons' golden era in 1997, at the beginning of season 9, there has been little critical analysis of what that shift signified for the show and for popular culture as a whole. For The Simpsons, this shift signifies two important qualitative changes: first, in the changing definition of work, from a Fordist model of employment to a precarious one, and second, as a result of the first, in its mode of realism, moving from an internally coherent to a fractured portrayal of the characters' lives. The first sign of this transformation comes in season 8 through the character of Frank Grimes. His relationship to Homer marks a turning point, after which characters and viewers alike are no longer able to inhabit a stable Fordist universe. If the task of realism, as a mode of expression is to approach social reality then The Simpsons' failure to provide consistent characterizations reflects neoliberalism's own dislocations.

This article enters the Dark Simpsons to provide theories of un/popular culture, while summoning models of dark pop. The piece commences with a conventional presentation of memes. However, their accelerated movement is probed and monitored to understand the agitated transformations between popular and un/popular culture. These models are then applied to an investigation of the Dark Simpsons and the rationale for this troubled and troubling cultural system.

, Landmark Education has continuously denied being a religious organization. Despite ample discourse on the religious nature of the group within popular online and print media, a conspicuous void within academia-particularly within Religious Studies -speaks volumes. Rarely are the boundaries of what constitutes a "religion" expanded in order to explore those groups that, though not understood to be "religious" in a traditional sense, clearly contribute to contemporary "spiritual" life. And yet, that Landmark Education is perceived as being somehow religious demands deeper analysis. This article highlights the problematics of "religion" within late Western modernity as illustrated by the contention surrounding the religious status of both Scientology and Transcendental Meditation. A discussion of Landmark Education is offered in light of these issues, along with a dissection of the religio-spiritual dimensions of the organization and its primary product, the Landmark Forum. Incorporating several Eastern spiritual practices, the highly emotional nature of the Landmark Forum's weekend training is such as to create Durkheimian notions of "religious effervescence," altering pre-existing belief systems and producing a sense of the sacred collective. Group-specific language contributes to this, whilst simultaneously shrouding Landmark Education in mystery and esotericism. The Forum is replete with stories of miracles, healings, and salvation apposite for a modern Western paradigm. Indeed, the sacred pervades the training, manifested in the form of the Self, capable of altering the very nature of the world and representing the "ultimate concern." 226 Renee Lockwood

El presente artículo pretende evidenciar los discursos sobre inmigración en la serie televisiva Los Simpson, a partir de un análisis de discurso efectuado a dos episodios que abordan el tema a profundidad, el 151 y el 441. Su relevancia radica en la importancia que la serie, como producción de referencia y culto, ha consolidado. Esto basado en los recursos de forma y fondo que se desprenden de ser una serie animada, por un lado, y el medio que la transmite, es decir, la televisión por otro. Por ende, se asume que el debate presente a partir de discursos sobre inmigración goza de una alta recepción y potencial influencia. Palabras clave: inmigración, Los Simpson, programas de televisión, discurso

This article aims to demonstrate the discourses on immigration in the TV series The Simpsons. The analysis is based on two chapters that address the issue: nº 151 and nº 441. Its relevance lies in the importance that the TV series has as a global reference and cult. This is due to the format and background that come from being an animated series. And also by the way the television series is

Simpson's rule is a method for numerical integration, the numerical approximation of definite integrals.Simpson’s rule is a method for approximating the area under a curve over a given interval that involves partitioning the interval by an odd number n+1 of equally spaced ordinates and adding the areas of the n/2 figures formed by pairs of successive odd-numbered ordinates and the parabolas which they determine with their included even-numbered ordinates. In Simpson's Rule, we will use parabolas to approximate each part of the curve. This proves to be very efficient since it's generally more accurate than the other numerical methods we've seen.
The method is credited to the mathematician Thomas Simpson (1710–1761) of Leicestershire, England. Kepler used similar formulas over 100 years prior. For this reason the method is sometimes called Kepler's rule, or Keplersche Fassregel in German.

From its creation The Simpsons proved different, but how the irreverence of a show can be enough for the American public to select this sitcom as it preferred primetime watching time? How the show confronts capital issues of our decadent society as race, gender, religion sex and first, family and marriage. It’s not all in the humor or the quality of color or maybe selecting aggressive topics like the environment of corruption. How the gender representation in topics like homosexuality in majority of male characters on the show affect the way the audience react to them. Multiple recog-nitions around the world, but also critics about their political agenda and controversy. This show create a momentum for success on television for shows oriented to social aspect and adult anima-tion, awakening also a wave of copycats around the world. The success of the sitcom resides in big part in how the show presents actual social topics that make them attractive for all. Now society is moving on, moral decay is all around and a family show, with a very dysfunctional family, agree, it’s getting behind. Are we seeing the last of them or the team have more surprises under their hat? Will see. That’s the reason of the few ideas put together in this paper.

Intertextuality has enriched the Simpsons, creating relatable characters in whom viewers can invest themselves, and complex narratives that not only mock other texts, but are loaded with pre-established emotions and connotations that are translated to each episode. The Simpsons’ success over the past twenty-seven years can be measured by its phenomenal transmedial presence, existing in almost every media platform conceivable. In my essay, I would like to look at the purpose of intertextuality in the Simpsons, and briefly look at its role as a transmedial practice.

The Simpsons is one of the most successful cartoons and one of the most famous (and widely quoted) sitcoms in TV history, a mass-media phenomenon and the longest-running prime-time animated show in television history. As a typical postmodern creation, it oscillates between a work of art and a consumer good to be exported and sold. Translators and dubbing teams attempting to reproduce it in another language (and culture) must deal confidently with an enormous amount of textual material. This article analyzes the practical strategies adopted by Italian translators using selected episodes from Season Five (with references to other seasons and episodes). As this analysis of the Italian edition will try to demonstrate that, while The Simpsons undoubtedly remains an American 'product', many of its themes and references are part of a global cultural background whose adaptation for a 'local' audience, such as the Italian one, can still be possible.

The article discusses the television series The Simpsons in the context of disability studies. Referring to David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s theory of narrative prosthesis, the argument is that their notion of disability as a metaphorical device falls short of the specific function of disability in satire as both a source of humor and social commentary. As the reading of The Simpsons suggests, the show uses images of the grotesque as a form of graphic humor; furthermore, these images provide potentials of distanciation and critical thinking concerning the objectification of disability in the dominant discourse and the visualization of it in the media.

I claim that the American English word "cowabunga" (the most standard spelling) is ultimately based on a Bantu language word "umgawa" as used in one of the early Tarzan movies.  I discuss various issues related to the etymology of this word, in language and writing system.

Reading the interplay between text, audience, and institutional context, this article critically examines the distinctiveness of The Simpsons. It explores how the animated series uses textual strategies that are interesting to and challenging for both (postmodern) critical theory and processes of interpretation, including existing critical writing on the program.

The television show The Simpsons is considered to be one of the most successful TV programs of all times and is ranked as the longest-running show in television history. An "extensive referential network" to different types of texts combined with social and political criticism, a broad range of characters and "it's realism" turn the show -according to Wanja von der Goltz -"into a sophisticated prime time enactment of American culture and society." 1

"Los Simpson": la imagen de una utopía degenerada. Se analizará una tarjeta de felicitación navideña que se desprende del capítulo piloto de Los Simpson, emitido el 17 de diciembre de 1989 en la cadena estadounidense Fox. En esta primera entrega se consuma el pasaje desde la viñeta animada o cortinilla hacia la serie de formato televisivo estándar, al tiempo que se establecen las formas definitivas tanto del aspecto de los personajes como del mundo en el que habitan. Desde un punto de vista textual, la imagen actúa al modo de un mito fundacional: presenta a todos los miembros de la familia reunidos, quienes habrán de convertirse en los personajes de la serie, fijando los caracteres y estableciendo los rasgos que habrán de perpetuarse como reconocibles en lo sucesivo.

Destaca por su relevancia comunicativa, en tanto que Los Simpson es una de las series más longevas y exitosas del panorama televisivo global. De otra parte, y bajo un punto de vista iconográfico, sobresale por la renovación que plantea de los códigos de los dibujos animados hibridados con la viñeta, la caricatura y otras manifestaciones gráficas de la sátira, en tanto que da lugar a un modelo o género audiovisual de animación para adultos de gran predicamento en los años noventa.

& Keywords English: Each culture has its specificities that are governed by its socio-cultural norms. Cultures that share the same values and worldviews tend to facilitate the task of translators to transfer specific socio-cultural references to their own audience with minimal intervention. However, translators of distant cultures may find themselves at the mercy of many unsurmountable constraints and need to mitigate transmitting foreign content by resorting to either creative ways or even through blatant manipulation. This paper investigates the transadaptation of Western socio-cultural references of an audiovisual corpus dubbed for Arab audiences. The study looks at how, and to what degree, the Arabic translator managed to render these elements, and what intrinsic or extrinsic factors were behind any shifts in the process. The corpus examined was selected from The Simpsons: Seasons 1, 2 and 3; which was dubbed into Egyptian vernacular in 2005. The series addresses many sensitive issues with candour rarely seen in animated programmes. Because it is animated, it is generally assumed that The Simpsons targets children and teenagers; however, because of its satirical character and some of the themes that it tackles, it is looked at with suspicion and vigilance in the Arab World. Drawing on notions such as culture, ideology, manipulation, while leaning on the Descriptive Translation Studies framework and using Discourse Analysis as a tool to unveil any shifts in translation, the results demonstrate clear manipulation of the source text by the translator which seems to be attributed to his own agenda or the influence of patronage.

Occasionally, significant events occur after a television show's production and/or first airing that necessitate changes to the text in reruns, DVDs, and other distribution platforms like Netflix. This phenomenon was on display after 9/11, when shows including 24, Family Guy, Friends, The Simpsons, and others had full episodes and/or specific scenes cut from distribution. This phenomenon demonstrates how television's popular archive is mutable, popular memory acts as a site of social and political struggle, and production, ancillary markets, official and unofficial distribution, the cultural standing of television and its genres, and other factors interact to determine which aspects of television's past are available to the public at different moments.

In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson (1991) mentions an "aesthetic of cognitive mapping" as a new form of radical aesthetic practice to deal with the set of historical situations and problems symptomatic of late capitalism. For Jameson (1991), cognitive mapping functions as a tool for postmodern subjects to represent the totality of the global late capitalist system, allowing them to situate themselves within the system, and to reenact the critique of capitalism that has been neutralized by postmodernist confusion. While Jameson's notion of cognitive mapping, and specifically its question of how to represent the totality of the late capitalist system, has been taken up by a number of poststructuralist critical race theorists and social geographers (Bartolovich, 2000; Beverly, 2000; Tally Jr., 2000), relatively little attention has been paid to the cognitive mapping of postmodern affect. Drawing upon a close reading of the music and visual art of the nostalgic internet-based "vaporwave" aesthetic alongside Jameson's postmodern theory and the affect theory of Raymond Williams (1977) and Brian Massumi (1995; 1998), this essay argues that vaporwave can be understood as an attempt to aestheticize and thereby map out the affective climate circulating in late capitalist consumer culture. More specifically, this paper argues that through its somewhat obsessive hypersaturation with retro commodities and aesthetics from the 1980s and 1990s, vaporwave simultaneously critiques the salient characteristics of late capitalism such as pastiche, depthlessness, and waning of affect, and enacts a nostalgic longing for a modernism that is fleeing further and further into an inaccessible history. This paper seeks to illustrate the potentiality of Jameson's cognitive mapping project in the realm of affect, and investigate the relationship between late capitalist affect and subcultural aesthetics.

El monstruo es una criatura que persiste en nuestro imaginario colectivo. Se trata de una criatura que a la que constantemente acudimos para referenciarla y representarla, porque existe en el ser humano una extraña necesidad de remitir hacia él. Se trata de un ser capaz de dar vida a nuestros más oscuros deseos y de funcionar como la transgresión perfecta de los tabúes que silencia nuestra cultura. El monstruo es una figura imprescindible para transgredir los conceptos de normalidad que nos sujetan y nos someten. Es por esto que tenemos la necesidad de remitir a esa ambivalencia que nos plantea una y otra vez.

A lo largo de este artículo, ofreceremos una panorámica sobre los conceptos de intermedialidad y el discurso transversal que ofrece la serie animada Los Simpson; centrándonos, muy especialmente, en el modo que emplea para adaptar y reescribir a diferentes monstruos extraídos de la literatura y el cine, en sus capítulos de terror: La casa árbol del Terror (Treehouse of Horror).

The universe of The Simpsons is wide. It is formed by hundreds of characters, each one with a very defined profile. Its objective: to parody entirely to the society. We can find for almost any situation a character who gives life to the series.

To analyze the influence of the program The Simpsons in the society is of vital importance, since with this essay it is tried to evidence the unknown contents that are sent to the viewers, in this case to the young people and as these influence in their behavior and their relation with society.

... Lyotard targets the Enlightenment's authoritative explanations of the world and ... of proving that “aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally”. ... Simpsons has not only aimed its religious satire at Christianity, but has dedicated entire ...

Os Simpsons foi criado por Matt Groening, em 1987. A trama se desenvolve em Springfield e retrata o cotidiano da família Simpsons: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa e Maggie. É uma série polêmica por utilizar sátiras para fazer duras críticas à sociedade e à cultura ocidental. Utilizando cenas do último episódio da 13ª temporada da animação, busca-se responder à seguinte questão: como o outro é pensando dentro do conjunto de ações de uma sociedade organizada? A análise de discurso de vertente francesa se faz presente no desenvolver do projeto, a fim de melhor refletir sobre as ações das personagens. Através desse processo, é perceptível o comportamento imoral do patriarca da família. Homer não é sensível às necessidades e aos direitos dos outros; ele parece não ter benevolência nem justiça. Isso pode se dar ao fato de Homer ser um lutador de classe "média-alta-baixa", que trabalha em uma fábrica sob a tirania de um capitalista cruel (HALWANI, 2007). O projeto baseia-se no conceito de que a ética pode contribuir para fundamentar ou justificar certa forma de comportamento moral, revelando uma relação entre o comportamento moral e as necessidades e os comportamentos sociais (VAZQUEZ, 2000).