Posted on 12/15/2009 8:44:32 AM PST by Borges
America’s most famous dysfunctional cartoon family, The Simpsons, this week marks two decades of making the world laugh while offering alternative television therapy to millions of fans.
The now distinctive yellow characters of Homer, Maggie and their children, the intellectually-challenged Bart, his smart sister Lisa and pacifier-sucking baby Maggie first burst onto American TV screens on December 17, 1989.
Over the past 20 years, they have entered into the national and global consciousness as an icon of television entertainment.
The Fox network show’s influence on popular American culture was highlighted when The Simpsons were idolized on US postage stamps earlier this year, and in November Marge Simpson was the cover girl forPlayboy magazine.
The gravelly-voiced Marge, whose upswept blue hair-do defies gravity, became the first cartoon character to grace the cover of the magazine, more known for featuring movie stars, athletes and other celebrities in states of undress.
The show’s success has surprised even creator Matt Groening and executive producer Al Jean, the creative pens behind the family which lives in the shadow of a nuclear reactor in a fictional town called Springfield.
“I knew that the show would be a success, but I didn’t know that it would be so big, last so long and become a global phenomenon,” Groening said earlier this year.
“The Simpsons immediately struck a chord with viewers across the country as it poked fun at itself and everything in its wake,” Fox studios said in a statement.
“With its subversive humor and delightful wit, the series has made an indelible imprint on American pop culture, and the family members have become television icons.”
The series is now the longest running comedy in US television history, and has received numerous awards.
Fox is planning to mark the 20th birthday with a special documentary about how the world views The Simpsons to be directed by Oscar-nominated filmmakerMorgan Spurlock, star of “Super Size Me” and “30 Days”.
“When they first called me about this, I thought it was a prank and I hung up,” Spurlock said.
“And then my agent called back and said, ‘No, no, this is for real,’ at which point I fainted. Then when I woke up, I called everyone I knew because it was the coolest thing I could ever get to do in my career.”
The documentary “The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3D on Ice” will air on January 10.
Numerous celebrities have been lampooned on the show over the decades, including most recently French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his glamorous wife, former model Carla Bruni.
They appeared in a November episode entitled “The Devil Wears Nada” in which bungling paterfamilias, the doughnut-loving Homer and his colleague Carl Carlsonvisit Paris and bump into Bruni, a cigarette-smoking femme fatale in a stylish ballgown.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries the Bruni character throws herself into Carl’s arms and declares: “I want to make love, right now.”
While Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair and Fox owner Rupert Murdoch recorded their own voices for their appearances and escaped with a gentle ribbing, the harsher Sarkozy parody appeared without their consent.
So far though no US president, current or former, has ever accepted an invite to appear, although President Barack Obama did send a nice rejection, Jean said earlier this year.
Premiered on the then fledgling Fox channel as a half-hour Christmas special on December 17, 1989 and then as a regular series from January 14, 1990, the success of the Simpsons is a TV legend. Today it is broadcast in 45 languages.
And in 2007 they hit the big screen for the first time with a feature-length film “The Simpsons Movie.”
The epic took four years to complete and Groening and Jean said a new film was only a distant possibility.
“I suppose someday there might be a sequel, but not yet,” Groening said.
Ping!
Simpsons has actually been around a couple years longer, technically, as it was a series of shorts on the Tracey Ullman show.
I have never watched even 10 minutes of this completely stupid cartoon and in my lifetime never will. I just do not find any humor in this cartoon.
If you’ve never watched it then yes you won’t find anything.
Used to be good in the 1990s. Jumped the shark around 2000 when it started to preach hardcore leftist propaganda without even trying to disguise it.
For a long time it was the most conservative show on TV.
I’m a huge Simpsons fan, but it died about 11 years ago. I especially love the Halloween episodes, but the last one I saw was so unfunny, it was amazing. I didn’t laugh once—sad. Such a great show, but it should’ve gone away long ago. And the movie mostly sucked, too.
Sadly, The Simpsons is also a sign of how far our society has declined in the past twenty years. Speaking as a former fan who has since moved on to watching more “degenerate” programming such as South Park, I was just a young boy when the show first started. I remember that, in many quarters, it was considered quite controversial in its displays of a dysfunctional family.
Now the show is considered tame and almost wholesome. This was best explained in South Park when Eric Cartman meets Bart Simpson and they compare the worst things they’ve done - Bart cut off the head of a statue and Cartman made a kid eat his own parents. When the Simpsons tries to push the envelope in the way current programs do, it simply comes off as contrived. Incidentally, I stopped watching the Simpsons in favor for those other shows simply because that lack of ability to push the envelope in a non-forced manner has directly affected its ability to be funny. When it tries it just never fits because it betrays the essence of what the show once was.
Still, there is something sad about us as a society when that which once had parts of society up in arms has come to be considered a wholesome mainstay of sorts.
IIRc, the show pretty much jumped the rails about the time it had the "gay" episode where Carl and Lenny(?) come out of the closet, and Homer had to deal with it. Really went overboard on pushing off the gay agenda onto the viewers.
And most of the stuff people said about it in the early 1990s was false. It was never really raunchy or scataological and the characters always felt remorse for their actions. Most of the people complaning never watched it.
Best line from Sunday night when Bart wanted a brother. “Dad said he doesn’t need a Husay to my Uday”.
“The Simpsons” ride at Universal- best ride evah!
Reminds me of the years when I used to enjoy this series.
bttt
Amen to that! I watched it a few times and then decided to quit. It is to me a perfect example of everything that is wrong with America. JMHO
I has a huge fan until about 6 or 7 years ago.
Stopped watching as it visibly aged.
The movie, however, was fantastic and we watch it as a family 2 or 3 times a month.
America’s most famous dysfunctional family the Obama’s he thinks he’s Nero and Michell thinks very party is a costume party.
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