Monday, February 18, 2008

"The Wax Never Lies"

Literalization and Satire in "Flaming Moe's"
Episode 45 (8F08), Season 3. Written by Robert Cohen; Directed by Alan Smart & Rich Moore.

Point of entry: "A reasonable definition of satire, then, is 'a literary manner which blends a critical attitude with humor and wit to the end that human institutions or humanity may be improved. The true satirist is conscious of the frailty of institutions of man's devising and attempts through laughter not so much to tear them down as to inspire a remodeling.'" - Robert Harris, in "The Purpose and Method of Satire", at http://www3.telus.net/eddyelmer/Tools/satire.htm. Quoted text from A Handbook to Literature (eds. William Thrall, Addison Hibbard and C. Hugh Holman).


Personal note: Bravely and regularly, The Simpsons has satirized many institutions, but in contrast to the episodes in the first two seasons which featured fairly pedestrian plots and minimal jabs at the world around its viewers, Season 3 was where the show entered the new territory of the sustained "spoof" episodes (a style of episode perhaps best executed in "Cape Feare" in Season 5). "Flaming Moe's" is one of my all-time favourites because it is the episode where the show moved beyond not only the clever Poe re-tellings such as "The Telltale Head" of Season 1 or the segment of Season 2's original "Treehouse of Horror" based on "The Raven", but also beyond the cleverly-titled "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" of even weeks before this landmark episode, and into the realm of well-crafted satire.

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Over its history, perhaps the most important institution that The Simpsons has satirized is television itself, and "Flaming Moe's" (originally aired Nov. 21, 1991) quite evidently weaves in an extended send-up of the most popular television series of its moment, Cheers. But two other social institutions - the "local pub" and its surrounding "social drinking" culture, as well as the famous "American" entrepreneurial spirit - are tackled as well in this episode, making it one that lends itself well to an analysis of the satirical workings of this television series in their infancy.

The situation comedy (or "sitcom") has always come laced with clichés and characters who are little more than types one would find in their various situations, from the stereotyped family or gender roles depicted in early series like Father Knows Best or I Love Lucy through the many different "characters" one could meet on the next barstool over in a Boston pub. Indeed, later in "Flaming Moe's," this holds true, as a gentrified Barney (still a drunk, but now wearing a suit and getting chummy with "Armando and Raffi") stands in for Cheers's Norm Peterson, and new bar staff (Woody Boyd and Diane Chambers, effectively, though neither are given a name in the script) filling the roles that the viewer is familiar with from Cheers after introducing the setting - the all-important situation in this genre - with a wonderful parodic introductory theme that can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8EyvFgd_Kw.


Though this comes around the two-thirds mark of the episode, the groundwork has already been laid by Moe's hiring of an intellectual waitress and the argument from the outset that cements the parody by drawing the analogy between Moe and Cheers's owner/bartender Sam Malone, who infamously bedded both Diane and her replacement (after Shelley Long left the series), Rebecca. The waitress is obviously Diane, as she calls Moe "Morris", as Diane called all the Cheers characters by their full names (though Moe will never again be called by this name on the series); what's more, Sam Simon wrote all of her dialogue, turning back to his previous employment as a staff writer on Cheers. The knowledge of Shelley Long's career inevitably comes back at the end of the episode to add to the spoof when, Flaming Moe's having returned to just Moe's, the waitress has "left to pursue a movie career," which is of course Shelley Long's reason for leaving Cheers.

The parodied introductory theme goes beyond a simple spoof, though; in fact, one could even argue that these sketches - or at least, the type of drinking culture they depict - had already been parodied in Season 2's "The War of the Simpsons", where Homer's false memory of the party is rendered with images of well-dressed party-goers classically enjoying alcohol. (As is noted in the episode's Wikipedia entry, these sketches, are more in the style of New Yorker cartoonist Al Hirschfeld's caricature of The Algonquin Round Table.) "Flaming Moe's" montage treads into the territory of satire, however, as what is really happening in Moe's bar is as follows: Barney abuses alcohol to the point that he passes out in the street; uniformed officers are in dereliction of duty and drinking instead of upholding the law; Moe, with his hand in an lascivious postion, is slapped by his employee in response to what appears to be a sexual assault; patrons use whatever they can find around them as weapons to bloody each other in a full-on bar brawl while Moe and Barney egg them on; Aerosmith uses the Love Tester (they're Aerosmith - it's impossible that they're hard up for a lay!), and a scantily-clad Mrs. Krabappel courts two sailors ("sailors on leave", I'm sure) at once.


The lyrics, too, are embittered compared to those used by Cheers. Where there was once:

Making your way in the world today / takes everything you've got
Taking a break from all your worries / sure would help a lot
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see / our troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name
You want to go where people know / people are all the same
You want to go where everybody knows your name


The Simpsons gives us:

When the weight of the world has got you down / and you want to end your life
Bills to pay, a dead-end job and problems with the wife
But don't throw in the towel / 'cause there's a place right down the block
Where you can drink your misery away
At Flaming Moe's (Let's all go to Flaming Moe's)
Where liquor in a mug / Will warm you like a hug
Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away
Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away


While both introductory sequences do tend to musically resemble jingles from 1940's radio commercials, the former seems to promote the more sanitized version of alcohol-fuelled escapism, whereas the latter gives us a more visceral (not to mention accurate) depiction of what it often means to use alcohol to forget one's problems. And this underbelly of social drinking is brought to life in two other ways, by (1) Homer's visit to a different bar, which, presided over by a one-eyed, tattooed shotgun-wielding maniac who thinks it stretch to provide a clean glass, provides a stark contrast to responsible drinking in a respectable establishment, and (2) by Moe's feeble and frightening attempt to explain away the 30 cases of "non-narkotik" cough syrup (shamelessly plastered with Krusty the Clown's face) by saying that he "got hooked on the stuff while he was in the service". Here it is easy to see the duplicity of the cough syrup - for I think it's not a stretch to include cough syrup among the perfumes, colognes, mouthwashes, rubbing alcohol or worse that the desperate alcoholic will drink seeking that kind of escape - that will be exemplified later in the series, when "Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment" will end with that classic line "To alcohol: the cause of - and solution to - all of life's problems!"

The final image in the Flaming Moe's montage is perhaps most important, as we see Homer - the regular customer, that is to say the reason for the bar's existence - stuck outside while we hear "Happiness is just a Flaming Moe away". In the montage, two other regulars are harmed: Barney's serious drinking problem is neglected as he lies in the street, and "Glasses Guy" (does he even have a name?), another regular in the bar, looks incredulous after being attacked with a broken bottle. In the latter panel, Moe and Barney are actively encouraging the harming of the original customer base, something that Moe does more passively in this episode when it is revealed that Homer is "not on the list", and when, as Homer desperately tries to make Moe understand that he's just lost him as a customer, Moe is drowning his voice out with the sound of a cash register ringing in sale after sale. Quite literally, the entrepreneur has lost touch with his customer - the customer who in a long-ago golden age was "always right", etc. - and here we see the dark underbelly of the entrepreneurial spirit: the rise of the vice industry and cash's usurping of the customer as "king".


This institution of the local pub and traditional business success have both been successfully lampooned, as has television, and we can safely say that in each case, this episode has as its purpose to snap the viewer to attention and examine the man-made institutions around us. The show doesn't necessarily say that escaping reality through alcohol, or running a successful business, or that even the sitcom are in and of themselves a problem. If there were something wrong with this third target, after all, the show would be criticizing itself and its viewers outwardly - something they really didn't have the audacity to do at this early stage of the series (though Homer does note in this episode that "If there were any justice in the world, [his] face would be on a bunch of crappy merchandise", a fun aside coming at the moment where the series's popularity was exploding, making this already the case).

But more than this, the show gives us countless signals of its desire to test our limits, and to make us see the way the seams are exposed in such institutions. The show opens with "Eye on Springfield", a TV news magazine hosted by Kent Brockman that seems to focus on nothing but women in bikinis. The unwittingly astute Homer relaxes to this progam and channels a term used (if not coined) by Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death to decry the decline of the institution of television news programs in the heyday of shows like A Current Affair: "ah, infotainment". (It is also worth noting how Brockman in this segment - with two women on his arms - is equated to Krusty the Clown when the latter makes a similar entrance to Flaming Moe's, dressed uncharacteristically in maroon that matches Brockman's usual suit. Acutally, Brockman too comes to Moe's with an attractive woman on his arm, proving that as a "legitimate journalist", he is as big of a celebrity as the television clown.) Homer's blind acceptance of the term shows - as does Homer's choice to jump on the opportunity to sock Bart on the arm for speaking while jinxed, claiming simply that these are the rules - the dullest character, Homer, accepting an institution blindly.


The acceptance of conventional wisdom in the face of a duplicity challenging it is also seen in one of the games played during Lisa's slumber party - in one of the series's only moments where Lisa has more friends than even the rarely-seen Janie - in which the girls drip a candle's wax into a bucket of water, and the shape that the wax takes is to represent the girl's future husband's trade (a sad convention in the institution of the slumber party). Lisa's friend drips the wax, and is upset that it appears to be a mop, signifying that her husband will be a janitor. But the open-minded Lisa challenges this right away, turning it upside down so that it is an olympic torch and saying the man in her future will instead be a triumphant athlete. The girl drips again, and says "oh no, a dustpan," at which point even Lisa admits defeat: "the wax never lies." It has always been my opinion though (seriously, from the first time I saw this episode as a kid!) that this supposed dustpan looks like a paintbrush - albeit a wide one more likely to be used by a house-painter than an artist, but nevertheless still not such a seemingly negative fate.

Mrs. Krabappel in this episode straddles two worlds as well: the childrens' educator by day, the veneer is stripped off when, upon Bart's presentation of liquor bottles to the class, she tells him to take them to teachers' lounge, and that he may collect what's left at the end of the day. By night, Mrs. K. is a drunken floozie throwing herself at the declaredly married Homer as well as Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer (in addition to the sailors). Not only is the educational system satirized, but so too is the political institution when Mayor Quimby declares a given day in the episode's time frame to be "Flaming Moe's Day", despite its already being Veterans' Day. In response to this slight, he simply says from his high authority "It can be two things!".


Indeed, it would appear to be the point of this episode to expose those things that can be "two things" and to show that most may not be only what they seem: Bart discovers that "Hugh Jass" is not just a funny-sounding name, but is actually a bar patron's name, and is forced to back out of his prank call; Tipsy McStagger doesn't actually exist, but is "a composite of other successful logos"; and ultimately, the Flaming Moe is also the Flaming Homer, which trips Bart up during his show and tell segment on "inventors we admire". In the classroom, though, such duplicity can't exist: Nelson Muntz cries out to Bart that this drink is called a Flaming Moe, and "Your Dad didn't invent it, you wuss, Moe the Bartender did!", giving Moe but one identity (his profession). The origin of the drink is hastily confirmed by Mrs. K., who says that "everyone knows that," and from her position as educator, displaces truth with a commonly held falsehood. Pity poor Bart in this case, having to reconcile the images of his father as either inventor or fraud - Bart thought that simply by bringing enough for everybody he would avoid reprimand, as would be the case if he brought cookies or donuts...

It is important, though, that not all things in the episode are duplicit. The contrast between those that are and those that aren't is drawn by literalization; in addition to this concretizing of Moe's only role, for example, we can note Moe's pointing out of the "sneeze guard" on the salad bar, on which Barney promptly sneezes and declares that "these things really work". This may be the only thing in this episode that is exactly what it appears to be - what else could a specifically engineered item such as this be? Everything else, however, is up for grabs.


So what do we do other than revel in all of these satire-enabling double-edged swords? I think the best thing to do may be to consider Homer's famous speech about "making people happy" from his "gumdrop house, on lollipop lane" with his drink despite not getting any credit for it and his subsequent storming out of the bedroom. He sticks his head back in the door, of course, to tell Marge that he was being sarcastic, in case she couldn't tell. To Homer, who takes things as they are without questioning them (as do those who literalize Moe's figure of speech and spit out the drink due to the "blood and sweat" in it), using sarcasm is a big step, and indeed, this is one of the first episodes of The Simpsons that is not as straight-ahead as it appears. (For Marge, it is evident... "Well, duh," she sarcastically responds.)

But it is Homer's ability to conceive of a secondary alternative that gets the action of the episode started in the first place. Out of beer, he has to think of a second way to drink away the memory of Marge's sisters' hairy legs. He makes a mixed drink, accidentally adds cough syrup and - once seredipitously ignited by a stray ash from Patty's cigarette - discovers a new drink. This alternate use of the ingredients - the refuse from both bottoms of liquor bottles and already consumed tobacco, plus the cough syrup - shows the potential that all things have within them to be multifacted (like Aristotle's differentiation between things in actu - realized - and things in potentia - their potential). Moe's bar already has this problem: its potential is not realized before the new drink is sold, and it is serving as no more than a cigarette machine for the junior high students in the neighbourhood. By recognizing the potential - which could also be called the dark side - of the cough syrup, the secret ingredient in the drink around which the whole plot turns, the bar is brought to life. One man's junk is another man's treasure, as Barney (the alcoholic)makes clear by telling Homer that "only an idiot would give away a million dollar idea like that". Unbeknownst to Barney, "that" is a drink based in cough syrup, elixir for a desperate drunk and in a way the height of the vice industry - fitting, no?


And it is similarly this dark side of the drink that will bring about the downfall: the shame of the ingredient and the theft of the idea are, like Quasimodo, the repressed dark secret of Victor Hugo's extolled Notre Dame de Paris - a likeness that Homer takes on while exposing the truth. (Yes, I will propose the Disney's depiction of Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame owes something to Homer's appearance in this scene). In a way, the arrangement is almost Faustian: Moe, out of beer and desperate (as "increased job satisfaction and family togetherness are poison for purveyors of mind-numbing intoxicants") makes a deal with the devil, turning to Homer's cough syrup concoction and learning what he doesn't have the right to know to increase his standing.

Even if Moe too defines himself by his profession as Nelson did, the episode's final line points to a double-faceted Moe as well: it ends with Homer telling Moe that he is the best friend a guy could ever have. While this might just be a barb at a typical sitcom ending, we have to note here that Homer finally has what he has wanted ever since the drink became popular - recognition and, more importantly, his watering hole back. Moe didn't make the million dollars - which he would have shared with Homer, though Homer didn't know this - and welcomed Homer back, which to Homer, seeking only to get drunk, was enough. But out of all of this, we have to note that while Moe may step on Homer's toes to get to the top, he can be reasoned with; it is Homer who cannot be stopped from cruelly exacting revenge on Moe by exposing the secret ingredient. Homer's obsession with revenge dominates the episode, and in the end, though Moe's bar goes back to being what it was beforehand, the satire is complete, as everyone has been exposed, punished and taught a lesson, and no one has risen above his station. Though Homer appears to be the hero, all along he may have been the villain - the best double-edged sword of them all.


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Other observations:

  • Among the many "Moes" that Homer utters when obsessed with revenge on Moe, one of them is Marge asking Bart to mow the lawn, to which he responds "Ok, but you promised me moe money." I had some ideas as to wher this came from, but once I researched them I was proven wrong. Particularly: "Mo' Money", a Wayans brothers film from Columbia Pictures, but it was released the following July. (In passing, the Notorious B.I.G. song "Mo' Money Mo' Problems," was released in 1997.) What this is based on, then, I wish I knew.
  • Did anyone else notice that the invention for which Martin Prince says to thank A.J.P. Martin, the Gas Chromatograph, is what Professor Frink uses to deduce the secret ingredient ("Love?!?") in the drink? As far as I can recall, Professor Frink is always using machines he invents, except in this instance... unless he is of course getting credit for someone else's invention, which would dovetail nicely with the episode's theme...

Sunday, February 3, 2008

"Hey, that's not the wallet inspector...!"

Homer the Greek: Anagnorisis in "Homer Goes to College"
Episode 84 (1F02), Season 5. Written by Conan O'Brien, directed by Jim Reardon.

Point of entry: "The source of wonder is often the tragic recognition or anagnorisis. Recognition has been variously defined. In Aristotle it is the recognition of persons through tokens, artistic contrivances, memory, reasoning (including false inferences) and lastly, arising out of the events themselves (as in Oedipus Rex). Aristotle defines this anagnorisis as a change from ignorance to knowledge." -- from Poetics, as summarized by Souvik Mukherjee, at http://www.english-literature.org/essays/aristotle_poetics.html.

Personal note: Where else could I start this particular series of examinations but here, in the episode where the dim Homer enters the academic world? One of my more enjoyable courses was on Anagnorisis during my Master's year, taught by guest professor Piero Boitani of La Sapienza (Rome). In this entry, I attempt to apply the study of this poetic device to a legendary episode.

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In Greek Tragedy, as Aristotle states in his Poetics, there is a moment of anagnorisis (or recognition) in which the main character progresses from ignorance to knowledge. To Aristotle, recognitions could be made from many sources, but the few above are the most common, and are given in his preferred hierarchy, from lowest to highest.

Nearly every episode of The Simpsons can be watched without recognizing all of the allusions made, but the lowest form of recognition - that by tokens, which is exemplified by Aristotle in the example of Odysseus being recognized by his nurse by a characteristic scar - is rarely seen within The Simpsons. One example would perhaps be in the episode where Homer joins the Stonecutters, where he is recognized as the chosen one due to his birthmark. Aristotle dislikes this form of recognition because it is demonstrates a lack of imagination on the author's part.

The recognitions necessary in the viewer's conscience for the show's many allusions to work, however, must often be made by way of tokens, and I can choose the allusions from this episode as ones typical of the series. The show's opening couch gag, for example, is taken from Monty Python's Flying Circus, and in another instance, the show uses the iconic song "Louie Louie" to enhance the depiction of Homer's college years by drawing on this song's use in the film Animal House. These allusions function not only within Aristotle's schema of recognition, but can also be seen semiotically, as icons bringing with them certain significations. In our "post-modern" (though I hesitate to use that term) climate in which the show was created, it is likely best to take such allusions in more of an intertextual way, as quotations - which is certainly fertile ground for a separate article.

Anagnorisis is not so much focused on the viewer's response as it is on the depiction of recognition within the sphere created in the artwork itself, and we can look at the second type of recognition - that which occurs through artistic contrivance - as it occurs within the show itself, when we see such a contrivance used in the film Homer is watching (School of Hard Knockers). In this film - clearly intended to be a fictional and hyperbolically bad campus romp film in the vein of Animal House or Meatballs we see the Dean (aptly, "Dean Bitterman", a stock name for a stock character) walking with a man in a blue suit. Now, one would presume that this man could be anyone, and of course, we don't have enough time to see if other clues are given - for example, classic cues such as the motorcade or a Secret Service agent could have been used to allow its viewer to infer this man's role - but instead, we are presented with a direct confession not unlike those made in Dante's Commedia, that is to say a simple confession of identity. In the shortened allusion made by the show-within-the-show, the recognition is as unimaginative and and direct as we could normally expect from this grade of film.

The third and slightly better type of recognition (in Aristotle's eyes) is when a character recognizes another character by memory, and the comic moments brought about when we see this type of recognition are enhanced by thinking of them through the lens of anagnorisis. In the episode's opening moments, Homer is tested for his competence, and ends up "melting down" the test work station (despite it not actually being linked to any radioactive material). Later in the episode, when he challenges his professor - "Excuse me, Professor Brainiac, I worked in a nuclear power plant, I think I know how a proton accelerator works..." - and ends up turning the school radioactive as well. Leaving the building, two members of the emergency response team arrive; Homer directs them inside with a simple "It's in there", to which they respond "Thanks, Homer." Homer, therefore, is recognized by memory, and though we don't see these characters earlier in the episode, it is reasonable to infer that they are but two of the many emergency personnel Homer has kept busy with his record of accidents.

But a second instance in this episode also involves a recognition by way of memory. When Homer and the "nerds" are expelled from Springfield University, though the nerds believe they will be fine, the moment they step outside the campus gates are robbed by the series's criminal for all seasons, Snake, who poses as the "Wallet Inspector". As famously stated, Homer comes to a recognition too: "Hey... that's not the wallet inspector...". This can be seen as either the third or fourth type of recognition in Aristotle's hierarchy.

We can look at Homer's long pause before coming to this realization and accept that Homer must have reasoned this out deductively: Snake is not wearing a uniform or badge saying "Wallet Inspector", nor does he present goverment identification or any other token to allow for his recognition. Homer could therefore deduce (better late than never) that this man is not the wallet inspector and satisfy Aristotle's second-best form of recognition. Particularly if he heard Snake's aside ("Wow, I can't believe that worked!") before the criminal makes his getaway.

Before passing to the other way that this scene can be interpreted (which, for my part, I find absolutely hilarious), I would like to take a moment to note something about the text of Aristotle's Poetics which currently survives. The Greeks of course had two principal forms of drama, the tragedy (which we study at length from the Poetics) and the comedy. Forgive me for working from Wikipedia here, they just summarize it so well (I still paraphrase and inject my own thoughts, though):

There is evidence that a very large section - as much as half - of the Poetics is missing, including the section that dealt with comedy. While this section did not survive, the New Comedy - a genre that flourished not even 100 years after Aristotle's death - often used anagnorisis for its resolution, and did so by way of birth tokens (the lowest form of recognition). This genre is mimicked in the work of English dramatists such as Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare in the Jacobean period, one example being in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, in which the final revelation is that Perdita is actually of noble enough birth to marry her lover Polixines, who is a Prince. Her identity is proven by a letter, written in the King's hand, that is suddenly found near the end of the play, using the lowest two forms of recognition - a token and a contrivance - to bring about the recognition.

Knowing that comedies have historically made use of the lower forms of recognition to greater success (School of Hard Knockers included, of course), the second possible interpretation of Homer's recognition that Snake is not the Wallet Inspector could move down the hierarchy one level, to recognition by way of memory. How could Homer know that Snake is not the Wallet Inspector? Instead of a lack of identity-confirming evidence, Homer instead may have a wealth of contradictory evidence that allows him to deny that Snake is who he says he is: a memory. I find myself nearly dying of laughter at this point in the episode, as all I can infer is this: Homer knows Snake isn't the Wallet Inspector because someone else has robbed him this way before. If we are in fact to look toward the lower forms of anagnorisis when studying their use in comedies, while I wouldn't suggest blindly applying this hierarchy, it does encourage me to lean toward memory (and not deduction) as the reason for Homer's recognition.

The highest form of recognition, to Aristotle, occurs when it is a product of the events themselves, such as in Oedipus Rex, where the identity (of King Laius's killer) is revealed in the plot, and not through the outside actors of tokens, contrivance, memory or deduction. While the following may be a touch tenuous, we can see an example of recognition coming directly from a plot, if not necessarily that of the episode itself.

Homer imagines that his college experience will be exactly as it appears in the campus classics like Animal House, and engages in many "typical" activities (pranks, for the most part, but also, a road trip and the spiking of punch at the freshman mixer). Homer assigns a role to the Dean ("that crusty old Dean...."), as well as to himself ("a jock") and to the pre-labelled "nerds". It is by applying his vision of university that Homer's story is resolved, but along the way he shows evidence of the hubris - excessive pride - typical of the Greek tragic hero (the burning of his High School diploma, the plan to save the Dean's life, the prank phone call to the Dean in which he calls him a "stupid-head", and the belief that he can write the entire periodic table of the elements on his hand all provide worthy examples). In classically tragic form, he also experiences hamartia - missing the mark: respecitively, the house catches fire, the Dean is hit by the car the nerds were supposed to save him from, the pay-phone from which Homer calls is visible from the Dean's window, and Homer fails his exam.

The resolution of the story - with Homer confessing to the Dean that the nerds were innocent, and all of them being re-admitted to college - is in line with the plot by which Homer's actions are dictated, and even the nerds pick up how blindly loyal to the plot Homer is when they ask "why does [a prank] always have to be 'zany'?" Homer is, in fact, as (hubristically... if that's a word...) loyal to this plot as Oedipus was to his quest for justice, and in each story (Oedipus Rex and "Homer Goes to College"), the title character goes, from full examination that starts from a position of ignorance (Oedipus quests for justice in his "trial" before Thebes, while Homer has his EYES propped open in a riff on Clockwork Orange to learn as much as possible before the, well, examination) to full knowledge that is harmful: in Oedipus's case, he is exiled and can no longer be in Thebes once he is revealed to be the murderer of Laius, while Homer laments "Now I'm going to lose my job just because I'm dangerously unqualified". For each character, the recognition of himself as the problem element in his environment - keep in mind that Mr. Burns hides Homer in the plant's basement on inspection day - is the passage from ignorance to knowledge that brings about each character's downfall.

One could make the argument, as I hope to have shown above, that this episode, while a satirical take on comedies such as Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds, is actually structured like a tragedy, which is why its use of anagnorisis is so important. Perhaps most interestingly, though, we can look to these campus romps for the little morality lesson that is often taught when, inevitably, the jokers are on the verge of expulsion from their university. In most cases, the protagonists scam their way out and still succeed, despite acting in such a way that, in accordance with a tragic plot, should see them punished. "Homer Goes to College", in addition to being a particularly violent episode, gives us this tragic punishment: Homer has to go back to college in the end, and succeed without cheating, the true purpose of anagnorisis: to make the protagonist learn. This is Homer's peripeteia - reversal of fortune - which is of course undercut by the credits, which use the classic photo montage and "Louie Louie" again, almost to remind us that even though it was a tragedy and used anagnorisis in the way typical of that genre (or, failing that, in a way that is more appropriate to New Comedy as practiced in Ancient Greece and Renaissance England), it will be much more fun to immortalize this episode alongside the college films it parodies - which would be fine too. This aside, I think that the level of violence in the episode - a much criticized point among viewers - can be taken as indicative of the violence done by the college comedies to both the learning process and its depiction in classical tragedy, and if we take these films as the episodes subject matter, we can it as more of an attack on than a glorification of the films Homer attempts to use as models for his learning. The purpose of tragedy, after all, was to educate its audience through the purging of pity and fear. By structuring this episode as a tragedy, and including gratuitous violence - "Dad, start digging some nerd holes..." - I think that when originally aired, this episode can be said to have accomplished such a feat.

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Other Observations:
  • Lisa's list of famous nerds, including David Byrne of Talking Heads, is referenced when the episode where "Scratchy finally gets Itchy" comes on under the title "Burning Down the Mouse," a reference to Talking Heads's career-defining single, "Burning Down the House." This is especially interesting given the parodic reference in the title - in a special episode of a cartoon-within-a-cartoon, we see a writer sticking in a "just-for-fun" and somewhat erudite allusion. (Kind of like what Conan O'Brien does with Homer emerging from the melted-down test work station as some variation of the Incredible Hulk and/or Karloff's Frankenstein?) The recognition that takes place in the viewer's mind when watching the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon is therefore layered in a nice "meta-" way, and by displaying self-consciousness about the way recognition works in the universe within the Simpsons (showing that the writers of the shows the characters watch also use these references), the writer is also encouraging us to analyze the allusions used.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Prologue

Nine months ago, I left, as the Americans call post-secondary education of nearly all forms, "college". I took with me six years of memories and reams of papers I may never look at again, and I fear that my two degrees - a Combined Honours B.A. in English and French (University of Western Ontario), and an M.A. in Comparative Literature (University of Toronto) - may be among them.

University education, at least in the above disciplines, has never seemed to me to be more similar to alchemy than it does at this point in my life, as it professes to magically turn any form of artistic sensibility, creativity and or general humanism into the well-developed critical faculties required for seeking out, as Matthew Arnold would have it, "the best that is known and thought in the world." With a shock, any form of emotional or personal attachment to a significant work of art is torn to shreds upon entrance into the academy, and ever so slowly over the years beyond the first, the last ribbons of the historical document that is one's life experience fall gently to the floor, drifting slightly on the winds of establishment. Artwork after artwork fell from its secure place in my (for lack of a more precise term) soul based on the "teachings" of the institution, and I was normalized even to the point where I must now regard even my tightly- held John Steinbeck (no less than the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature) with grains of skepticism.

True, everything should to an extent be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. And yet, in all the years of learning what I should not be studying, the foundational place of one work of art in my personal make-up could not be shaken. That piece of art is the animated television series currently mid-way through it's 19th season: The Simpsons.

The reasons to revile this television program - at least, from the perspective of the critic of art - are based not only on the fact that, like Steinbeck, it has a populist appeal, but rather, that it is delivered by way of a populist medium. Not only is it on television, it is the lowest form of television: further, as a cartoon, The Simpsons rank even lower on these critics' radars as the animated descendant of the plebian comic book. Television, after all, is no more than an instrument for the promotion of consumption, with programs existing to do no more than fill the space between commercials, to ensure that large numbers of viewers see the ads which pay the network's bills. And yet, when confronted with it, the academy more often than not has to at least accept that the show is well-written and good example of satire, though in my experience, it has done so begrudgingly more often than not. There seems almost to be an element of shame in the teacher when the series is discussed in a classroom setting beyond high school, as I discovered several times (particularly during discussions of parody, pastiche, intertextuality and/or post-modernism) during my so-called education. The Simpsons, however, has been responible for a large part of my learning - not the same as education, it should be noted - be it through its emotional impact, cynicism, realistic portrayal of the world it inhabits, allusion and quotation, and occasionally, through nothing more than the telling of a well-designed and well-executed tale with an emotional impact that embarrasses the floating corpses of live-action television actors and their lame-duck writers who are often little more than slaves to the media empires they serve and write for little more than to increase their market share.

When you live in a media-rich society like that which we enjoy, however, this is a creation that is readily consumed, and thanks to syndication based on the show's high ratings, it is a work of art that is available to be consumed repeatedly: with the standard digital cable package, there are usually between six and 12 different episodes aired per day. Inevitably, this will lead to closer scrutiny, and things not evident in the first consumption of an episode will emerge that fourth, fifth or ninety-eighth time it is watched. The true joy of The Simpsons is in its ability to stay somewhat relevant, for even in episodes from those first years (with animation the show's creators are the first to call, among other epithets, "squishy"), the potential to be re-thought through the lens of a new (or more likely, "classic") work of art one has experienced since seeing that episode, be it a high art form such as painting, sculpture, "classical" music or architecture, or a lower form, such as other cartoons, television shows, films or comics. It is by entering into dialogue with art and history that Simpsons can be timeless, and its continued popularity - particularly in syndication and in DVD sales - runs against the grain, as this is not sold a "classic television" product, but as something which enrages its detractors by proving itself to be as relevant nearly twenty years on as it was in its first years.

The difficulty with The Simpsons, however, is that it is very hard to work from in an academic context. This is not to say that I don't dream of the day where a proposal for a Ph.D. on this television series gets me into Harvard (or equally, Ryerson...) and leads me into a career of teaching undergraduates of the value of this television program - in fact, this blog will most likely serve as a series of rough notes for just such a purpose - but there are difficulties beyond the reputation of its medium. For one, the episodes are short, and rarely allow for a prolonged discussion of any given topic - just when an allusion or reference is made, it's more often than not over before it can really make an extended comment on the matter discussed. These insertions for the erudite, however, are gratifying for not only the viewer, but also the writer, and by recognizing these allusions and other minutia as doors through which we can access the show, an episode's tone can shift drastically. It is for this reason that these references are more than simple gratification of the slumming intellectual, as reading this work of art through some of the chosen intertexts can truly alter the viewing, and make what we can accept as a somewhat formulaic and slapstick-based oeuvre into a work that can equally be seen as creative criticism of the world in which "we" live (Canadians, Americans and all global citizens included). The Simpsons enters into dialogue not necessarily with a given canon of artworks, but it is the quintessential text of cultural studies, a synthesizer of the zeitgeist and that which came before.

It is these tensions and many others that I will set out to explore in a series of readings of Simpsons episodes. The readings come really in no particular order than whatever I have recently seen or read about, and may in some cases be on a single episode (as will be my first planned commentary, "Hey, that's not the Wallet Inspector..."), sometimes on a single allusion, or character (I don't know what it will be, but I have to say something about Sideshow Bob), or sometimes on a theme taken up between several episodes: Sports is another one that I feel I will have to get out my system early on, as some of my personal favourite episodes include Homer at the Bat, Lisa on Ice and the Pee-Wee Football episode whose title escapes me for the moment. I feel also that the odd entry (such as this one, I guess) will be one with no purpose other than to engage popular and/or academic criticisms of the series, in some cases specific books or articles and in other cases comments from people around me (the most common being those where people debate when the show "jumped the shark"). My studies will be somewhat limited, as until seasons beyond the tenth are released to DVD I will be stuck watching more recent episodes on television (and therefore, sometimes in cut-for-syndication mode), and I will come clean and admit that, like most Simpsons fans, my most used sources will likely include Wikipedia and the SNPP (Springfield Nuclear Power Plant) archive, at http://www.snpp.com/.

Please feel free to comment on anything written in any of these entries should you be either a frequent reader or should you stumble across this page, and should you stumble across this page, please feel free to become a frequent reader. I look forward to sharing most of what this television show has been teaching me since, just before Christmas of 1989 (as a six-year old), I discovered a show that would become a bigger part of my life than I could ever have imagined.