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.
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