When it's good, satire makes you think, and The Simpsons skewers everything from nuclear waste to alien abductions, the movies, TV, and official hypocrisy. And the nature of the best satire is, of course, to poke fun at human foibles. The nature of Bart's abrasive commentary is satirical. But you can laugh at him because you don't want to be like him." But I used to get letters saying, Homer isn't wearing a seat belt he's a bad example. "Bart isn't a good example," agrees Groening. But Bart's pranks can be obnoxious, and he has worried many parents and teachers who fret publicly about his bad influence-his cheeky back talk, his enthusiastic naughtiness, and his inattention at school. The show has all the elements of its live-action family-oriented prototypes, with a twist: an involved community assorted villains a sweet, annoying next-door neighbor and the family itself-a goofy dad whose frailties get him into trouble a loving, sensible mom who usually gets him out again two adorable little girls and one 10-year-old trickster.īart is Dennis the Menace with self-awareness-a kid so abused by the public school system that when he was labeled a failure in kindergarten, he found his self-esteem as the class stand-up comic. SIMPSONS LATE NIGHT HOST WRITER TVIn the best tradition of TV families, the Simpsons love one another, no matter what. About to hatch its 200th episode, Trash of the Titans (Fox, April 26, 8-8:30 p.m.), the "plausible impossible" family long ago achieved pop-icon status. It has won a Peabody Award, 12 Emmys, and a shelf-load of assorted others. SIMPSONS LATE NIGHT HOST WRITER SERIESGroening's baby is the longest-running prime-time animated series in television history. "Well this is what I would have done, and I did it," he says, adding wryly, "At an early age I was most strongly affected by Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. The man who created the diminutive provocateur for The Simpsons says he grew up watching too much television and fantasized what he would do if he got his own TV show. There's a little bit of Matt Groening in Bart Simpson. PRIMARY SOURCE Simpsons Creator on Poking Fun Some of these children grew up to produce their own television shows about American families in at least one case, a show produced in the 1980s was conceived as a parody of the fairy-tale family shows of the 1950s and 1960s. As television became a staple of American family life, its portrayal of American families was absorbed by children, many of whom eventually realized the fallacy of what they watched. In many ways, these television families reflected an idealized vision of a nineteenth-century family unit living with twentieth-century conveniences.ĭespite their unrealistic portrayal of American life, the shows faced little competition and soon became hits, running for hundreds of episodes apiece. Programs such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver told the stories of model American families headed by industrious working fathers and held together by loving stay-at-home mothers. SIMPSONS LATE NIGHT HOST WRITER FREEThe Federal Communication Commission (FCC), established in 1934 to regulate interstate communication, set and enforced broadcast standards.Īs a result of this self-censorship, many early television programs were quite idealistic in their portrayal of American life, depicting homes as cheery, congenial places in a world free of war, hunger, and conflict. Networks employed their own censors to ensure that profane or vulgar material did not air, protecting the networks from potential fines and other penalties. Convinced that television had the potential to improve human life, the medium's pioneers insisted that programming conform to a rigid set of guidelines for content and taste. INTRODUCTIONĮarly television programming was tightly regulated. He writes on television and popular culture. Mason is a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor. "Simpsons' Creator on Poking Fun." Christian Science Monitor.
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