Posted on 12/09/2001 4:42:14 AM PST by foreverfree
The Simpsons: sacrilege or satire?
New book by Florida religion writer tries to answer the question.
By Richard N. Ostling
AP Religion Writer
How God appeared in a dream: “Perfect teeth. Nice smell. A class act all the way.”
The family religion: “You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work in real life. Uh, Christianity.”
Church signboard slogan: “God Welcomes His Victims.”
This is just a very small sample of one-liners about religion from “The Simpsons.”
For 12-plus seasons, the animated series has mined religious subjects for laughs like no other show on television.
The staple of the Fox network has sometimes been called sacrilegious rather than satirical for its jabs at clergy and the faithful alike. But religious commentators have looked at the animated series and found plenty to like.
In a rare coincidence, two leading Protestant magazines, the liberal Christian Century and conservative Christianity Today, simultaneously ran friendly cover stories on the show in early 2000.
Christian Century said it's appreciated in religious circles, while Christianity Today hailed the good-guy characterization of the Simpsons' evangelical neighbor, Ned Flanders.
An anthology, “The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer” (Open Court), reported religion was an element in 70 percent of randomly selected episodes and the major theme in 10 percent.
The latest analysis, in a book many folks will find under their Christmas tree, claims that strange as it might seem the cartoon “more accurately reflects the faith lives of Americans than any other show in the medium.”
In “The Gospel According to The Simpsons” (Westminster John Knox), Mark I. Pinsky notes that the characters regularly pray, attend worship and discuss humanity's inescapable religious questions. God's existence is unquestioned and he sometimes intervenes directly in the preposterous plots.
Pinsky, religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, also notes that, despite ridiculing everything in sight, the show is basically pro-family and usually lets a rough morality triumph.
“The Simpsons” may be irreverent toward churches and clergy, he says, but other institutions suffer more, particularly big business. (Montgomery Burns, owner of the nuclear power plant, once hatched a scheme to block out the sun, forcing everyone to buy more electricity).
Pinsky, an active Reform Jew, is not a big TV fan. But he was goaded into sampling “The Simpsons” by his children and got hooked. He can only hope now that the book replicates his publisher's 1965 title “The Gospel According to Peanuts” by divinity student Robert Short, which sold 10 million copies.
In that more innocent era, “a lot of people were offended by putting something as holy as the Gospel together with a comic strip,” says Short, now a Presbyterian minister in Monticello, Ark. The New York Times considered it “a perilous experiment.”
Now preachers make frequent use of pop culture. But less often does pop culture, especially TV, treat religion.
With “The Simpsons,” Pinsky says, early episodes featured bratty son Bart. But as the focus shifted more toward bumbling father Homer, the show began tackling deeper issues, Pinsky says. Besides, a series this long always needs new material, and religion is rich territory.
The Simpsons crew was sharp enough to realize this even though, according to Pinsky's estimate, 80 percent of the show's writers over the past dozen years have been either skeptics or atheists. Several, however, have called been active Christians.
The characters they and creator Matt Groening have created for fictional Springfield are a microcosm of American religious and particularly Protestant types.
Homer is the sort who regularly displays his religious ignorance (he calls God “omnivorous” instead of “omnipresent”), snoozes in church and prays largely in desperation. “God, if you really are God, you'll get me tickets to that game. Why do you mock me, O Lord?” he moans in one show.
Long-suffering wife Marge is the solid saint who delivers the rare serious lines: “There has to be more to life than just what we see, Lisa. Everyone needs something to believe in.”
Precocious daughter Lisa is the mainline Protestant rationalist and preacher of social justice.
Son Bart veers between belief when needed and being the incarnation of the devil.
Next-door neighbor Flanders has his boys play Bible Bombardment board games and vacations at “America's Most Judgmental Religious Theme Park.” His piety irritates people, but he always returns scorn with love, and is committed to his faith.
Then there's Rev. Lovejoy, burned-out pastor of Springfield's community church, who veers from non-denominational blandness to fundamentalist rigidity. God is among those who find his unctuous sermons boring.
Non-Protestants don't come off perfectly, either. Krusty the Clown, the show's Jewish character, is a gruff, chain-smoking show-biz veteran. The depiction of workaholic Kwik-E-Mart manager Apu, a Hindu, has offended some Indian-Americans, partly because he's at once obsequious and overcharging.
Catholics are less visible, but the Catholic League objected to a satirical commercial in which a scantily clad woman wearing a cross suggestively filled a car with gas as a voice-over said “The Catholic Church: We've made a few . . . changes.”
Among all denominations, liberal Unitarianism with its lack of doctrine may fare the worst. “If that's the one true faith, I'll eat my hat,” Homer exclaims.
For all its barbs, however, “The Simpsons” rarely mentions Jesus and steers clear of explicit Christian teachings, Pinsky says. He says that, in the end, the show may actually cloak a “sacred essence in the guise of profane storytelling.”
He concludes that “whether the series, once considered so anti-authoritarian, is subversive or supportive of faith is largely in the eye of the beholder.”
The newspaper article which Pinsky expanded into his book ran in this section in October 1999.
Marge:"That's a lousy thing to do!"
Bill Clinton:"Well, I'm a lousy president."
I think that was at one of Selma's ill-fated marriages to either Troy McClure (you might remember him from such driver's ed films as "Alice's Adventures through the Windshield Glass" and "The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot") or Sideshow Bob. You are right that it is hysterical.
The one with the Movementarians where he keeps saying, "na na na na nananan LEADER!" is really funny, too.
You'd probably have to go back to feudal Japan, during the life of Miyamoto Musashi, when the purge of Christians took place. But Japan's martial incarnation of Zen was always an odd duck, and served more as a political control tool of the daimyo and the shogun than an actual religion, so I don't know if it really counts. The purge certainly wasn't a "my God is better than your God" thing, though, and in fact the Buddhist warrior monks got much the same treatment from the political establishment.
Cheap shots at the stereotypical images of hypocritical - and titular - Christian churches/parishioners aren't as hip to me now as they were back when I was a college sophomore, but a couple decades of life in the slow lane will do that to a guy. So many TV writers appear to be perpetually twenty years old (based on what they find interesting and/or humorous), that I shouldn't be surprised if they still find irreligiousity to be hysterically funny. Maybe I'm being too harsh there, because it could be nothing more than laziness... if one can't come up with enough secular targets, then recycle the the "church" jokes.
If the writers wanted to be cutting edge, they could broadly parody Islam. Of course, there is the possibility of the Brooks, Simon & Groening organization (sounds like a law firm) getting a fatwa shoved up their wazoo, and that would be the worst pain ever. Nah. Won't happen. As for the "worst episode ever," it wasn't last night... but Lisa was featured prominently in it.
Ed
Someone sent me a whole list of Troy McClure's body of work. It's a riot!
Hmm, I wonder if our religious viewpoints are different . . . .
Horsesh!t.
I love most of the Adult Swim shows. I don't like Home Movies, but Cowboy Bebop, Sealab 2021 and Space Ghost are great, and the Brak Show and Aqua Teen Hunger Force are good too.
Here's one of my favorite excerpts from Space Ghost, with Thom Yorke from the rock band Radiohead.
Thom Yorke: Do you take those, those (motions with his hand)... intelligence drugs?
Space Ghost: (stops) I don't need intelligent drugs, Thom. Because I don't know what they are. Okay, Thom?
Thom Yorke: Yeah.
Space Ghost: But I will put anything into my mouth that is given to me. Whether it's supposed to go there or not. (sits down at his desk) Because... I'm different.
Thom Yorke: (stifles laughter)
Space Ghost: Is that clear with everyone?
Thom Yorke: Very.
Space Ghost: Just different.
Thom Yorke: That's because you're weird. (laughs)
Is the writer of this article kidding??? I've only ever seen the program a few times (although my husband must have seen every episode a hundred times), but Lisa has always struck me as the epitome of an annoying misguided leftie.
"Christian" is definitely not what I think of when Lisa is on the screen.
That's using the western "Family Name Last" order. You'll find the Japanese refer to him as Miyamoto Musashi, placing the family name first. Anyway, his given name was Musashi.
Hi, I'm Troy McClure...
Updates and corrections to
Episode number research and thankless past maintenance carried out by Chris Baird (cbaird@scorch.apana.org.au), with his modest assistant Bucky Whaley (Bucky.Whaley@launchpad.unc.edu).
Some information provided by Dave Hall (davehall@muug.mb.ca) and Chris Lehr (cjl1782@rit.edu).
"I Can't Believe They Invented It" details provided by Gregory Myers (gregory_myers@prenhall.com).
Information from printed Simpsons materials supplied by Jim Dyer (jym@remarque.berkeley.edu), Anthony Dean (adean@expert.cc.purdue.edu), James Liu (sliu39@mail.idt.net), Phil McGoldrick (phil.mcgoldrick@xtra.co.nz), Ian Pugh (skypilot@ezaccess.net) and the man himself, Troy McClure (masquerading as weiland@uclink2.berkeley.edu).
Information from AfterDark(tm) Simpsons Screen Saver (movies and ICBTII! provided by John (JTMacc@aol.com).
This list can also be found, along with many other Simpson tidbits, at The Simpsons Archive.
He goes to that class and they show the moive about drunk driving and the deaths that occur but the soundtrack to it is really silly music. That is true comedy.
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