The Simpsons

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http://wtso.net/
"Watch The Simpsons Online"

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D'oh!
Bridget McManus and Nicole Brady
June 12, 2008
www.theage.com.au

With The Simpsons into its 20th season, Bridget McManus and Nicole Brady ask local comedians, writers and animators what the residents of Springfield mean to them.

Since it premiered on the US Fox network on December 17, 1989, The Simpsons has established itself as one of television's pioneering comedies. It elevated animation from the realm of children's entertainment to the mainstream. Insightful, cunning, political, it has always been at the forefront of pop culture. But lest we analyse too much, at its core The Simpsons is funny. Sometimes hysterically so.

The Fox network last week signed for a 20th series, meaning The Simpsons will equal the western drama Gunsmoke's record as US television's longest-running prime-time series. Production of the new 20-episode season begins shortly and will air in the US and on Channel Ten later this year.

ROVE McMANUS, Rove
The Simpsons have influenced a lot of my comedy friends. There's an episode, a Cape Fear parody, where Sideshow Bob gets hit in the face with about 20 rakes and it takes a good minute and a half for him to go through them all, which, in television terms, is a very long time for a joke, and it's a perfect comedy moment. It's now a yardstick for comedians when we talk about how you can keep going with a joke in that same way. We call it The Sideshow Bob Rake Idea. And when, if a joke falls flat, rather than just stop and move on, you keep going and reference the fact that the joke didn't work and all you're doing is making it worse for yourself, we use the phrase, "How will I get out of this hole? I'll dig my way out". That's a Simpsons line.

What I like most about The Simpsons is that it's a comedy first and a cartoon second. You hear about shows that are going to "be the next Simpsons" but it's a kid's show. The Simpsons was never meant for kids.

Most of the laughs come from Homer. He's just so stupid. I love the arguments he has with his brain where his brain just walks out on him - you hear his brain actually walk out and shut the door. It's those little moments that we can relate to. We've all probably had a Homer moment at some point.

There's only a finite amount of plot lines but they still come up with good ones and it's not just about The Simpsons family now. It's not just the crazy little professor guy any more, everybody knows his name's John Frink. Even principal Skinner's got a backstory through his time in Vietnam and his problems with his mother and how he's getting it on with Mrs Krabappel, and so from that you can have an entire episode that doesn't even involve the core family. That's why the series has managed to last this long and will probably last for a long time into the future.

When I was in Los Angeles, I had the chance to sit down at a Simpsons table read, and you really see where the success of the series comes from. They read it as live, they don't stop. They get a crowd of people in and as they get a laugh they write a note. I don't know how many shows would do that. Most people just put it to air and hope for the best.

ED KAVALEE, Nova FM
The pace of the comedy is so quick. There are so many jokes per show. I watch a lot of old sitcoms and they would have one long shot of a scene that might go six or seven minutes with four or five punchlines. The Simpsons is just joke after joke. But at the same time the characters are so clear. Characters they came up with 20 seasons ago, like Mo the bartender, are so wonderfully fleshed out now.

I remember about five years ago they released a genealogy of all the different characters and how they link to each other and you forget so much. In a little town with 30-odd characters they've just created so many different things.

I think I was 10 when I started watching and I remember the big divide was between those who thought it was funny and those who thought it was stupid, and thought that Bart was dumb and not very cool. And then about four seasons in they switched the focus to Homer.

You watch the episodes back, and I saw one the other day that Adam West was in - and I've only recently gotten into the Batman television series - and it's like the more things you know about, especially pop culture wise, the more jokes you can get from The Simpsons, which is why you can watch the episodes over and over again.

It's been a while since there's been a really classic episode like "Monorail", but it's impossible to watch an episode of The Simpsons, even now, where you don't get three or four really good laughs. You forget how much it's influenced people, when it first started people would say "D'oh" and you'd prick your ears up and go "that's from The Simpsons". Now it's just part of the common lexicon.

JO STANLEY, Fox FM
My favourite thing about The Simpsons is that they are masters at sugar-coating some very clever, pointed social comments. Not just about America, which I think is pretty risky at times, but also about their own network. So they are fearless and that inspires me. Obviously they have the power to be fearless but I think they were always like that. So they were always true to their own belief system and their own ethics. And also being clever and satirical is as funny as being completely pointless and silly just for the sake of it.

Probably my favourite joke ever on The Simpsons is when they are watching television and the commentator character says, "and now we cross to a man who has had the hiccups for 25 years". And he goes, "Hic! Kill me. Hic! Kill me. Hic! Kill me . . ."

Those sort of incidental jokes that they slot in there - in between the plot points and the things that are moving the show along - are just so clever. It's taught me that you can never work too hard and you can never put too many jokes into something. It's so amazing that it hasn't lost its relevance or its sharpness, it's still as relevant as it has ever been.

ADAM ELLIOT, animator
The Simpsons have had an impact on so much of Western popular culture, it's hard to explain how they've directly influenced my own work. The fact that the show has always been pitched to adults first, then children, has paved the way for filmmakers like myself who want to tackle serious subject matter in animation. While The Simpsons are very cartoony in their look, they are very seriously adult in their content - and often really subversive - and for lots of us working in animation they have been absolute trailblazers.

GEORGE McENCROE, Mix 101.1
When The Simpsons first came out we would gather at a friend's house and watch it every Sunday night. I still love it. I watch it with the kids. I think Family Guy has taken that whole genre to an even darker, more stomach-churning place, but without The Simpsons you wouldn't have Family Guy. That sort of satire for the masses was a big step and I loved that they could say so many powerful things in such a deliciously warm and funny and unintimidating way. It showed that you can deliver a good blow with humour rather than taking to the soapbox. You can address homophobia and racism, you can address all sorts of really important things in a way that's tongue-in-cheek. They came at the big issues from the side and made people laugh at themselves. And they showed the all-American family being so dysfunctional and yet likeable. It really made you like Americans for the first time, it was like, "Yes, you understand sarcasm and satire and being irreverent and the importance of that". It felt so outrageous that it was being done in America. There is still a naive joy about The Simpsons, which is hard to beat.

ADAM ZWAR, Wilfred
You can't really create anything new in comedy because The Simpsons have already done it. I don't know how they continue to keep it so groundbreaking. Every year the standard is maintained. How many comedy shows do you see that in?

It has influenced me in how free the writers are. Whether you can be that free because you're doing animation I'm not sure, but either way they just take such risks, continually. If you look at Ricky Gervais' episode of The Simpsons you just realise how great they are. They've got one of the great comic geniuses writing an episode and I reckon it doesn't quite stack up when put against the average middle-range episode.

I identify with Homer, totally. He's the great innocent and his desires in life are the most base desires of every man. You kind of forgive yourself for being a man when you watch Homer. And Marge is beautiful, isn't she? I wonder if there's a correlation between Marge and Larry David's wife (Cheryl Hines) in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Just like Homer, Larry David's a really difficult man to live with but he's also got this incredibly understanding wife who puts up with him and she's so kind and on certain days she can be a little bit sexy as well.

ROBYN BUTLER, The Librarians
Through osmosis, The Simpsons have bled into everybody's style of humour because it's that short, snappy, satirical way of writing. Because it has been there for 20 years it's informed everybody who's gone on to write comedy, even in general sitcom terms. I was addicted to it as a younger person. I was living in a share house then and it was the new thing that we all sat around to watch. It was a big deal because it was really subversive at the time.

They got away with saying anything. Now my children are addicted to it. They sit and watch it and I cook dinner and I laugh at different things to what they laugh at. And it's still firing and being funny and satirical, and after 20 years that's pretty impressive.

Marge is my favourite. She's Homer's moral compass and yet sometimes she can slide off her own moral compass and she can be a little trashy herself. Unlike Lisa, she isn't always steadfastly morally upright, and I admire both those things. I also admire her unending love for that big, fat, balding slob. Homer kind of makes me want to drink beer. Because he is so completely fallible, and he's the one we all identify with.

ADAM ROZENBACH, Spicks and Specks
It was funny how you just thought it was great and then two years later when you saw an earlier episode you realised how much the characters were different, how different everyone looked and you just couldn't go back to the old ones. Once it had evolved it was hilarious.

The Simpsons set the tone for Shrek and all those other movies and shows that had jokes that were for adults but were for kids. All those undertones just go over kids' heads but they could watch it and laugh while Homer fell over or if Bart was a naughty kid. I most identify with Krusty the Klown. I love the way he's just trotting it out, he's given up. I can relate.

I think the show has lost the depths of the storylines. It doesn't push the boundaries as much any more. Homer seems to be a lot more stupid than he was and it seems Lisa is more righteous than ever. But the new generation is getting on board and I guess if you're a parent and you've got 12-year-old kids you probably want them watching The Simpsons rather than Family Guy or American Dad, which are definitely adult shows.

REBEL WILSON, The Wedge
I was about 11 when I first saw The Simpsons. I had a cassette tape with the song Do the Bartman on it, and this other song called Deep Deep Trouble and it was like a Bart Simpson rap. I changed some of the words to make it about me and I performed it in a talent quest in Sydney. I got highly commended but some seven-year-old ballet girl won.

I really liked the musical elements of The Simpsons - occasionally they'd break out into into these production numbers, which were really funny and that's what I do in my new show, a TV musical called Bogan Pride.

I saw The Simpsons movie, which I thought was good, but when you see stuff like Borat or shows on Australian TV like Chris Lilley's show, the comedy's a lot edgier. I thought The Simpsons movie was a bit old-fashioned in that the jokes were very family-friendly. It had that edge about 10 years ago but now it seems a bit tame. But it's still got good character comedy.

CHAS LICCIARDELLO, The Chaser
The Simpsons has taught me that as long as you have a spoonful of sugar you can make intelligent, serious points on TV.

I have watched it since the early '90s, and I have always found it funny. I'm not a philosopher about it, I'm not one of the university lecturers who can reel off the classical references, I just think that in a barren television landscape, I find The Simpsons a shining light.

I don't think they've reinvented the wheel or were revolutionary in any way in terms of writing, they are just very good at it. There have been tight, clever, funny comedies before - they have just managed to do it for a long time.

DAVE HUGHES, comedian
I remember being really nervous in hotel rooms before doing stand-up comedy gigs and having The Simpsons on and being able to laugh. It has helped me relax over the years. I once got described in an Age review as Homer Simpson-like. I took it as a compliment. The show grew on me. Initially I thought, "this is a really badly drawn cartoon", but it didn't take long before I tuned into it. There probably isn't a day that goes by where you don't see at least two minutes of The Simpsons. I don't know where Channel Ten would be without them.

The Simpsons were certainly at the forefront of making it funny to be in a dysfunctional family. Family Guy would never be here if not for The Simpsons.

I've moved past The Simpsons and I watch Family Guy instead. Obviously The Simpsons' staying power is phenomenal, but at the moment I'm in a non-Simpsons phase. That's not to say that you can't fall back in love with them.

PAULY FENECH, Pizza
One thing I love about The Simpsons is that it proved that you can have a whole city of characters that are funny and you don't just have to have four characters with two guests.

The Simpsons proved my theory that you can parody anything in comedy, you can mix up the genres. It showed me that if you have good comedy characters in an animation, people will believe that they're real. They're just the Simpsons. They're in people's psyches. It's like they're real people we know in a parallel universe.

I've had a soft spot for Mo the whole time. He's always got these weird things on the side, he's always trying. He's the underdog that never comes through. I think everybody identifies with Homer. Marge reminds me of what happens to women when they get into a stable relationship - they focus on the cleaning and all the rest of it.

The best thing about The Simpsons is that they've attacked everybody but somehow have managed to go from being a naughty show to being mainstream. They've been around so long they're acceptable. They're crazy. They've got the hidden gay theme of Monty Burns and Smithers. Normally, an American sitcom wouldn't go anywhere near that.

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Playboy turning cover over to Marge Simpson
9th October 2009

Marge is about to do something Homer might not approve of. Playboy magazine is turning over its cover to the matriarch of Springfield's first family: Marge Simpson. It's a first for the magazine, which has had everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Cindy Crawford to the Girls of Hooters and even the likes of Jerry Seinfeld on the cover. But it's never had a cartoon character before.

Marge and her pile of bright blue hair are set to grace the cover of the November issue of Playboy. It will hit the newsstands October 16. Marge isn't going to bare all, though, as the magazine says there will only be "implied nudity" in the 3-page pictorial.

New CEO Scott Flanders says the idea is to attract readers in their 20s to a magazine where the average reader's age is 35.

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FILTH!

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Welcome to Springfield, Oregon: real life model for The Simpsons
Blue collar spirit, slapstick cops, and a Latino Bart. Life along Interstate 5 reflects Matt Groening's inspiration for TV animation
Rory Carroll
guardian.co.uk
13 April 2012

Snow recently coated Springfield, cancelling school, so a boy nicknamed Bart and two friends spent the morning building a snowman on the corner of Fifth Street. So big did they roll the two main mounds that they could not hoist one on to the other. Bart had an idea: "They look like testicles. Let's add a penis." Three hours of dedicated effort later, a three-metre phallus towered over the corner of Fifth Street, delighting its creators and infuriating an elderly neighbour who arrived in a motorised wheelchair. "Disgusting! Indecent!" she cried, jabbing the sculpture with a pole until it crumpled. Bart was defiant. "We'll build it back bigger and straighter."

Welcome to Springfield. Not the cartoon version, where Bart Simpson wreaks mayhem in a fictional town, but the real place, population 59,000, which originally inspired the television series and now, in some startling ways, reflects it. It has a Latino Bart, a prank-loving police force, Indian convenience stores, a blue-collar underdog spirit, rumours of mutant amphibians, dingy taverns, cheap beer and doughnuts. Lots of doughnuts.

And now, fame. This week Matt Groening, the cartoon's creator, told the Smithsonian magazine that the animated town was inspired by one near his childhood home of Portland. "Springfield was named after Springfield, Oregon. Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the US. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought: 'This will be cool; everyone will think it's their Springfield.' And they do."

They did. Now Springfields in Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts and elsewhere that had claimed The Simpsons for themselves are mourning their loss and Oregon is mulling its gain. An ambivalent trophy. The longest-running US sitcom is a pop cultural phenomenon that has earned multiple awards and immortalised its characters – but it is also a merciless parody of family and societal dysfunction.

The rainy strip of malls and single-storey homes along Interstate 5 in the southern Willamette valley lacks the sunshine and the nuclear plant of the fictional version. A gritty town battered by the decline of its lumber industry, it is mocked as hicksville by its rival, snootier neighbour, the university city Eugene, which Groening renamed Shelbyville.

The animator drew on his experiences growing up in the 1970s, but today's Springfield has a wackiness and poignancy to rival its cartoon equivalent. Edgar Aguilar – Bart to staff and classmates at Springfield high school – is the 16-year-old son of Mexican immigrants who work in a fast-food restaurant, part of a fast-growing growing Latino population. It was his idea to build the snowman last month and his idea to amend the plan. "Well, we couldn't lift the balls. And they looked like a pair of genitals. We improvised." He tried in vain to protect it from his affronted neighbour – an encounter filmed on a phone and uploaded to Facebook. "She demolished the whole shaft."

Edgar's father laughed and his mother groaned at the episode, much as Homer and Marge Simpson might have. "Homer is always letting Bart off the hook," said Edgar, who usually wears his black hair in a spike. In another echo of the show, Edgar lags in schoolwork but his sister thrives. "It's across the board. The boys struggle and the girls – oh my, whoosh, way ahead," said Carmen Gelman, the principal, a charismatic Latina with a nose stud who overcame youthful poverty, abuse and delinquency to become a respected educator. She bears no resemblance to the uptight Principal Skinner from the show. Told that a sparkly purple dildo had been left on a colleague's chair, she exploded with laughter. She also laughed off Edgar's snow sculpture, noting that other boys built their own versions during the snow. "His was the best."

In addition to Edgar, Bart's subversive spirit dwells, improbably, in a uniformed police officer, Jason Molony, stationed at the school. The 39-year-old, who bristles with hardware, grew up adoring the cartoon rebel. He has spiked blond hair and is compared by some colleagues to Bart. "I lived through Bart on TV. I could enjoy him getting away with things I couldn't do in real life." Molony's job is to protect and advise the 1,340 students and staff, but he enjoys rapport with Edgar, who teased him as a "rookie" when he started patrolling the school and asked for his gun. "I told him to give it to me, that he didn't know how to use it." Both, however, turned sombre when discussing why police are in Springfield's schools: a 1998 shooting at a nearby school which killed two and wounded 22.

The police here are widely considered efficient and honest, unlike Chief Wiggum's bumbling force, but have a knack for slapstick. Their Chinese-made shoulder badges, it was recently noticed after five years, misspelt Oregon as Oregdn. New badges have been made. John Umenhofer, 50, a decorated sergeant, recalled himself and a partner ribbing each other before a supposedly routine bust – "You kick in the door." "No, you kick it in" – only to discover, upon entering, an arsenal of AK-47s. Umenhofer dates his sense of humour to 1970 when Oregon authorities dynamited a beached sperm whale's rotting carcass, sending up a huge chunk of blubber that flattened his father's newly bought car. "Dad saw the funny side."

The mayor, Christine Lundberg, dismissed any comparisons to her sleazy animation counterpart, Mayor Quimby. The real post is voluntary, with no salary. "I don't look like him and I'm not corrupt. We don't do local politics like that. I do like his sash, though. I don't have one." In a former career, the mother-of-four fixed navigation gears on to navy jets – including at the Top Gun base – before serving popcorn to schoolchildren, which paved an entry to community politics. Lundberg, who calls herself a pragmatic independent, played down rumours of five-legged frogs owing to pollution from lumber mills, which Groening reimagined as a nuclear plant. "Once I did see a six-legged frog in my pool," she smiled. "I ran into the house and told my son and he said: 'Mom, they're mating.' "

There is a town hall administrator called Lisa Simpson – the name of Bart's sister in the show – but she shuns the limelight. Asked if she has four fingers, like her namesake, a poker-faced colleague replied: "We don't know. She keeps her hands in her pockets."

Groening sent a plaque to the town in 2007, in effect admitting that this corner of Oregon was the real Springfield, so most local people were not surprised this week, but some still professed ignorance.

"The Simpsons? I don't know what you're talking about," said the Indian clerk at a 7-Eleven off 14th Street. The TV show features a convenience store called Kwik-E-Mart owned by an Indian man called Apu, but that appeared news to Springfield's real, numerous Indian store clerks. The owner of the 7-Eleven, an Indian man who gave his name only as Sam, also declined to be interviewed. "Busy day, no time. And in any case I don't know what you're talking about."

Wayne Jones, 28, serving at the Bright Oak Meats convenience store, said he revered the show and that it correctly depicted the town's appetite for doughnuts, made by a local company, Master Donuts. "They go very fast. Especially the chocolate-covered apple ones." Instead of Moe's Tavern, the town has the Mohawk Tavern, where Christina Ruth, 33, serves $2 (£1.25) beers ($1 during happy hour) and shots of rum-filled jelly to customers who stop on the way home from work for what they term a "drunk on". "If there's a Homer here, it's me," said Marc Callagan, 21, a pizza deliverer and karaoke enthusiast. "I'm the only one who punches inanimate objects several times a day."

A mile down the road, Douglas Dougherty, 65, an evangelical pastor at the Springfield Church of God, lamented the town's link to The Simpsons. "It certainly is funny, but it pokes fun at things sacred. The show is just too irreverent for me." The recent spate of snow penises, he said, was not a good sign. "What can I say? Values gone astray."