This is a guest post by OrlandoScene’s Michael Myers
On August 21 at 10 a.m., FXX will begin The Simpsons marathon — the longest in television history, all 552 episodes straight through. But before it begins, the enduring success of everyone’s favorite American parody family deserves a closer look.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Who remembers “The Tracey Ullman Show?” That’s what I thought. The comedy variety show by British-born comedienne/actress/one-time pop star Tracey Ullman featured an eclectic cast, decent fun. Not too ground-breaking. Between commercial breaks, though, one of the show’s mainstays, Dan Castellaneta, lent his voice to one-minute animated skits produced by Matt Groening called (very apparently) “The Simpsons.” The rough old shorts, available on YouTube for the curious and nostalgic, were fun parodies of the American nuclear family, which tied the show over to commercial. Though rough compared to their current counterparts, all the characters are there. The voices are there. After all this time, even these humble beginnings are obviously, unequivocally, Simpsons.
After two years the show earned its prime time slot as a full-length cartoon feature. The rest is history. And Seth McFarlane has been merely a child of that history.
But why has the show endured? Why have so many of us nurtured near familial connections to these characters? Well, while some may denounce “The Simpsons,” even in liking them, as cartoon-candy stimulus (or variety comedy if they’re feeling generous), the show is more. Much more. It’s a sitcom, a representation of life. An icon. When I say “the rest is history,” I mean more than the cliché — I mean that “The Simpsons” has mirrored us every step of its broadcast, one joke at a time.
It has none of the weaknesses which kill the sitcom. Sooner or later — usually painfully, exasperatingly later — no matter how beloved the characters or how idyllic the setting, sitcoms become old. Because the people do. We could go back to “Leave it to Beaver,” sitcom suburbia at its finest (and still popular enough today to be on Netflix). We could look at 90’s hit “Malcolm in the Middle.” Teenagers reading the lines which were cute when they were eight aren’t so cute. For sitcoms, the ones which survive are not the ones that find their sweet spot and hang on, but the ones that evolve. Since people grow, the show has to. Grow or die. Six seasons and out. Be it “Leave it to Beaver” or “Modern Family,” it makes no difference.
But “The Simpsons” doesn’t have to. So they have continued, eerily unchanged since they began. Maggie is technically thirty years old. Nancy Cartwright, the woman who plays Bart, is nearing sixty. They are unrestrained by the flaws of their genre, empowered by their medium to last forever behind the preserving glass of public television. They were once a parody of the American family — they are now reoccurring echoes of that parody living in an eternal place, a static time. The world moves on. People age and die. But “The Simpsons” remains.
And as for history, who may say that “The Simpsons” is not a part of it as any people, race or culture? For the last thirty years, every moment in history has been shadowed and hackneyed by commentary from Springfield’s favorite living room. No politician has been safe, no policy left unchecked. Wherever we turn, there they are. And they are us.
Will the show end? Probably. Castellaneta will die or Groening will retire it for artistic reasons. This marathon may be it. But the people of Springfield will remain, eternally the same. And so they will be to us — for each moment in time, the commentary we need to take the work-a-day and laugh at it. Should we love them? Should we need our everyday lives to seem funny, because without the help we think them so sad? The answer to that belongs in another place, another time. All that’s important here is that we do. We love them. We will for as long as they live.
And we know that will be forever.
