The Simpsons

The Simpsons Critique.
The Simpsons may be seemingly about humor or simply is a parity of a middle-class American family. However, when you look between the lines it may become apparent that The Simpsons is lampooning some much more deeper issues. The prominent ones appear to be capitalism enslaving the middle class, consumer culture and men’s supposed disrespect for their wives and women. More examples lie with the characters Bart and Lisa. Bart is supposedly the embodiment of the failures of the American school system, and Lisa is meant to be the embodiment of reason. What is important to note about this is that although her statements are normally voiced as reason, they are more often than not simply ignored. Normally, a television show doing this would not have a chance getting airtime, however, The Simpsons were aired by the relatively new network, Fox, whom was willing to take the risk. The result was a television program that gained enormous popularity in an environment where this should not have happened.
Response
Some points I can see, however, others I believe are stretching logic. For example, it is clear that the Simpsons is in many ways meant to ridicule the American life, arguably the mundane aspects of it. For example, the fact that Homer must got to his job that he hates everyday. The author argues, however, that the story shows some cases where Homer leaves his job, but always has to return to it for some reason. One example is that he left work for a bowling alley, but then has to return to the power plant because of a new baby. I fail to see how this is demonstrative of capitalism’s control over our life. All in all, Homer leaving a dream job to return to a better paying miserable job can also be demonstrative of bad luck as well. The bottom line is that there is probably a lot of truth to the statements, but I seriously doubt that The Simpsons creators had anything so deep in mind when writing the cartoon.
Reflection
It seems that cartoons are a popular medium for critique of society in some way. Simpsons, as it was demonstrated definitely directs satire towards certain aspects of a middle class family. But there are other shows out there as well. We are all familiar with South Park, which seems to ridicule really anything. For example, there was certainly an episode meant to demonstrate the writer’s opinion of the new Indiana Jones movie because in this episode one of the characters has dreams about George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg raping the character Indiana Jones. Also, the show seems to point at the masses (meaning general population) having a tendency to be jumpy and terrified. There was an episode about Family Guy planning on showing an animation of Mohammed. In the episode, the Muslim world sent threats and such to America and the public decided to bury their heads in the dirt so they did not see it, thereby doing what the terrorists wanted.

Questions
1.) How is the nuclear power plant meant to represent capitalism especially consumerism? It is not explained well, there should be more evidence of this rather than the author’s speculation.
2.) Bart may explain the failure of the school system, but how is Lisa explained as she went to the same school as Bart?