Deconstructing Homer Simpson

It’s hard to grow old and stay true to yourself — not even The Simpsons can pull it off. In a recent episode, Homer announced that he will no longer strangle Bart, a recurring gag for over 30 seasons. It was a scene reminiscent of Itchy & Scratchy & Marge (season 2, episode 9) when the yellow matriarch realizes that Maggie is imitating the violence on The Itchy & Scratchy Show, and forbids Bart and Lisa from watching it. After the show’s producer ignores her pleas for less violence, Marge organizes Springfieldians for Nonviolence, Understanding, and Helping (SNUH), and forces her family to picket outside the studio. SNUH was a dig at former vice-president Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, who campaigned against obscene and violent music lyrics, leading to the parental advisory warnings about explicit content we have today. Perhaps Tipper will make a video about the lyrics in Bad Bunny’s Baticano — “I do her where she pees and where she poops.” Instead, Disney gives us Spanish socialite Isabel Preysler celebrating Christmas, as if there’s never a day in her life when it isn’t Christmas. The plotline of that old Simpsons episode went as expected. After SNUH targeted Itchy and Scratchy, they went after Michelangelo’s David statue because stopping censorship is harder than boiling the ocean.

It‘s not so concerning that they’ve dropped the joke — no gag can last 34 seasons. Nor is it worrisome that they might replace Homer’s beer with kombucha or enroll him in a workshop on the “New Masculinity.” The biggest issue is that they felt the need to articulate their move to kill the gag. After all, it’s an animated series, not a parenting workshop. “Times have changed,” Homer said. He’s right, of course. The Simpsons era has passed. We now live in the age of their politically correct, moralizing nemesis — the Flanders family.

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