There are in different cultures that remember the past, such as You are the worst students I have ever taught or Hip Hop is dead. How did reminiscing become a necessity? I guess the speaker is implying that he has lived through "better times." Who can resist a sense of superiority? So even if there are frequent fans who criticize the quality of "The Simpsons" for declining over the years, even if the "quality decline" is listed as a chapter of Simpson's Wikipedia entry, it does not have to be taken seriously. This strand of sighing may just be the identity label of the old forced dengs who huddle together for warmth.
Image credit: The Simpsons Season 10, Episode 6
As long as you haven't lived in the mountains for the past thirty years, I don't have to describe the historical place of Simpson to you. The longest-running primetime tv series in American history has influenced too many tv series, as well as other areas of popular culture. This year even came out with this recipe to teach you how to make the meals inside.
The Unofficial Simpson Cookbook by Laurel Randolph
From the first season in 1989 to the thirty-third season of this year, I didn't need ratings to sense that Simpson had withdrawn from the stage of history: it had completely lost its topicality in my information stratosphere, and only when people exclaimed that it "predicted the future once again" did it borrow the corpse again and again. But that doesn't mean Simpson is rotten, after all, the times are always chasing newer ones, not better ones.
Simpson's average viewership figure per season Image source: Forbes
This year, the New York Post reported that a Russian mall rewarded people with covid-19 vaccines for free ice cream, and in the 12th episode of "Simpson" broadcast in 2000, there was a scene in which a needle was exchanged for free ice cream. Image credit: The Simpsons Season 12, Episode 6
In order to confirm the "quality decline" statement, I made up for the last few seasons, only to find that watching Simpson can become a kind of labor, and you need to play with mobile phones in the middle. Strangely, obviously those farts and bloody elements are still there. In season 23's Halloween special, Momer, who was bitten by a poisonous spider, froze his whole body, and the only way to communicate with people was to choose the letters in the alphabet by farting; the second time he was bitten by a spider, he became a paralyzed Spider-Man, killing enemies in a net and using the webs that sprayed out of his ass. and can always pry people's childhood attachments, which have to be buried deep in the process of socialization later. Similar jokes reminded me of my eight-year-old brother, who happily said he was going to give his mother something to eat, and his mother asked what to give, and he smiled even brighter: "I'll give you my shit." ”
Image credit: The Simpsons Season 17, Episode 6
Even Disney's purchase of Fox in 2019 did not turn "Simpson" from Fox into a "I Love My Home" for all ages. In season 33, you can still see little girls on the playground being cut off by swings. Of course, in the early days, the picture of the whole family being turned over under the influence of mysterious gases and the five flesh intestines singing and dancing is estimated to be difficult to reproduce. Think of it, this is Disney.
The annual Halloween special" "Treehouse of Horrors" series is a Simpson tradition, and the highest-rated episode of the sixth season is the sixth episode of the sixth season, where "The Gas That Turns People Upside Down" appears. Image credit: The Simpsons Season 6, Episode 6
What "rebellion is not there, entertainment to death", the older generation uses this word from rock and roll to Supreme, and can not scold "Simpson". It still adheres to the baidu encyclopedia depicted in the sentence: "A humorous mockery of American culture and society, human conditions and television itself." "The relationship between the boss and the employees dates back to the cave dwelling days. Ten men went to kill mammoths while the boss yelled at them; then the boss took the meat, and the ten men received only the fingernails. Life is like that. After the Renaissance came, clocks were invented, which meant that bosses no longer had to waste time checking on employees, they could become popes and marry their own sisters. In recent years, unions have been formed, and 'workers' rights have been abolished in recent years..." At the end of the first episode of season thirty-two, "Plainclothes Burns," Homer's speech about exploitative relationships is tied to history, religion, and politics, and you'll have to suspect that this guy's soul has been stolen. In recent seasons, the mundane daily routine has sometimes inserted similar reviews. Human happiness may have something in common, and American audiences understand the fun of Beijing's brothers. I even think that the new media editor can learn the traffic code from the middle school: you have to rely on the next three ways to attract readers, but also interspersed with two stabs to the society raised by this dog; you not only have to let the reader face their original happiness, but also end sublimation, value, and give them intellectual satisfaction.
Keeping up with current events, Grandpa Abe became a victim of telecommunications fraud. The whole family touched the telecommunications fraud den, but the police arrived but did not arrest anyone, because "you have here today, and tomorrow there will be a new stronghold." Image credit: The Simpsons Season 33, Episode 2
What exactly does that mean? In Let the Hero Save the Cat First, it is said that in a good story, the protagonist has a clear purpose, such as Hamlet wanting to kill his uncle; he also has to encounter strong obstacles, such as a weak, an overheard his father-in-law, and his uncle himself. "Drama" arises from the tug-of-war between the protagonist and the obstacle. According to this formula, in the fourth season of "Marge against the Monorail", Marge's purpose is to try to spend a huge new financial sum in The town of Springfield on the renovation of the road; the obstacle is the capitalists who advocate the use of this money to build light rail. Suspicious, Marge goes to the town where the light rail was once built, discovers a safety hazard, and wants to stop the project. But at the same time the whole town was ready to greet the light rail with joy, and after listening to the little songs used by the capitalists' lobbying, they could no longer hold anything in their brains.
Image credit: The Simpsons Season 4, Episode 12
In the fifth season of "Outer Space Homer", Dad Homer's purpose is to prove his worth, just in time to meet NASA in order to improve the ratings of aviation programs, to find Americans love to watch "ordinary people" to train as astronauts. His number one obstacle was another ordinary astronaut candidate, the alcoholic Barney, but after the latter passed the selection, he drank alcohol-free champagne and went crazy, and Homer was automatically elected, one step closer to realizing himself. His next obstacle was his stupid self: he was really in space, the potato chips he released and the experimental ants stuck into the equipment, and the whole ship was in crisis because of him. In this way, the early "Simpson" was very rigorous, and I did not expect that "rigorous" could be used to describe "Simpson".
Image credit: The Simpsons Season 5, Episode 15
In recent seasons, you can't say that the protagonist has no purpose. The first episode of Season 32 revolves around Burns, the owner of the nuclear power plant where Homer works, whose purpose is to understand what employees really think of themselves, and the inducement is that he finds graffiti cursing himself in the staff restroom — etc., does that count as an employee's opinion? How else does he have to know? This purpose was quickly overturned: Burns disguised as a new employee and Homer fooled around with his friends, so burns, who had been the embodiment of capitalist evil for more than three decades, was melted by the spring breeze of working-class friendship. Burns oscillates between his identities as exploiter and working-class good friend, and finally, infected by the aforementioned Homer speech, loses his conscience of not surviving more than one episode. Not to mention the metaphor of "tug-of-war", this plot is more like a double-headed switch, left and right.
Owner Burns and his second identity Fred Image source: The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 1
Therefore, "Simpson" has never forgotten to satirize society, but the old "Simpson" is through the "purpose vs obstacles" of the pull, taking the audience step by step into the quagmire that the residents of Springfield Town cannot get out of: "Marge against the monorail", the quagmire is the addiction to large-scale infrastructure, it is not necessary, but it just can't stop; in "Outer Space Homer", the quagmire is an increasingly anti-intellectual science popularization in the mass media - the audience looks at it and suddenly feels a hint of familiarity. In the new Simpson, the satire is like the standard answer to the question of "central thought" in middle school Chinese reading, or the bad editor's preface before the Chinese edition of the world's masterpiece. Stripped of these words, the rest is closer to Tom and Jerry, or the Simpson play, the cult "Tom and Jerry," and "The Itchy and Scratchy Show."
Image credit: The Simpsons Season 4, Episode 19
This is very much in line with the logic of communication over the years. The cautionary tale at the end of each episode can be cut into a long picture with subtitles at the bottom and spread widely on Twitter; the picture of Homer farting or chrysanthemum spitting out a spider's web can be made into a short video, and perhaps there is a chance to spread virally. Eventually, even if you haven't seen any episode in its entirety, you may feel like ," "Eh this GIF/Where have I seen this sentence?" As for whether this effect has been achieved, another said.
Or as Bukowski's epitaph says, "Don't try." Image credit: The Simpsons Season 8, Episode 20
But it's not fair to paraphrase a book's formula to judge Simpson as good or ugly. After all, "Save the Cat" just calls itself "the only screenwriting guide you need in your life"; and there are so many addictive stories that don't fit that formula. In the most obvious examples, in The Dragon Auror and Mary Sue literature, the protagonists of these stories can be invincible in all obstacles, which pokes at the reader's humble desire. The early "Simpson" as an "anti-family drama" poked at the audience's humility itself. "Marge Against monorail" does not have a clear interest in the electorate assumed by the "social contract theory". When they hear the slogan, they forget that small, densely populated towns don't need light rail at all. Homer in "Outer Space" is the only one in the factory who has not been named the best employee. The factory's rule is that every employee can be the best at once, and on this day Homer thought that he could finally turn himself, but he did not expect that the honor would eventually be attributed to a carbon rod. In a midlife crisis, he urgently needs to be a hero and show it to himself and his family. Ironical society, are you not in society yourself?
Oh, that's the carbon rod. Image credit: The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 1
"A lot of shows give you just a few characters, and The Simpsons give you the whole world," the Simpsons twentieth anniversary documentary said. In the world of Springfield, there are police officers and mayors representing corrupt power, factory owners representing exploiters, strippers, tramps, gangsters, depressed perverted bar owners, mama boy principals, and control freaks headmaster fucking. Apu's diligent and kind Indian boss is considered "Springfield Town Conscience", as long as you ignore the camera once filmed him picking up hot dogs that fell on the ground, blowing off the ash, and selling them to customers. Greed, laziness, short-sightedness, anti-intellectualism, miserliness... Every ordinary person has weaknesses, and every farce is catalyzed by their weaknesses. The old Simpson didn't stand outside the system and complain about it: We can't struggle out of the quagmire because we can't struggle with ourselves.
Image credit: The Simpsons Season 5, Episode 13
I'm not going to lament here that people in this era don't introspect, that way I'll sound as old as the guys mentioned at the beginning. This era has other animations worth watching, Simpson is not an era, it is dead does not mean that the era is dead. Simpson isn't dead either, it's gliding forward on the inertia of IP, even though the town of Springfield is now a Ship of Theseus relative to twenty years ago. A digression. The Phrase in the Simpsons' Baidu Encyclopedia entry "is a humorous mockery of American culture and society, human condition, and television itself," and I checked wikipedia to find that "human condition" is a crappy translation of Human Condition. The German philosopher Hannah Arendt has a book also called Human Condition. So I thought that the threshold of philosophy is not low, if you spend three days brushing the first ten seasons of "Simpson", can you probably know what the "conditions of man" are.