The current era of postmodernism is colored by numerous conflicts and debates that are rooted in the multiplicity of meanings and connotations, which each postmodern object is expected to comprise. Whether in cinema, television, painting, or music – postmodernism works to evoke self-consciousness, diversity attitudes, and to deny the relevance of knowledge so actively spread by traditional mass media. The Simpsons is just another example of the postmodernist vision of the world, filled with cultural controversies, the lack of objective knowledge, and persistent cultural pessimism. The Simpsons is the cinematic creation of postmodernism, intentionally designed as the instrument of cultural mockery. The postmodern character of The Simpsons is readily observed through its intertextuality, parody, and the vague boundary between low and high culture, so characteristic of all postmodern trends.
Intertextuality is the determining feature of The Simpsons, as well as the critical element of its postmodern vision. This intertextuality establishes a new system of relationships between postmodern community and the values actively promoted by television, newspapers, and postmodern culture. The Simpsons creates a vision of hypocrisy which we, as postmodern members of our society cannot but take for granted. It is the hypocrisy between what we are expected to be and what we are in reality. Moreover, it is also a sense of hypocrisy and conflict between what we are expected to be and what we do not want to be. The Simpsons deconstructs the reality in a way that makes it an object of mockery and reviews traditional cultural values from a new perspective.
“Its deconstruction of its environment, and of the ground upon which it stands, goes further, as both animation and television in general are mocked” (Gray 160). Whenever Homer tries to prove to Marge that cartoons cannot have any deep meaning, or whenever Homer creates a vision of animation as of the source of cheap laughter, intertextuality comes into play as the essential element of postmodern reality de(con)struction, which presents our values and cultural attitudes as those that are not worth a penny and deserve to be heavily criticized. The fact that The Simpsons as the product of animation and the product of television turn animation and television into the two central objects of mockery reveals its postmodern essence and makes its mockery even more convincing.
The whole series is concentrated around watching TV, the values of the postmodern star system, the value of animation industry in general, and finally, the role which popular culture plays in shaping our worldviews. The mere example of Bart becoming popular for saying and repeating one single phrase “I didn’t do it” disrupts the relevance of cultural cults, to which The Simpsons is usually equaled. This multidimensionality and intertextuality are the distinctive features of postmodern animation, which mocks itself and seeks to shed the light onto the emptiness and hollowness of the postmodern cultural values, to which we adhere. “At numerous moments, The Simpsons makes moves, albeit small, to distance itself from being yet another show-as-cultural-icon, by holding itself up to ridicule and to the criticism that this too shall pass” (Gray 161). This reflexivity and metatextuality also suggest that postmodern values are too vague and volatile to be taken seriously, and thus can easily become the objects of cultural parody.
This parody is just another element of postmodern culture, which The Simpsons seeks to promote. Not only self-parody, but the need to mock over the majority of values and principles which for us seem acceptable and normal turns The Simpsons into the source of postmodern cultural truth (however, with the multiplicity of meanings as the distinctive feature of postmodern culture, this truth is also subject to change). It is difficult not to agree to Degli-Esposti, who writes that “The Simpsons is on the sort of postmodern mission to denaturalize some of the dominant features of our way of life; to point out that those entities that we unthinkingly experience as natural, are in fact cultural; made by us, not given to us” (62).
This quotation reveals the complexity of postmodern interrelationships between community, values, and media. Whenever we apply to television and media as the sources of the major cultural values, we immediately forget that the latter are also the products of human creation, and to attribute the process of value creation to television as an abstract cultural notion is at least inappropriate and largely erroneous. The Simpsons is also the product of human creation, which makes these interrelationships even more difficult to understand, but it is The Simpsons that emphasizes its own intentional commercial character and uses these commercial values as the source of parody. On the one hand, The Simpsons uses parody to reveal the most complex facets of present day postmodern culture, as well as to explain the power and effects which mass media tend to produce on human minds.
On the other hand, this very power and these very effects are used by The Simpsons creators to promote the discussed sitcom as the source of commercial profits. Interchangeable images that mix reality with television commercials and plunge the Simpson family into the whirl of fantasies is similar to the fantasies we use to experience, when facing another bright television or newspaper ad. This parody over Homer as The Prince of Tides or The Erotic Adventures of Hercules turn this mixture of reality and imagery into a complex postmodern parody, which, unfortunately for the majority of postmodern community, erases the boundary between the low and the high culture, and does not leave us a chance to grasp the meaning of the most important cultural values.
The vague boundary between high and low culture is characteristic of all postmodern movements, but for The Simpsons it turns into just another object of moral contemplation. The scene where Marge and Homer attend a concert, and where the Star Wars theme is taken by Homer as an example of classical music implies that surrounded by postmodern values, we are no longer able to distinguish between real classics and its false substitutes. Alberti suggests that “in our own era, this distinction between the high and low has collapsed under the weight of the democracy of the visual and the aural, as contemporary aesthetic production has come to rely more heavily upon media other than print and upon generic forms besides the poem and the novel” (30).
True, and Alberti is correct, the mere fact that The Simpsons as the sitcom is used to disrupt the misbalanced postmodern values proves that fact that postmodern community is more likely to believe sitcom characters rather than printed media. Whether The Simpsons is the product of high or low culture is not clear, but even if the Simpson family represents low cultural ideology, it also finds enough strength to turn this ideology into the object of parody. Homer’s outrage at the amphitheatre scene is not provoked by deconstructing the meaning of classics, but by the fact of the Star War theme not being performed well enough. For Homer, such performance is too inappropriate for a piece, which for postmodern community stands out as the bright example of classical music; and this is where the postmodern crowd should finally realize the narrowing gap between mass culture and high art. This narrow divide between the two incompatible categories, wisely combined with self-parody and intertextuality shape a new vision of postmodernism, which mocks over its own cultural hollowness and uses its power for self-deconstruction, of which The Simpsons remains one of the brightest examples.
Conclusion
The Simpsons is the brightest example of postmodern mockery. Intertextuality, vague distinction between high and low culture, and self-parody are the three distinctive features of the discussed sitcom, which turn the Simpson family into the source of multiple complex cultural meanings and make it an object of the detailed philosophic contemplation. Intertextuality suggests that as a product of commercial television and animation, The Simpsons finds sufficient power to deconstruct mass media and to turn it into the object mockery. This deconstruction is reasonably balanced with self-parody. Finally, it is the narrowing gap between high art and low culture that distinguishes The Simpsons from other creations of postmodern cinema. The Simpsons reflects the changeable essence of the postmodern society, which is lost in the midst of controversial values and lacks self-identification in the world, where hypocrisy and falsity predetermine one’s social successes.
Works Cited
- Alberti, J. Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture.
- Wayne State University Press, 2003.
- Degli-Esposti, C. Postmodernism in the Cinema. Berghahn Books, 1998.
- Gray, J. Watching With The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. Taylor &
- Francis, 2006.
