On The Simpsons and Simpletons
February 25, 2005
Update: The Revealer informs us that Sharlet is not the culture-making star we believed him to be, consulting only for NPR’s Weekend America, not The Simpsons. (Do they have consultants? Where does one volunteer?) Still, he has a leg up on me in this department: my last consulting gig was for Jesuit Communications in Oceania on their production of “Pathways to Peace” broadcast via satellite in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Patty Bouvier is gay. And Jeff Sharlet is crowing about it. After America’s everytown–Springfield, home of TV’s best-loved family The Simpsons–legalizes gay marriage in an attempt to boost a sagging economy, Homer Simpson decides to cash in as well by buying a clerical license off the internet and performing all the anticipated ceremonies which the morally sound pastors presumably won’t touch. To complicate matters, Patty Bouvier, Homer’s sister-in-law, comes out of the closet, and Homer presides over the hitching.
In the wake of this “cultural event,” pundits from all sides have scrambled to make sense of what The Simpsons is saying. Sharlet, who
is a paid consultant for the show (talk about culturepower!), gets some easy yuks at the expense of Christians who previously thought The Simpsons was a “Christian show.” It seems some “hardcore” Christians were horrified at the latest
episode. D’oh! Sharlet is right, it is downright asinine to treat
the comic brilliance of The
Simpsons with the unbreakable earnestness more properly reserved for
papal edicts, or at the least, congressional reports! But the joke is on gay and liberal activists too, who want to see in The Simpsons a “ray of light” for “their” side of the issue.
It seems to me, though, that Homer’s response to the culture wars is fundamentally the right one. The gays (and Flanderses) are all clowns and suckers, and if they want to pay me two hundred bucks to give them a vanity wedding on the authority of a vanity clerical license (or approve their vain lives with faux inspirational schlock), their loss is my gain! Woo-hoo!!!
This is On The Simpsons and Simpletons in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Blowgun Spirituality | Next: Progress in an Egg | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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