Simpsons critique

"The Simpsons as a critique of consumer culture" is pretty accurate, albeit primitive critique of the social significance of The Simpsons. The author gives some background information on the development of the show, and then argues that The Simpsons is a itself a critique on middle class American values and norms. He states that the characters themselves don't represent actual individuals, but instead stand for broader ideas--Lisa represents rationale, Marge- the indifference towards middle class women, Bart- the poor quality of public education, Mr. Burns- capitalism, and so forth. Meanwhile, the plot line of each episode makes a statement about American society outside of the narrative itself, argues the writer. The article claims that the dominant theme and intent of the show is to poke fun at capitalist values, consumer culture, public education, gender roles and so on. The article also seems to focus on the idea of a martyr mentality within the middle class, which dictates that one must give up on their dreams and labor within the capitalist system in order to provide for their family and live out the American dream of consumption. The author extracts these claims through examples from several Simpsons episodes. 

With so many scholarly critiques of The Simpsons over the years, this particular one  didn't strike me as particularly revealing. In fact, most of the critical claims made by the author strike me as common knowledge, or statements which the show blatantly makes, rather than a very deep reading of its underlying or embedded messages. For instance, its obvious that The Simpsons is a satire, rather than a situational narrative, and that its purpose is to expose and even criticize aspects of American culture. I also felt that while at some points the writer points out the obvious, at other times he reads too much into certain aspects of the show, such as claiming that The Simpsons challenges male sexuality. While I agree that the show does indeed propose a liberal view of sexuality, the examples (from the show) used in this particular article don't succeed in proving that point.

However, one astute observation on Tingleff's part was claiming that the characters on the show actually have very underdeveloped personalities as "people", which allows them to embody more general values. 

Overall, this article reminded me of the narrative critiques we had to write as communication majors in senior comps class last year. It reminds me of the assignment both in the style and structure of the article, and also in the sense that the author wrote it because he was forced to critique something, rather than a genuine analytical epiphany he wished to share.