The Simpsons: Still going strong
LONDON — When The Simpsons debuted on television in 1987, it was as a series of fleeting animated sketches intended to bridge commercial breaks in The Tracey Ullman Show. There was little reason to think they would endure. They were a peculiar yellow, crudely drawn and conceived as ephemeral.
LONDON — When The Simpsons debuted on television in 1987, it was as a series of fleeting animated sketches intended to bridge commercial breaks in The Tracey Ullman Show. There was little reason to think they would endure. They were a peculiar yellow, crudely drawn and conceived as ephemeral.
The audience giggled at the animated snippets, however, so the TV network Fox adapted the cartoon into a half-hour series in December 1989. Almost a quarter of a century later, The Simpsons is the United States’ longest-running sitcom, with a stamina that makes Cheers, Seinfeld and Friends seem will o’ the wisp. And it shows no sign of stopping or of losing its status as a global phenomenon.
“It turned into a 25-year occupation. It’s amazing. Most shows are happy to last just five years,” marvelled Al Jean, one of the original writers, who now runs the show. “I’m glad I’ve been here all that time.”
Jean, 52, oversees 20 writers whose job is to defy entertainment gravity by producing storylines and jokes that continue to zing after more than 500 episodes. How has the show lasted so long? And how much longer will it run?
Jean started as a writer and has been the showrunner since 2001, liaising with creator Matt Groening, Fox executives, writers and voice actors such as Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simspon), Julie Kavner (Marge) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart). His desk is invisible beneath piles of jottings, books, magazines and DVDs. Simpsons paraphernalia competes for shelf space.
In the early days, Jean recalled, parodying US mores via a dysfunctional, chaotic family provoked ire. “It was extremely controversial in some quarters and for a while it had this reputation of being kind of vulgar. My daughter’s school said you couldn’t wear a Simpsons T-shirt. I always thought that the show was much richer than that and had a moral centre. And I believe after the passage of time and many viewings, people said, ‘Yeah, that’s true’.”
The Simpsons started as counter-culture and became culture. The show has won 27 Emmys, been named the 20th century’s best TV series by Time magazine and spawned billions of dollars worth of advertising, video games, theme park rides, box office tickets and merchandise. Plus it introduced “D’oh!”, “Eat my shorts” and “Don’t have a cow, man” to multiple languages.
“Now at that same school where my younger daughter goes, they want Simpsons items for auction,” said Jean.
Overtaking The Cosby Show in the ratings in the early 1990s marked a coming of age. President George Bush memorably tripped over the zeitgeist in 1992 by saying he wanted to make American families more like The Waltons — a Depression-set drama — and less like The Simpsons.
“I think his speech writer somewhat maladroitly thought it would be a funny thing to say. Our response was that Americans are like the Simpsons. To say Americans (should) be like the Waltons ... well, they were a very sad family with no money.”
(The show responded by having Bart slyly compare his family to the Waltons: “We’re praying for an end to the Depression, too.”)
Some writers use Comic Book Guy, a potbellied, sarcastic nerd, to vent their own opinions, but the show tends not to pick on specific people, said Jean. “We have kind of a liberal bent, but we try to be even-handed ... and it’s easier for us to do that with causes than it is with individuals.”
The show has tackled topics such as homosexuality — notably the episode in which Springfield legalises same-sex weddings (Homer, ever the opportunist, becomes a minister and erects a sign “Will marry anyone to anything” after discovering he can charge couples US$200, or S$253). Conservative groups complained, but it was the season’s highest-rated show. Government snooping is a recurring theme. The writers have also poked fun at their own network. “We can push it pretty far,” Jean said.
Some topics remain off-limits (“there’s nothing funny about school shootings”). Death, however, appears in Season 25: An important character dies. “All I can say is a character passes away,” Jean said coyly.
Just how do they keep things fresh? A rotating pool of new and veteran writers mines ideas from multiple sources. “You get them from real life,” said Jean. “Teachers you had, problems your kids are going through, things that happened to you, things you read in the paper. It’s always about families and about things that happen to them.”
But British author Simon Singh recently revealed an additional, unexpected source of creativity in his book, The Simpsons And Their Mathematical Secrets, detailing how Jean and his writing colleagues have advanced degrees in maths and physics — and how they weave calculus, geometry and equations into plots.
“People think maths is about processing numbers and an answer comes out, but in fact it’s an incredibly creative field,” said Singh. The mystery of pi, googolplex and infinity have appeared in some episodes, even if only attentive geeks got the jokes.
Mathematics also suggests the show is unlikely to end immediately or continue for a million years. “It’s fairly haphazard logic, but when you pick something at random, chances are you’re in the middle of it,” said Singh.
Prepare yourself, in other words, for possibly another quarter-century of The Simpsons. THE GUARDIAN
Catch The Simpsons every Sunday at 7pm on MediaCorp Channel 5.