The Bizarre Modern Reality of The Simpsons

Watching this video made me realize that Spongebob is probably the children's equivalent of The Simpsons. Like The Simpsons, Spongebob had a few brilliant initial seasons, was allowed to exist far past the point of relevancy or quality (still going after 20 years), and has an active meme culture that is almost exclusively dedicated to those first few brilliant seasons.

My man just did a whole segment on the existentialism of Steamed Hams

Season 1: Homer gets fired from his job and goes from a big enough depressive episode for him to want to attempt suicide. Then a truck almost hits his wife due to the absence of a street sign so Homer decides to devote his life to making his town a safer place and in he end he gets rehired as his job's safety inspector(of sector 7-G) Season 30: Homer plays Leauge of Legends and does the Floss

"Quality, shmaulity; if I had a TV show I'd run that sucker into the ground" -Bart Simpson, 1992. Ironic.

The Simpsons is the poster child of "the show is dead, but the fandom is alive".

I just realized I went from Bart's age when the show began to Homer's age now..

Simpsons even touched on its existential crisis a few years ago, with the longest couch gag in the show's history, where we go to the far future of the Simpsons, where it has degraded and been so far removed from its original context as to be nearly unrecognizable. It also implies a decline of the civilization producing the show. Very strange and surreal. Also, my favorite Steamed Hams is the Persona Social Link.

The steamed hams remix of feel good Inc unironically goes so hard and I think that’s kind of a testament to how good the original song is in a way

What this proves more than anything is that the original incarnation of the Simpsons was so beautiful and good that not even 20 years of betrayal, failure and idiocy can destroy it.

“...Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.” ― Henry Jenkins

"Having his boss, supernintendo Chalmers" You sneaky sneaky man.

Hearing about Bartkira reminded me of a show my college did called "Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play", which is basically about a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic scenario where they retell an episode of the Simpsons like we would retell a folktale, and they act it out. they have paper mache masks of the characters and everything. Theres a bootleg floating online somewhere if anyone wants to see more weird Simpsons content. Its a very fun show!

Coming late to this video. I was one of the artists who took part in Bartkira

There was a post credits scene added to a re-run of an episode of the Simpsons the week the Cosby show went off the air in 1992. In the scene Homer and Bart discuss in a meta-contextual sense why the Cosby show was being taken off the air. Bart: Hey dad how come they're taking the Cosby show off the air Homer: Because Mr Cosby wanted to stop before the quality suffered Bart: Quality, Shmality, if I had a TV sow I'd run that sucker into the ground. Homer: Amen boy, Amen.

If we’re talking about fan content that recontextualizes shows, there’s a great comic about Bart and Chris from Family Guy going to couples therapy with Bobby as their counselor. And it makes Homer and Peter out as abusive dads who have traumatized their sons and that ugly trauma rears it’s head as they try to make their relationship work. I know it’s a meme and it’s ridiculous but I did always appreciate the approach to familial relationships and how slapstick in TV shows can be morphed into real traumatizing abuse.

It's scary how accurate that Memes = Genes thing is. An image that transitions from one person to another, slowly changing as it passes on. I've never thought of it like that before.

15:13 "Now at 36 years old" Realizing I'm almost as old as Marge gave ME an existential crisis

Unfortunately the show suffered the same fate as one of it's titular characters Don't Forget You're Here Forever

When The Simpsons was at its peak you almost literally wouldn't go through a day without hearing someone quote from it, or doing so yourself. There was a perfect Simpsons reference for just about every real life context - and everyone got the reference. With the show being made to die the ugly and prolonged death it is, I'm glad to see some of its better qualities getting to live on in meme culture - shitty mobile games not withstanding.

I bet both my kidneys that there are at least six rejected scripts for episodes about how the show has been long dead but not allowed to die.