Bart Simpson: Prince of Irreverence
BY: Douglas Rushkoff
He begins his essays by stating that The Simpsons, “is the closest thing in America to a national media literacy program.” He talks about how the show is able to get away with a lot of things because the program is a cartoon. So they are putting forth that it is a family show and have been able to incorporate inappropriate material. The show began with a set of individuals who came up with the idea and was passed with not a second look at the material in the show or how the ideals of the show would affect the people watching it. He goes into how television programs are created, an author creates a story that the viewer can relate to and we watch the ups and downs of that character. He goes back in time to when televisions did not have remotes and people had to actually get up if they wanted to view a different program. Which many people didn’t do as often as someone who has a remote and has very easy access to change the channel with easy means. After the television controller the controller for video games came out and just made things easier to control at an individual’s fingertips. Now in the new the youth knows way more about the advanced technologies then even their parents. He then goes back into talking about The Simpsons, and the character Bart which is an anagram for “brat”. The media from the outside world is presented to Bart in this T.V. series where he can then interact with it and create comical stories that may or may not be true. He engages the fact that the author of this show can use the outside media and have it interact with his show. Like an episode about the super bowl, or a president election. This comes out to viewers that this show is feeding us media. The authors of this show create parody’s that resemble something real from our society and make a joke out of it. So the author can show the cruelness of the world and today and as long as it ends happy the viewers are happy.