Life as a cartoon: “Simpsons”: What we are

One reason why George Bush Sr. lost the election as US President to Bill Clinton in 1992 was a misjudgment. During the election campaign, he said that Americans should be “like the Waltons” – and not “like the Simpsons.” This was the old America versus the new America: traditional boredom versus modern entertainment. The “Waltons” are set in the time of the Great Depression, the “Simpsons” in the present. And Bill Clinton played the saxophone like Lisa Simpson.

Translated into German, it was roughly as if the CDU claimed that pork knuckles and sauerkraut were better than Italian food. Somehow it always tastes good when it’s well made, which you can’t say about pork knuckles and sauerkraut, even if they’re well made. The “Simpsons” are generally well made and almost always pleasing. The “Waltons” are heavy in the stomach and have rightly been forgotten.

In December, The Simpsons will be 35 years old, half as old as its creator Matt Groening was in February. Both birthdays are celebrated in an exhibition in Dortmund, for which the curator, the art historian and comic researcher Alexander Braun, has written a very good catalog.

The “Simpsons” is one of the most successful television series in the world. So successful that even the actors who lend their voices to the cartoon characters have become multi-millionaires over the decades. What makes this series so powerful? Much has been written about its postmodern nature of presenting capitalism as a funny supermarket and adapting its history, its trends and its stars and making jokes about it. In particular about the fluid character of Springfield, where everything takes place: a small town that changes its appearance for every episode like Duckburg in the Donald Duck comics. Sometimes it is by the sea, sometimes in the mountains, only the Simpson family house always remains the same and the family is ultimately intact. If the surname Simpson is a common name, Springfield is also an Anytown in the USA, it could be anywhere. In fact, there are 48 cities named Springfield in 43 states. Groening once said that Springfield was less a city than a “mental state.” Curator Braun goes even further: »Springfield is all of America. Springfield is the entire western world. Springfield is all of us.”

Averageness is king. Originally, Groening and his company assumed that the wild child Bart Simpson would be the crowd’s favorite, but instead it was his stubborn and stupid father Homer, who can’t even remember that the guy from the church services is called Jesus and not ” Jebus,” as he thinks, because he immediately falls asleep in church. “The dumbest one won the race!” cheers curator Braun, because the simple Homer is “the most lovable.” Homer’s simplicity shimmers anew in every episode, in the most beautiful colors of nonsense. Stan Laurel was only black and white.

In an essay in “Spex” from 1999, Diedrich Diederichsen pointed out that in the case of the married couple Homer and Marge Simpson the “two elements of ’68”, namely the “sensual-instinctive liberation and political revaluation of values” as “stereotypical Gender roles” were split: Homer represents an “infantile hedonism” and Marge a “moralism” without any development. Instead, these two approaches constantly jump back to the old days and can therefore be mobilized again and again. Their children, Bart and Lisa, push this divide further and “only differ from their parents in that they are better and more up-to-date in the relevant disciplines, and perhaps also farther away from kitsch.” For this reason, Diederichsen sees the series as a kind of dream work – like Sigmund Freud’s dream oscillating between desire and demand.

And like a dream, the series is packed with cultural references and symbols from underground to mainstream. As is well known, various stars and celebrities appear as cartoon characters, from The Who to Elon Musk (and again and again Glenn Close). Three things were crucial for the implementation of this form of television, but they only became effective because of certain previous events. One could speak of a very special yellow constellation or as Homer Simpson puts it to his son: “Bart, we are in America! Here everyone can eat whatever they want, as long as they eat too much of it.”

First: Matt Groening created The Simpsons while waiting in the front office to sign a deal for the animation rights to his character Binky, a depressed bunny and the main character of his comic series Life in Hell. Suddenly he felt he had to save Binky’s underground charm from commercialization. Alternatively, he spontaneously invented The Simpsons as a satire on sitcoms. He quickly gave its members the first names of his own family. His father is Homer, his mother is Marge, and his sisters are Maggie and Lisa. It was a “family constellation with a twist” (Braun). He drew the “Life in Hell” comics until 2012.

And here’s the back story: Groening actually wanted to become a journalist. In the 1970s, he studied at a left-wing hippie college in Olympia, Washington, where he taught himself how to draw comics on the side – using cartoon textbooks, simply because drawing comics was hip at the time. Binky emerged as a self-made punk comic when Groening was working at a hip record store in West Hollywood after college because he couldn’t make a living from journalism at all. Los Angeles was full of guys like him, no one was waiting for him. Comics were better. Backstory of the backstory: His father, the original Homer, had also drawn cartoons, but made his living as an unconventional commercial filmmaker. Even though he believed in God. His son, on the other hand, describes himself as an agnostic, but believes in hell because he knows the US TV program.

Second: The new animated film series “Simpsons” was shown on a new national television network where routines had not yet stifled creativity. At first, The Simpsons were one-minute episodes in a sketch show, then gradually became longer and finally became its own show. In 1989, it was the first primetime animated series since The Flintstones ended in 1966. Background: The new channel was Fox and belonged to Robert Murdoch’s right-wing media network, which later created an even more right-wing sister channel, Fox News, which Donald Trump valued and used as a propaganda medium for a long time.

Third: Groening and his team had a guarantee written into their contract that Fox would never interfere with the content of the series. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Because Fox was almost bankrupt shortly after the start and accepted unusual concepts out of necessity. For example, the trick of not making gags for the children in the cartoon, but for the parents who watch the show with their children. History: Such approaches were supported by James L. Brooks as producer. He was a little older than Groening, already very experienced in the film and television business and, above all, successful: in 1984 he won five Oscars as a director with “Time of Tenderness.”

The “Simpsons” was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for everyone involved. They just had to succeed. And they had it. But what does that mean? In his introduction, Alexander Braun makes a plausible suggestion for reducing complexity: “Think of the cultural history of humanity as a vast sea. Now imagine the Beach Boys on an ideal day on the beach in Malibu, with perfect waves that the brothers surf from morning to night.” And when they arrive home, exhausted and happy, they are wisely asked: “What is the sea?”, to which Beach Boys boss Brian Wilson replies: “I have no idea, but we had a lot of fun!”

By the way: The sound is made first and then the image. First we speak and then we draw. The dialogues are illustrated. Or as »Jebus« would say: In the beginning there was joke, nothing came into being without joke.

Alexander Braun: The Simpsons. It doesn’t get any yellower. Panini. 336 p., hardcover, €39. Exhibition: until October 27th in the showroom: comic + cartoon, Max-von-der-Grün-Platz 7, Dortmund