Can you think of any ways in which the institutional context of The Simpsons affects the representations of gender and the family found in the programme?

Homework

The creators of The Simpsons obviously had the task of creating a family of stereotypical people. The characters strongly relate to different age groups and genders. For example, when I did some audience research I found that most mothers liked Maggie because she was the cutest and how most boys aged 11-13 liked Bart because he was such a troublemaker.

The producers of The Simpsons needed a programme that would appeal to a large target audience. This meant that they would have to include comedy that different age groups would find funny. They did this very well by using the more obvious humour (Homer making a fool of himself) to attract younger children and then more adult humour (little jokes between the adults of the cartoon) to attract the older generation.

The institutional context also affects what topics The Simpsons covers. Many of the episodes do actually give out a lot of information on current news. The producers and creators must still make this appeal to a wide audience range so instead of making the cartoon based on one person all the way through the episode it usually follows each member of the family for short periods f time throughout the story.

Can you think of any ways in which the target audience for the programme affects the representations of the gender and the family?

Because the target audience range is so wide the creators must make sure the characters appeal to everyone that watches it i.e. boys, girls, teenagers, parents etc. This means that some people like Homer, some people like Maggie and others like other characters of The Simpsons. I found from my audience research that boys tend to like the same sex characters e.g. Homer and Bart, Mothers tend to like Maggie because she is cute ...

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Can you think of any ways in which the target audience for the programme affects the representations of the gender and the family?

Because the target audience range is so wide the creators must make sure the characters appeal to everyone that watches it i.e. boys, girls, teenagers, parents etc. This means that some people like Homer, some people like Maggie and others like other characters of The Simpsons. I found from my audience research that boys tend to like the same sex characters e.g. Homer and Bart, Mothers tend to like Maggie because she is cute or Marge because they can relate to what she is feeling a lot of the time.

The creators and producers must be very careful, however, how they portray the family of The Simpsons. So many people watch it all around the world that if they made the family so dysfunctional then this is what some people might get the impression real American families are like. This is why they give some characters a few really bad personality flaws but then make up for them with other values e.g. Homer is really stupid yet kind and loving to his family.

The audience must be able to relate to the characters. This is very important to the cartoon and is what has made it so successful. Mothers can relate to what Marge fells sometimes and Fathers can relate to what Homer goes through. It is like this for all the characters.

Make a bullet point list of six important things you have learnt from this short project:

In the episode we studied in class, Marge had a breakdown and needed to get away from the family. Fortunately I had this episode on video and showed my family it. Both my parents agreed that they also feel like this sometimes. This shows that the characters have been made specifically to appeal to different people. I also showed them a few other episodes and found that my younger brother laughed at the more slapstick humour whereas my parents laughed at the more subtle jokes that the adults made.

I also found a lot of information about News Corporation, the company that makes The Simpsons. Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corp., makes the most of the large audience of The Simpsons. It is usually shown at prime time where nearly everybody is watching TV and the audience range becomes massive. The Simpsons has hugely increased prime time ratings, which shows that many people watch it.

The Simpsons is represented in many ways. The dialogue is tremendously important to the success of The Simpsons and without some of the classic catchphrases e.g. Homer – Doh!! the cartoon wouldn’t be that same. Also visuals are very important to the creation of the episodes because this can play a huge part in audience targeting. If the cartoon was black and white not many younger kids would enjoy it, but because they characters are yellow and the scenery is usually very bright younger children will enjoy it as well as the older generation who are usually attracted to the humour of the cartoon.

I have also found that it is very important how the family is portrayed in certain scenarios. So many people watch The Simpsons, it is important that the cartoon gives real American families a good image. This is why although most of the characters have things wrong with them they make it up with other important values like love, kindness and forgiveness e.g. Homer has to put up with Bart so much and yet he always loves him again at the end of the episode.

From the News Corporation website I found that The Simpsons is in the top 10 most watched prime time TV programmes and is always gaining more popularity as the years go by. I also found that The Simpsons are releasing a toy line of speaking characters, which boosted Fox’s and News Corporation’s profits significantly.

Also I found that different people read the characters in their own way. For example a 45 year old mother saw Maggie as a cute little baby and the favourite character out of the series whereas when a boy aged 13 was asked what they thought of Maggie they said that she was boring and had nothing to do with the series events.