Bart: “Dad, you can stop now. The commercial's over. The show's back on.”
Homer: “Oh. Oh, yeah.”
We get the impression that the Simpsons will watch anything on T.V. but we always see the kids watching “The Krusty the Clown Show,” and when it is appropriate to the plot, the news.
Krusty the Clown works as a children’s presenter who has managed to keep his job by manipulation of his young viewers, for example, when Krusty begins his show by greeting his viewers he goes on to shout in a voice of false enthusiasm “…and what would you do if I went off the air?” they reply with genuine enthusiasm, “We’d kill ourselves!”
Krusty means a lot to the younger generation, who, easily led, worship him as a kind of religious idol, buying all his merchandise, ‘aping’ his actions and doing his bidding. The kids only see him as an enthusiastic presenter and entertainer on-screen, but we get to see him off stage, when he is himself: a bad-tempered, illiterate lowlife with many vices, including gambling.
When Bart is in the audience at a Krusty show for the first time, he is not impressed and catches Krusty out with a quick question , Bart sub-consciously chooses to believe Krusty is an impostor rather than betray his hero and see Krusty for the poor excuse for a presenter he really is: “Kids in TV land, you're being duped!” says Bart, Krusty subsequently grabs Bart by the neck and starts strangling him.
Krusty’s show promotes violence in that real pain is inflicted upon people, most notably Sideshow Bob (being fired from a Cannon and emerging half-conscious to land in a heap only a few yards away), and sadism in that Krusty encourages laughter at the result of violence. This is reflected in “Itchy and Scratchy”, the cartoon that is loosely based upon “Tom and Jerry”, the main difference being that in “Itchy and Scratchy,” the mouse insinuates violence and generally succeeds in killing the cat in various evil ways in every 10 second episode. “Itchy and Scratchy” is deliberately poorly animated, with few key-frames and appalling use of squash and stretch. This is partly so we can distinguish between the Simpson’s cartoon world and the cartoon world within the Simpsons T.V. sets, and partly to exaggerate how lame “Itchy and Scratchy” is. The culmination of every episode is always a violent act and produces howls of laughter from the viewers. Krusty is an example that we do not really know anything about real presenters anyway.
The news anchorman Kent Brockman seems languid and uninterested when reading the news, and whilst he never takes his eyes off the camera like normal newsreaders, his expression is one devoid of feeling or care. He breezes through serious news about natural disasters and murders by only reading the headline then throwing his autocue away. He continues in this manner until he reaches an item of either no importance or on the subject of sport, at which he grins and proceeds to talk on the subject for the remainder of the bulletin. This may seem cold and childish to most people in England, but the same is actually to some extent true of some American newsreaders. Kent Brockman appears to have self confidence in that he believes he is far more competent than anyone else and so believes he can do anything he wants with his time on air, he also comes across as being bored in that he would rather read a story about a kitten than report on the President of the USA being found guilty of murder.
So within the Simpsons T.V. is like a false religion and its presenters false idols. The Simpsons is, however, just a cartoon and although it may mimic a moral agenda, it has none. The Simpsons humour works by putting forward positions only to undercut them. This may seem cynical but the Simpsons humour is so well thought-out it even manages to undercut it’s cynicism too. This is true to life in America but fortunately T.V. is of a lower standard over there than in Britain. Both countries, however, share the faith and reliance in television and its messages.
Satire can be used to attack anybody at all who thinks that he or she has any sort of handle on the answer to any major question or is simply powerful or influential. The reason The Simpsons work is because we live in a world of coercive media and each episode is a joyous release from that precisely because the programme's creators understand, and satirise it.
