When viewers first met The Simpsons 30 years ago, Homer and Margie lovingly put their children to bed. As influential as the maladaptive cartoon family would become, they were "an achievement without precedent or comparison in the history of broadcast television," as New York Times critic AO Scott put it.
The Simpsons 30 years ago
In contrast to the seamless familiarity ofThe Disney Figureor Saturday morning cartoons, The Simpsons immediately stood out. The lines were fuzzy, jagged and irregular. The children had pointy heads and all looked as if they had been electrocuted. Then there were the colors — bright yellow skin and blue hair, used by animators Gabor Csupo and Gyorgyi Peluce, Hungarian immigrants whose tiny animation studio undermined other competitors. So they won the contract and won the colors.
Now, when you look back, you see strange relics. In one of them, Bart and Lisa are watching TV on the couch. However, as soon as the show breaks for a commercial, the kids immediately start arguing. Even back then, the family spent a lot of time in front of the television. The moment the show resumes, they sit on the couch again and watch passively. So this was a disrespectful comment about the hypnotic effects of television on children.
But these ancestral Simpsons undoubtedly belong to a different era, more Homo erectus than modern man. And it seems the differences make the show's creators uncomfortable. The shorts have never been officially released by Fox and only a handful of them can be found on YouTube. The US broadcaster declined to provide it to Smithsonian. So they are treated less like canon and more like apocrypha.
New era
But the best parts of today's "Simpsons" share a raw vibrancy with those primitive ancestors. This is most evident when the show unexpectedly indulges in gags or visual experimentation, with artists like Banksy and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro invited to direct the opening sequence. The results were occasionally bold, arresting or just plain silly, which can be good enough.
“The Simpsons,” Time magazine once said, “established the cultural references and sensibilities of a generation.” Still, the show has long since become normalized by its own success with squeaky-clean tropes derived from the latest pop culture trend. The strangely lovable mutants that Matt Groening first launched at us 30 years ago brought lowbrow satirical art into the mainstream. And then the comedy wentwith the best momentsfurther.
