Revealing the Ugly Cartoonish Truth: The Simpsons

300 Word Response:
I liked this essay, Revealing the Ugly Cartoonish Truth: The Simpsons, written by Simon Benlow, for many reasons. This essay is a good essay because it was short and simple and it got the point across to the audience in about two pages. Also, it relates to me in many ways because I have watched The Simpsons since as long as I can remember and I have been entertained by it for the longest time. It also depicts a family and it satirizes everything mainstream America cherishes according to Simon. He presents a nice description of “Homer’s Odyssey”—one of the first season’s episodes. For example, Simon Benlow points out how they depict a bad, tardy, pot-smoking bus driver named Otto. He tells how everything was wrongly depicted like Otto, and the hosts of prisoners, the tire yard, and the power plant situation. Obviously, none of this would happen in real life because someone would revolt and command for change. That makes me think of other things like how the lunch lady at the Springfield school started serving up the students for lunches until they almost ran out of students—it was funny, but unrealistic. I guess they never really tried to make it too much like reality. This isn’t what Simon thinks though because he says, “The Simpsons is far more real than any “real-life” sitcom hopes to be (or wants to be). In the relentless pursuit to overturn our romantic notions of ourselves and our lovely creations, it is probably more real than the audience it attracts (and certainly more real than those whom it doesn’t).” I don’t really believe it is the most realistic because it seems to go over the edge too far as to be mocking America than praising it like live sit-coms might. So, this was a good essay and I kind of agreed with it but I don’t believe The Simpsons are realistic very much.

Writing Strategies:
In your own words, what is Benlow’s main idea?
Benlow’s main idea is that The Simpsons is more than just to please our most basic pleasures and that it is a more elaborate show that depicts a community that has lots of problems and it has much more important reasoning behind it than just to make us laugh.

Exploring Ideas:
Watch several episodes of The Simpsons, finding support for Benlow’s argument.
I watched many episodes of The Simpsons and I found much support for Benlow’s argument. For example, I noticed when a bio-chemical goes from the plant into town, which forever gets lost. Also, they show a murder that happened which the baby committed… because burns was trying to steal candy from the baby. There’s a lot of support for Benlow’s argument in various Simpsons episodes.