Micah talks about The Simpsons, but can't come up with a title

The notable artist Bansky provided the vision for the memorable couch gag on last night’s edition of The Simpsons. In Bansky’s vision, Our Favorite Family’s rush to couch is produced by anguished Korean, presumably South Korean, animators working in dry and literally toxic conditions. And that is the good life as we also see the sweatshop, complete with animal chipper, necessary to produce the Simpsons products that I love, and frankly can’t find in stores much anymore. A panda is whipped and the horn of a shackled unicorn is used to poke holes in the center of DVDs. All of this done in a giant 20th Century Fox building that is guarded by a barbed wire fence like it is a prison. (You can see the intro by going here.)

Now obviously Banksy does not understand how modern capitalism works. A unicorn would be paraded around from city to city and also forced to breed with other stallions to give horse racing a much-needed boost. Hollywood would of course do what is presently unthinkable and make movies about horses that didn’t die over 20 years ago.

I also wonder how accurate the bleak portrayal of the production of The Simpsons is. There is a significant range of conditions in the factories of less developed (or whatever other term you want to use) countries, and I have never been able to find out much about the conditions in the Chinese factories that Homer Simpson clocks and such. As for the animation of the show, it is done in South Korea, which I believe has relatively good working conditions as these things go.

There are probably some out there who would respond to my unqualified response of Fox by saying that exaggeration was used in this opening to make a comedic point. To them, I say exaggeration for comedic purposes is tired and old fashioned. Unless Bret Michaels is to be a star again, I need sincerity and this opening makes me uncomfortable because it makes me question not only my love all things related to The Simpsons, but how I consciously realize that I love this show in an unquestioning way. I don’t worry all that much about the conditions used to produce my action figures and Burger King toys, nor do fear the social outcome of my actions. It is a release from the examinations of everyday life that plague me in all but a dozen or so areas of my existence. Moreover, I hate what makes me uncomfortable almost as much as I hate what I don’t understand.

The political elements of opening are also worth looking at. Fox Broadcasting will go about its business after this aired without a touch of change. This suggests that books such as the John Alberti edited Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture and Mark I. Pinsky’s The Gospel According to The Simpsons are right about the impotence of The Simpsons as an agent of dissent. (Alberti’s work is more nuanced on this point, FWIW.) Then again, one only needs to look at a copy of Juxtapoz to see that major titans of capitalism such as Nike are more than willing to pay for artwork that the average person often can neither understand nor appreciate. Does that mean that art itself is ineffective at commentary? Perhaps, and perhaps there is no effective way to critique the world as it currently exists.