Do you guys ever think about how the generational cycles of abuse slowly crumble in The Simpsons? Do you ever think about it?
I love The Simpsons, and by no means it's supposed to be taken as a show that takes itself seriously, because it doesn't. But yet it handles heavy themes, it does handle strong subjects, particularly first seasons had certain, strong character's driven episodes meant to actually make you take it seriously. Even later seasons, albeit it becomes less and less of a thing (it becomes a bit heartless), has certain episodes like that. And is what makes The Simpsons a bit unique on the adult shows landmine.
Not to say it's completely original on this, because The Simpsons come from an era where sitcoms were everywhere, and sitcoms tend to be 70% comedy and then a few strong, heart-felt moments. This is because to keep you laughing, you need downs, otherwise, joke after joke after joke, you get a monotone story were there's no stakes nor pauses between a punchline and another. Comedy needs a tiny bit of seriousness, so you feel your feet on the ground, and then they will throw at you a joke, that, if is well written, is meant to surprise you, you don't see it coming. In the Simpsons, many of the classic jokes you remember best? You don't see them coming, not really, because the way they wrote the jokes in the simpsons is actually very clever, if I were to graph them, there would be several curves and points because they're jokes within jokes within jokes.
And then is a bit of dark humour, that is meant to reasonate with the audience somehow. So you laugh a bit at the fact that Homer's dad let him drink beer just so he would stop bothering him, but then the show makes you care, sometimes, about Homer being extremely hostile with his very old dad. But then you also laugh at the fact Homer's mom was a hippie, a rebel hippie, at that, that took him to Woodstock and is one of Homer's happiest memories of his childhood, and then you don't expect her literally dying.
And returning, in a way, just because she wants Homer and his family to continue what she started, and the show makes you care, the show makes you feel for the characters. Because Abe is a war veteran, he was awful to Homer and to his wife, but you also know he cared, and you also feel bad because he lives in a retirement home and wants to live with Homer and his family, but Homer will literally start the engine and leave him there, and at his age, he doesn't deserve that, but what does he deserve? Should Homer forgive him for everything? No, not really, you don't have to forgive abusers, but then it gets messy and complex because abusers don't deserve to be abused.
Homer, however, does forgive Abe, sometimes (and because of the nature of the show, it gets retconned, or forgotten, or brushed away, and etc). But more interestingly, he forgives his mom. Homer's mom was a much nicer parent, she was kind and Homer's refuge for happiness, so it's easy to forgive her, despite the fact that leaving Homer with someone like Abe was certainly, not a good choice, and we know that many, MANY of Homer's problems, all come rooted from either trauma or behaviours he learned from his childhood. And he's rightfully angry about it, he acts a bit like a rebellious teenager, because Homer is fairly inmature and this is because a extremely troubled youth.
But he forgives her right when she's literally a corpse in a chair, and then the closure comes from finishing what she started years ago as a radical environmentalist advocate.
So Homer knows, extremely well from first hand, his parents' flaws, and he is, to some degree, aware of how these affected him, which is more than most of the audience he represents realizes. But he's still an awful parent. He is abusive, towards Bart, but he also cares and tries deeply. He does an incredible much better job as a parent and as a partner than his parents.
And that's still not enough. That's not enough because trying doesn't mean sucess. The nature of the show makes it a bit harder, because sometimes it can be uqite inconsistent. There's a whole episode focused on how Homer decided to give up a lot and to stay under the awful working conditions from Mr. Burns because of Maggie, and then there are episodes where he literally forgets he has a third child.
But that's still better, somehow, than his upbringing. The bar was low, quite low, but he doesn't know anything else, and yet tries to be something different. And that's, from a narrative sense, interesting.
The cycle is breaking, is not completely over, is not a good job, but it is an attempt, it is watering down the abuse, it is making it less awful. Is like trying to purify a river, you're starting to remove the trash bags, you blocked the wastes tubes, the water is still contaminated, there's no grass and the ground is infertile. But it's a start, you need to start somewhere.
And then, in the futures episodes with Bart (and Lisa, and Maggie, even) we learn that, he isn't doing that much better either. Bart is divorced, his ex hates him because he's inmature and his children aren't very fond of him. Lisa's marriage is a bit of a mess, and her relationship with her daughter echoes a bit the one she had with Marge and Homer: She can't understand her, there's a lack of cummunication.
But it's still incredible, much better, than what they knew while growing up. Bart tries to be more responsible, he isn't abusive, his problem is that he's inmature and therefore can't connect with his children. But he doesn't quite yell at them, or tries to choke them (at least in the future episodes I remember, there are several). And unsurprisingly, he resents Homer a lot, which is logical, given everything, but he's also baffled that his children love Homer, and as a grandparent, he actually does quite a good job.
And the cycle is almost completely broken. Perhaps you can't absolutely clean it all, at least not in so few years, but it's happening and the change and evolution is logical, despite it being a sitcom, it is quite well written and sadly realistic. Bart and Lisa and Maggie don't have perfect lives as adults, and they struggle and the narrative shows you that a lot of these struggles come from their toxic enviroment.
And they're still doing better, because Homer and Marge chose to do slightly better than their parents. And so the cycle is near to the end.
I could talk about Marge, but sadly, in terms of her upbringing, there isn't much, besides the fact that she grew in a conservative home. We know her mother told her to held back tears and always pretend to be happy and force a smile, which is how she carried out in her life in many facets. And then we see she tries, at first, to teach the same to Lisa, and then decides to break that rule, to break what she forced herself to do and let Lisa be sad and express her emotions fully.
We also know she was quite bullied by her older sisters, and she's the one to always try to stop fights between Lisa and Bart, and the first one to try to stop rivalry between them when Homer tried to make them fight the other for attention.
Marge is flawed in a sense that she internalized a lot of misoginy and conservative ideals and then, sometimes, she tries to spread it, unwillingly, because is what she knows. Despite this, we know she supports Lisa's interests in studying and artistic skills. We know her mother was cold, and a bit detached, but Marge tries to be as warm and supportative as possible.
The Simpsons reasonates, mostly, with a generation that came from similar home enviroments, and, to some degree, some people in the audience could realize of their own flawed origins or how they carried those flaws, because I think the creators and writers had this in mind, the change and the struggle with trauma, the "not being good, but being better than what I remember".
So there's that. Deeply, deeeply flawed people that were raised in awful enviroments, and ultimately fail at being "good" parents, but they tried to change, and they tried to be better, and trying does matter in the end , because it's a start. They didn't end the cycle, but they planted the seeds for it. And to me, that's extremely interesting, and more so because this is the fricking Simpsons, a comedy, but like the context and narrative it generates, reasonates deeply with me despite not being for any of the generations the Simpsons represent, I'm a queer person in their 20s that was raised and still lives with an awful, awful family, but that I know their upbrinding was just so so so so much worse. And I know they try, and is not enough, and I can't quite forgive that, but I can see they try. And I know the cycle ends with me, at the very least.
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