The Simpsons Satire Essay

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The Simpsons is a sitcom of parody because the episodes usually mimic or imitate well-known scenes, plot devices, or characters from other media texts. Jonathan Gray describes it as “Parody attaches itself to generic discourses and either playfully or scornfully attacks them, aiming to destabilize the common sense of genre, and intertextuality chip away at already-read and yet-to-be-read texts” (Gray, pg. 44).
At the beginning of episode Three Men and a Comic Book, Bart and Lisa imitate Casper and Richie Rich which are well-known characters from other films. Casper is known as a friendly ghost but the thought of him being a ghost makes him scary. Richie Rich is known for being a troublemaker. Bart shows his audience what he is looking at …show more content…

Parodies such as The Simpsons is, “Fundamentally expansive, taking in all manner of discourses and genres, and serving as a purveyor of distrust of television form” (Gray, pg. 48). Parody is known as a tool of disembedding because while genre tries to continually work on gaining the trust of the audience, parody destroys that by mocking genre. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, stated his goal and message of this sitcom parody and it’s to wake the public up from being manipulated and exploited by television. This works as a potential technique because each short episode of The Simpsons basically ‘resets’ itself introducing new topics every time. With only having twenty-two minutes of program time to create an entire plot, everything moves quickly especially the rushed last-minute ending, however, “The Simpsons cannibalizes its own generic grammar and ideology often with brutally astute accuracy” ( Gray, pg. 51) that at the end it makes it worthwhile. Analyzing critical intertextuality in Johnson Gray’s reading only made me realize how many times I have seen television shows, reviews, ads, etc. deliberately make reference to another text without knowing a word existed for

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