D’oh!
With The Simpsons Movie just days away from being released, we’re asking the question once again whether the residents of Springfield have anything worthwhile to say.
Is watching The Simpsons simply about enjoying a few laughs or is there something deeper to the 400 episodes that have made their way to the small screen?
In 2002, academic Kris Jozajtis said The Simpsons was particularly adept at raising ethical dilemmas relevant to young people. In an unrelated study around that time, sociologist John Heeren found that 69% of all episodes of The Simpsons made some reference to religion.
The Simpson family first appeared just over 20 years ago on April 19, 1987 in The Tracey Ullman Show. In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half hour series for the Fox Broadcasting Company.
Since then it’s been hailed as a great source of wisdom by some and as an attack on society by others.
Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the very many other characters who have pushed the episodes along for the past two decades are loved by some and hated by others.
The Simpsons’ Wikipedia entry says,
The show was controversial from its beginning. The rebellious lead character at the time, Bart, frequently received no punishment for his misbehavior, which led some parents and conservatives to characterize him as a poor role model for children. At the time, former President George H. W. Bush said , “We’re going to strengthen the American family to make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons.” Several U.S. public schools even banned The Simpsons merchandise and t-shirts, such as one featuring Bart and the caption “Underachiever (‘And proud of it, man!’)”. Despite the ban, The Simpsons merchandise sold well and generated US$2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales.
Despite the criticism, many people have continued to look to The Simpsons for life lessons.
My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.
Today we took a look at a book titled Mixing it up with The Simpsons by Owen Smith. The book encourages churches to use episodes of The Simpsons to teach lessons on faith to young people.
Can the Rev. Timothy Lovejoy really teach us anything we need to know about God? Is the church selling out by turning to popular culture or is this kind of approach more like New Testament Christianity where the apostle Paul drew life lessons from the culture and beliefs of the people around him?
There was so much to say on the subject that we’ll be continuing discussions on The Simpsons next week. If you’d like to hear our discussion just click here.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Technorati Tags: The Simpsons – The Simpsons Movie – Mixing it up with The Simpsons – Spirituality
Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading The Simpsons go to church? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.
Check out:
Simpsons quiz
http://www.snpp.com/guides/solomann.html
http://www.tvshows.nu/article.php3?id_article=4548
—
See also: The Gospel According to The Simpsons (second edition, 2007) by Mark Pinsky
David Buckna
I tend to think that anything mentioning the simpsons is taking advantage of the name – clinging to it’s coat tales with the hope of achieving better visibility as a result.
The Church (meaning “all organised religion”) appears to be doing the same. Churches have historically used any and every way they could find to help spread their word.
The DaVinci code is a great example – the church, and every other commercial entity in existence jumped on it as something they wanted to be associated with – either for good or bad reasons.
It’s interesting that these marketing ploys are spun in so many directions too. Like you say – the Simpsons are used to show failure, success and of course the continuation of the family unit.
Sorry if I sound a little jaded, but in the town I grew up the local church owned most of the land the businesses in town were built on, and acted like the mafia… then had the cheek to make collections and so on.
i’ve used cuts from The Simpsons in youth group sermons before.
i think you have to be careful, but sometimes there are amazingly well painted pictures of the worlds conception of The Church.
I noticed that between seasons one time that the Simpsons local church went from an old brick building with a church tower to a big Cement slab, side building with the slowly assending angled roof which is steriotypical of the newly built large evangelical churches in the USA and Australia today…
i found it interesting that the creators of the Simpsons had noticed this enough to change their ‘steriotype’ of the church from the traditional church tower building…
Hey Jonathon,
Churches can give you a lot to be jaded about. And we can opportunist – for better or worse. But referring to the Simpsons or any other pop culture reference during a sermon isn’t the same thing as trying to skin people a few bucks. It’s trying to hook into the culture and sue illustrations people will get. Basically we’ve been doing that since the Bible was written! In regard to the Da Vinci code – again lots of bad stuff I’m sure, but it was a major phenomenon that contained a lot of untruth masquerading as truth. Really, the church needed to respond to that one.
Shalom.