As of 2003, The Simpsons is the longest running prime time animated series with fourteen seasons and counting. Not only does The Simpsons have almost fifteen million fans in America, but the show is watched by almost sixty million people across the globe. The show has created a billion dollar industry through sales of toys, books, clothing, and videos. Nielsen Media Research (NMR) has consistently rated every season of The Simpsons within the top thirty among prime time television programs of all genres. NMR also noted that males between the ages of 18-49 are the show's primary target audience. The New York Times millennium edition predicted that the show would still be highly rated in 2025. Although a large portion of the general public have been avid spectators, it has taken several years of programming for many political, religious, and academic authorities to approve or even take notice of the series. Today many of the powers that be believe that there is a moral and even religious lesson to be learned within each episode.
During the show's first year, in 1990, it was ridiculed and condemned all over the country. In April 1990, Bart Simpson T-shirts were banned in Cambridge Elementary School in Orange County, California. Two months later Mayor Sharpe James of Newark, New Jersey demanded that retail stores and street vendors stop selling these crude shirts. James was quoted by the Associate Press stating, "just at a time when [the nation's leaders] are trying to get our young people to develop their abilities to the fullest, we get a t-shirt with a popular cartoon character saying he is proud to be an underachiever" (James). JC-Penny department stores nationwide stopped selling the shirts. Leaders of the country began to join this bandwagon during a time where they considered the morality and values of Western Civilization were beginning to deteriorate because of violent video games and sinister rock music from groups such as Marilyn Manson. President George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara were disgusted by the series in 1992. Because of this original hatred by many of the rightwing officials and public voices many parents prohibited their children from watching as well as not taking an interest themselves.
The upheaval was also prominent in American churches. The minister of Willow Creek Community Church of Illinois created a sermon titled "What Jesus Would Say to Bart Simpson," expressing his distaste for the show.
The episode Mypods and Boomsticks from the noteworthy satirical TV show The Simpsons is an effective piece of work designed to criticise Apple products and customers and condemn racism towards religions. This episode revolves heavily around Bart and how he deals with racism towards his new friend, Lisa and the problems of being a consumer of Apple products and Homer with his racism towards a religion he doesn’t understand.
Move over Jetson there is a new beloved animated family in town, the Simpsons. The Simpson’s originally aired on December 17th, 1989 and has yet to make us stop laughing. The Simpson’s follow a not so typical American family from the fictional town of Springfield. The episode follow the satirical lives of Homer (Dad), Marge (mom), Bart (brother), Lisa (sister), and Maggie (little sister). Though this is a satirical TV show many episodes provide excellent points and example of material covered in a sociology class. The episode “Marge not be Proud” gives multiple examples of deviant behavior and this essay will discuss two of them.
Whether people stood for or against the Reverend William A. Sunday, they all agreed that it was difficult to be indifferent toward him. The religious leader was so extraordinarily popular, opinionated, and vocal that indifference was the last thing that he would get from people. His most loyal admirers were confident that this rural-breed preacher was God’s mouthpiece, calling Americans to repentance. Sunday’s critics said that at best he was a well-meaning buffoon whose sermons vulgarized and trivialized the Christian message and at worst he was a disgrace to the name of Christ (Dorsett 2).
The television show South Park is a very controversial show which has been attacked by the media, politicians, parents, the school system, and just about every other social group imaginable. Why is the show so controversial? The reason it is attacked so thoroughly is because of its crude humor and vulgar displays by its characters, as well as the fact that it attacks the thoughts and beliefs of every religion in the world. This vulgarity and intolerance is most notable in the character Cartman, who is extremely offensive in his thoughts, ideas, and actions. The show does, however, provide a balance to Cartman’s antics through his co-stars Stan and Kyle. Stan, and Kyle almost always stand up to Cartman and ridicule his intolerance, thereby creating a view of intolerance for intolerance. This intolerance for intolerance is the part of the show which redeems it, and should silence the critics. Unfortunately, those critics are the groups that the show often criticizes, and because of this they find the show repulsive. South Park’s depiction of society is very worthwhile, as it shows it’s viewers who can look past the crude humor, that intolerance within our society is not acceptable and poking fun at those ideas is one way of promoting tolerance.
For this assignment I watched the show The Simpsons, which comes on the Fox network on Sunday nights at eight. The show is about an animated nuclear family and their everyday lives. The Simpsons targets the middle class families that live in the suburbs of America. The show mainly appeals to families that composed of parents who work at blue-collar jobs and have children, between the ages of 10-18. You can tell this from the commercials, how The Simpsons life style is portrayed and the jokes contained in the show.
The Simpsons first aired in 1980 as a hilarious, sarcastic, and exaggerated satire of everyday life. With depictions of politics and politicians, bad parenting, greedy industry owners, and the faults in everyday society. The show really brings to life the thoughts and sometimes unrealistic views we have of everyday people.
"Seinfeld" was always present in my home during its nine-year run on Thursday nights as "Must See TV," and the social commentary was welcome humor. However, not everyone was thrilled by Seinfeld's prominence in American society and the subject matter with which Seinfeld dealt. Many Christians, Jews and other minorities had problems with the show's portrayal of their respective groups. Despite criticism from ethnic and religious groups, Jerry Seinfeld and his show were possibly the best sources of social commentary that America's mainstream had to offer. The show is missed in today's current television line-up and no post-"Seinfeld" sitcom has come to the same level of cultural criticism.
The data compiled by the Nielsen Media Research is essential to TV programming across the United States and in Canada. It monitors television ratings and estimates audience sizes by providing the highest quality of accuracy, allowing the television marketplace to function effectively. This information provides programmers and commercial advertisers with the awareness of people’s viewing habits. Depending on air times and the popularity of certain shows, the station calculates the advertising fees that generate a majority of its revenue.
There are stereotypes of different people and beliefs throughout American's thinking. From early on we learn to associate certain cultural differences to certain individuals. The cartoon representations on The Simpsons are a perfect example of such associations. Each character from the long-running, prime time television show is an archetype of individuals in the American society. Homer, Lisa, Barney, and all the rest give us a look at what "typical" Americans should act like while, at the same time, critiquing their attitudes and behaviors. The Simpsons is not the average cartoon show. Although it features cute, animated people and many humorous situations it was not meant for children. This is how the show's writers can get away with such a complex stereotype for each character. Adults and in particular American adults will understand references made buy the characters, their actions and thought processes. When picked apart the main characters of the show, the Simpson family, each have their own Americanized attitudes, which when thrown together encompass the typical "nuclear" family. To set the scene for this example, picture a family of five, all doing their various daily activities: the little boy skateboarding around the neighborhood causing trouble, the little girl at school concentrating on her music, the mother and baby at the supermarket, and the father driving home from a hard days work at the plant. All of a sudden the viewer is in this famil...
“It seems today that all we see is violence in movies and sex on TV, but where are those good old fashion values, on which we used to rely (Family Guy)?” This phrase is heard often by individuals who choose to watch one of the most famous animated sitcoms in the past decade, Family Guy. The first sentence happens to be the key slogan in the series theme song. Seth MacFarlane used this saying when the show was brought back to the air in 2005. This was around the time that I had originally started to watch the sitcom, after I watched a few of the episodes that aired before the cancellation in 2002. Family Guy’s popularity had increased astoundingly since it’s cancellation in 2002. In 2005, it became the first television show to have ever been resurrected due to the high volume of DVD sales (Gablan). Since then, its popularity has increased to become a consistent sitcom to appear in the Nielsen Ratings top 20 each week, while becoming the forty-third most popular overall show, and second most popular animated series on Tv.com, the most popular online television viewing site in North America (Richards).
Today I received a referral from a family who is seeking help regarding their dysfunctional family structure. The Simpson’s are a nuclear family that is having difficulties living as a family. I have already spoken to Marge Simpson and agreed to find a way to get her husband and children to therapy. She has very high aspirations of attending therapy with her family because she has longed for a “normal” functioning family in which her husband and children interact in a much healthier manner than they do now. She described her husband of being careless, her son uncontrollable ate times, and her daughters disconnected from the family. We have set up the meeting for next week, Wednesday at six, when she believed her family would be more willing to attend and actually participate in the therapy session.
Censorship even extends to school dress codes. A school dress code is a set of rules about what clothing may or may not be worn in schools. As previously mentioned, a set of criteria are used to determine whether or not student expression should be censored in schools. For censorship involving dress codes, there are two: the “Tinker disruption standard” and the “forum issue,” which determine if student expression disrupts the school day and by who it is regulated, respectively (Emert). One case involving censorship of the school dress code was of a boy who violated his school’s dress code (Nguyen). Zachary Guiles, a thirteen year old boy, had to cover up his shirt denigrating former President George W. Bush, which violated his First Amendment rights (Nguyen). The shirt showed President Bush’s head on a chicken with derogatory names. It had images of oil rigs and lines of cocaine (Nguyen). A student, who had opposite views as Guiles, notified the administration of the shirt (Nguyen). Guiles was sent home on May 13, 2004, when he didn’t cover up the shirt after being asked to. The next day, Guiles’ wore the shirt, which was covered with tape and the word ‘censored’ was written on the tape (Nguyen). The school which Guiles attended, Williamstown Middle High School in Vermont, said that the shirt violated the dress code. Guiles’ parents felt that their son’s “rights to engage in political speech” were violated, and they sued the school (Nguyen). Guiles did not win the lawsuit in December 2004, when the US District Court for Vermont ruled in favor of the school, saying the images were “’plainly offensive and inappropriate’” (Nguyen). Guiles appealed, and the Second Circuit court ruled that the images were not offensive an...
Jonathan Edwards was a man who could petrify any eighteenth century Puritan. He was born in East Windsor, Connecticut and was raised in a household with strict religious beliefs. In 1727 he began his preaching career as an assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, the pastor at the church at Northampton, Massachusetts. When his grandfather died two years later, Edwards became the pastor of the Church at Northampton and began preaching all over New England. He then emerged as one of the leaders of the Great Awakening with his determination to return to the orthodoxy of the Puritan faith. That is when he adopted his “fire and brimstone” emotional style of sermon. Although people often ran out of the church in hysterics, most stayed in the church captivated by his speeches. He had always purposely chose to address his congregation with a sermon, using all of the elements of an oratory. In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards displays all elements of an oratory by appealing to emotions, including expressive and rhythmic language, addressing the needs and concerns of his audience, and inspiring others to take action.
After twenty five seasons, The Simpsons continues to be an influential show. With animation as a medium, the writers use satire to point out the stereotypes the media generates. In some instances, they take a stereotype and push it to the extreme, like Apu and his eight children, and other times they go against the social norms, like Lisa being a strong independent woman. Through this the viewers are reminded just how much say the media has in their perception of others and how they are constantly making judgments of any entire group of people based on the characteristics of some. I do not think that stereotypes will ever cease to exist, but I do believe that it is important we, at the very least, are aware of what they are.
uite a number of individuals have asserted that The Sopranos is the best television series ever produced, and one is led to question the statement in view of the controversies the show has created. By what decisive factor is such a conclusion made? Is it because of the commercial success? Could it be the cultural value of the show? Is it due to creative cinematic value or because the number of subscription of the audience? What is so good about The Sopranos?