Media Literacy after The Simpsons

Media Literacy after The Simpsons homing pigeon Simpson Explains our postmodernistist Identity crisis,Whether we Prize it or not Media Literacy after The SimpsonsABSTRACTThis article suggests that The Simpsons is a sophisticated media subject to the highest degree media that forces educators who get wind media literacy into an encounter with postmodern judgment. The sense of postmodern judgment for media education is explored through a focus on two now themes in The Simpsons the changing judgment of personal personal individuality and the consequences of a relentlessly ironic worldview. Icons of habitual culture crumb be use to teach close to philosophical excogitations. From its inception The Simpsons has posed a signifi evictt ch each in allenge to educators.The program, which ridiculed all pulps of influence and turned Bart Simpson into a wildly habitual anti-hero, initially provoked an intense reaction from the education citizens, in around schools influential to the banning of paraphernalia bearing Barts images and habitual denunciations of the series. As the series grew in popularity- and eventual(prenominal)ly was joined by new(prenominal) cartoon series that were seen to be all the much much educationally offensive, such(prenominal) as Beavis and Butthead and South Park-the furor died cumulus to a now on the other artisan passive hostility toward the program, at least in the classroom. It certainly didnt facilitate the educational communitys disagreement to give way Interval magazine reputation the series the best tv program of the 20th century, or to have the poet laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky, praise the series, stating that it penetrates to the existence of television itself (Owen, 2000, p. 65). Nor did it facilitate that various teachers went habitat, turned the program on, and laughed themselves silly. whole the more(prenominal) another abbreviate has been created in the midst of the culture of children and th e culture of education, a poser that has been perhaps all the more more painful for media educators, various of whom follow Hobbs (1998) target that the texts of all(prenominal)day c atomic number 18er, when constituted as objects of well-disposed participation, append the possibility for combining textual, historical, and ideological query in ways that relieve students and teachers move beyond the limits of traditional disciplines and controversy line of businesss (p. 21). To be undeniable, there have been efforts by media educators to bring The Simpsons into the classroom. Our debate of the media literacy literary works and media literacy sites revealed a number of examples of proposed lessons incorporating the series, from examining The Simpsons as a virgin variant of loving satire to comparing The Simpsons family to other television families. On the other hand, in almost every dispute, we sensed that the unique qualities of the series eluded these efforts. The basic tools of media education and literacy as typically agreed upon by numerous media literacy communities-tools which regulate our govern to basic precepts such as the meaning that the media are constructed-appear not to be enough to turn The Simpsons from renegade habitual culture into a teachable moment (Aufderheide, 1993 Media Awareness Network, 2000). Perhaps the exchange poser with The Simpsons is that it seems to drag the media literacy examination onto the unfamiliar and all the more foreboding terrain of postmodernism, where issues of image and replica open to fall apart, a terrain where sporadic media educators are involuntary or able to follow. Of line, there has been an effort to define, critique, and bring postmodern impression to bear on educational judgment and application, expressly from advocates of unfavourable pedagogy (e.g., Aronowitz Giroux, 1992). All the more this has been a theory-driven effort that has not reached bring forward far into educational scholarship, and has made almost no headway into the frontlines of educational manipulate.Various teachers Studies in Media entropy Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 have never heard of the label postmodernism. The uniform mould is equally, if not more pronounced, in the media education citizens. Our examination of media literacy literature and key media literacy web sites in the United States and Canada revealed an almost comprehensive absence of controversy and examination on postmodernism. There have been, of pathway, notable exceptions (McLaren, Hammer, Scholle, Reilly, 1995 Steinberg Kincheloe, 1997). The outcome of this discharge margin is another slender abbreviate, in this dispute not between students and educators, on the other artisan between media educators and media theorists. In examining this section, we are struck by two observations. First, the gap between media education manipulate and media j udgment comes precisely at the moment when teachers and media educators are finding themselves overwhelmed by strange contemporaneous unbroken cultural texts for which the unfamiliar category of postmodernism may potentially be the most fruitful instructive handle. Second, the positions of students and media theorists stand in the succeeding family relationship. Students are living privileged an more and more postmodern regular cultural participation that media theorists are attempting to label, define, and s piece of tail. The puzzle is that students dont necessarily have the vocabulary to generate meaning of their participation, and the vocabulary that theorists have genuine seems to cause meaning only in graduate seminars. The Simpsons offers a promising opportunity to strategically residence these issues, richlylighting the limits of pompous media literacy tools, illustrating the aesthetic examine of postmodernism, and providing most vocabulary to label that examine. I n effect, it serves as an dispute of how the solution of postmodernism can be employ to develop a contemporary range of critical interpretive skills for constructively engaging this growing trend in habitual culture.Our article presents a mini introduction to postmodernism and a grounded process of the benefits and limits of applying this judgment. Our reason is not to provide an exhaustive or all the more spread out introduction to postmodern judgment. Rather, it is to position The Simpsons as a media subject that can be used as a starting dispense with for exploring postmodern judgment. Fear of Postmodernism If everyone loves The Simpsons, postmodernism has its fall off participation of critics. Writing in U.S. Material and Field Report, Leo (1999) argues that postmodernism has created a quarrel that no one can learn, a oral communication that is used to intellectually bully readers into agreeing with outlandish propositions. The academic area, on the other artisan, has offe red more equivocal assessments. Hebdige (1988) argues that we are in the presence of a buzzword, a expression which, while confusing, does appropriate an influential social or cultural transition. Kellner (1995) agrees, observing that . . . the label postmodern is frequently a placeholder, or semiotic marker, that indicates that there are virgin phenomena that demand mapping and theorizing (p. 46). In the infrequent instances where references to postmodernism do appear in media literacy literature, its ambiguous area is emphasized. For process, Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1997), in their effort to launch charting the challenges posed by multimedia education in an increasingly digitized media area, believe that postmodernism, although glib and sweeping, offers a beneficial pathway to stipulate a number of broad social and cultural commuteations. Some of the changes that control condition Buckingham and Sefton-Green embrace the area of consumption, the blurring distinctions betwe en production and consumption, the poaching of texts and symbols, and the rejection of the elitist and sterile oppositions between high and habitual culture (pp. 289-292). Given the slipperiness of the sense, postmodernism on the other hand marks a critical modern moment in the scan of media and replica. mental synthesis on the business of Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1997), we open by asking what is postmodernism and what can we do with it? With its challenge of truthfulness and its subject of the politics of media representations, postmodernism, once it is understood properly, can be a rich source of pedagogical judgment and manipulate. The Postmodern Dispute Definitions and Symptoms What true is the label postmodernism trying to receive? There is, first, the sense of opposition to modernism.In essence, modernism states that individuals and nations, guided by reasonable opinion and Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 Universit y of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 2 scientific achievements, are moving toward a more humane, more just, and more economically prosperous ultimate. In other contents, modernism embraces progress, viewing it as a linear and inexorable phenomenon with acceptable outcomes. Accordingly, the discharge in postmodernism stands for the meaning that there is no longer any guarantee of progress. In point, there is that petty consensus as to what progress all the more wealth. Postmodernity typically is distinguished by an undermining of force, the denigration of novel by turning it into a style or evocative nostalgia, the questioning of progress, and the head to impression the ultimate as empty. Other postmodern symptoms embrace the meaning of image clog up, intertextuality (the seemingly random quoting of one subject by another), a heightened meaning of media self-reflexivity calling control to replica as a hall of mirrors, and pastiche, defined as the sense to cause disjointed i mages and subject fragments. Finally, the postmodern process is marked by commodification overload (the head to turn everything into a product or marketing opportunity), badinage overload (the elevation of irony as the dominant rhetorical posture), and the increased questioning of the sense of personal identity brought on by viewing the self as a social construction. In short, the meaning of postmodernism calls control to the ways in which a beneficial deal of everyday regular culture is at once fully informed by, if not driven by, the basic media literacy precept that media construct social naked truth. In act, all the more of regular culture relentlessly draws carefulness to the further arbitrariness of almost every aspect of our social participation, as well as the moral and epistemological foundations on which social participation depends. In other contents, the curriculum of regular culture has outstripped the curriculum of the classroom, all the more the media education clas sroom. The vocabulary of postmodernism allows us to launch to contemplate and term the various ways in which this is taking fix, on the other share it further leaves us at a loss about how to proceed. Recognizing this disagreement, memo and educational theorists have attempted to clarify what is to be gained by drawing on the social and theoretical insights generated by the deconstructive influence of postmodern criticism. At the same musical interval, they have tried to demonstrate how to tame this influence in the utility of modernist values such as human rights, equality, freedom, and democracy (Aronowitz Giroux, 1991 Best Kellner, 1991 Giroux, 1997 Kellner, 1995 Rorty, 1989 Wolin, 1990).A critical postmodernism encourages us to solicit contemporary questions about all claims to influence (scientific or otherwise), about how contemporary forms of replica and contemporary inflections in the style of replica made practicable through technology and commodification exchange the qua lity of sense, and about how cultural dominance is produced and maintain through the patterns of contrasts used to define social and linguistic categories (Aronowitz Giroux, 1991 Scholle Denski, 1995). Postmodernism offers contemporary tools for critical interpretation and modern responsibilities for connecting media and cultural interpretation to democracy as a form of native land that enables critical reflection and activism, making us understand the ways in which our seemingly private individual identities are formed, through language and symbols, in relationship to each other and the broader social and governmental citizens (McKinlay, 1998, p. 481). For The Simpsons audience, an ambivalence toward technology and progress is guideline fare. This judgment of the ultimate as empty and without guarantees has further been associated with the core identity of Hour X, whose slogan might glance at We have seen the forthcoming and it sucks. While any aspect of postmodernism discussed above can be found in and explored in spite of appearance The Simpsons, two concepts in particular-irony overload and the questioning of identity-will serve as reference points in our reconsideration of the series. The puzzle of identity is a central complication for all young citizens, on the other artisan it is a puzzle that is not duration satisfactorily addressed, given the growing levels of hopelessness, cynicism, despair, and self-destruction among teenagers. Of particular control to us is that The Simpsons repeatedly focuses on this further subject the puzzle of selfhood in an increasingly absurd culture pulverized with images, symbols, values, irony, commercialization, and hucksterism. What lessons does The Simpsons teach? What lessons can be learned as the characters on the demonstrate are thrust into many battles for selfhood within the postmodern terrain? Enjoy all the more postmodern Studies in Media Info Literacy Education, Manual 1, Controversy 1 (February 2001), 1- 12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 3 culture, The Simpsons, is saturated with irony and obsessed with issues of absolute identity, expressly in relation to media culture. Our task is to devise an interpretive frame of reference to facilitate media educators and viewers open to cause critical meaning of these symptoms.The Challenges of Postmodern Selfhood Gergen (1991) notes that postmodernists abbreviate version into three epochs, each of which corresponds to a particular judgment of personal identity or selfhood. These closures are labeled as the pre-modern (romantic hour), the contemporary era, and the postmodern. From the pre-modern or romantic tradition, we derive our meaning in a durable center of identity. In Gergens contents, powerful forces in the deep interior of ones duration are held to be the source of inspiration, creativity, genius, and moral courage, all the more frenzy (Gergen, 1992, p. 61). Modernism redefined the self, shifting the emphasi s from deep, mysterious processes to human consciousness in the here and these days, always in control with such values as efficiency, stable functioning, and progress. The self in its virgin form-what Gergen calls the postmodern or comparative self-is no longer viewed as a separate target, on the other artisan is increasingly understood as a comparative construction, defined by and spread across the humanity and activity experiences each individual encounters throughout her or his field. In short, as McNamee and Gergen (1999) argue, there are no independent selves we are each constituted by others (who are themselves similarly constituted). We are always already relate by virtue of shared constitutions of the self (p. 15). Linked to this sense is the sense that a conscious understanding of ourselves as beings occurs through language, which is itself a fundamentally relative sense, and that our identity grows and develops in relationship to the endless dialogues that we have wi th others, with culture, and with ourselves. In this meaning, our interactions with the media become deeply monumental. Moreover, this contemporary consciousness of the relational sense of the self comes at correct the moment when the relationships we enter into and which contribute to our definition of self are multiplying at an exponential rate and are duration increasingly spread over a in a superior way and in a superior way span of hour and amplitude. It is one baggage to see the sense of the relational self when we think of, claim, two friends engaged in a mutually sustaining and defining examination. In this setting, the sense of the relational self is promising, perhaps all the more reassuring. On the other hand, extending the meaning of relationship to subsume every symbolic encounter in which we willingly or unwilling participate-from intentional relationships to unintentional and coerce relationship with 3,000 commercial messages per day-presents modern challenges. A cr itical postmodern perspective calls control to this crisis of identity, a crisis in which the media of memo and their commercial foundations are deeply implicated. Of line, thinking of the self as a relational construct not only gives insights into the crisis of the self, on the other share it further offers a means of thinking about how to residence that crisis. In this more hopeful and acceptable meaning, the relational self offers a glimpse of those selected aspects of human participation and identity that may be used as a moral foundation in the face of the deconstructive maelstrom of commercial postmodern culture. The relational self suggests a moral compass that is establish less on the authentic truths of religion or science than in the manner by which we draw up ourselves and our community through ceaseless and needful physical, linguistic, and psychological dependence upon one another. Drawing on the duty of Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jurgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, an d Jerome Bruner, McNamee and Gergen (1999) deposit elsewhere a autonomous and thoughtful introduction to what a moral value orientation organized on all sides of the relational self would see enjoy. They have called it relational responsibility, defining relationally responsible actions as those that sustain and enhance forms of exchange elsewhere of which influential process itself is made practicable. Isolation, they argue, represents the negation of citizens (p. 19). The guideline of relational responsibility is in stark contrast to the deconstructive tendencies of postmodernism. As such, it can serve as a critical bridge linking the interpretive coercion of a critical postmodernism to the modernist values associated with progressive democracy.Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 4 At the same hour, it is autonomous that the deconstructive tendencies of postmodernism (as a fix of virgin conditions) have influential implications for personal identity construction. Giddens (1991), for process, warns of the looming threat of personal meaninglessness. It is this threat that directs us back to a carefulness of one of the central tropes of postmodern discourse irony. As noted above, relentless irony is a hallmark of both The Simpsons and the postmodern era. As individuals struggle to await postmodern challenges to identity, there is grounds to solicit whether there is any valuation in the postmodern strategy of irony. Thus, the implications of irony both for identity formation and relational responsibility must be considered. Irony, Identity, and the Disagreement of Responsibility The Simpsons is regularly celebrated for its incisive wit and social satire, for its force to manipulate irony to bell control to the absurdity of everyday social conventions and beliefs. Irony functions as a critical form that helps us to break through surface sense to examine and understand the correct area of things in a contemporary and deeper means. It is a vehicle for enhancing critical consciousness, and it represents a moral coercion of skilled in the function of eradicating conventional pathetic (Rorty, 1989). As Hutcheon (1992, 1994) notes, critical irony is intimately linked to politics. The compel of deconstructing can be a first development to political dispute, and ironys oppositional character can be a major critical compel. The subversive functioning of irony is related to its status as a self-critical and self-reflexive resources that challenges hierarchy, and this influence to undermine and overturn is state to have politically transformative coercion. On the other share this is not where the manipulate of irony ends in The Simpsons, nor does it appropriate the postmodern turn in the meaning of irony. Postmodern irony is ambiguous and its solution is contested.It can be interpreted by adherents as lendful, reflexive, and liberating opponents , on the other hand, contemplate it as frivolous, deviant, and perverse (Hutcheon, 1992, 1994 Kaufman, 1997 Thiele, 1997). In postmodern irony, clarity in moral delineation begins to disappear. For process, in virgin comedy, as in all social behavior, all actions are controversy to satire from some perspective. Besides, by reason of postmodern irony begins with the assumption that language produces all sense, a kind of emancipatory indulgence in irony is evoked-an invitation to reconceptualize language as a form of play. As Gergen (1991) writes, we neednt credit such linguistic activities with profundity, imbue them with deep significance, or fix elsewhere to interchange the nature on their novel. Rather, we might play with the truths of the hour, shake them about, try them on dough funny hats (p. 188). In other contents, postmodern irony invites us to avoid saying it straight, using linear logic, and forming smooth, progressive narratives (p. 188). The Simpsons is saturated with t his form of postmodern irony. On the other facilitate where does that leave media educators trying to duty with this longly regular series? On the one artisan, media educators would prize to engage the series fully by practise of it raises various challenges to conventional ideas of mould and selfhood on the other share, they are unwilling to lead students to examine media literacy as a form of deconstruction that leads only to meaninglessness or play. Some media scholars contemplate postmodern irony as a laborious challenge for teachers attached to linking media literacy with productive citizenship. Purdy, for dispute, laments that between Madonna and the fist-fight between Jesus and Santa Claus that opened the cartoon series South Park, there is less and less left in high society whose flouting can elicit shock. Irony, he concludes, invites us to be self-absorbed, on the other facilitate in selves that we cannot believe to be particularly interesting or significant (p. 26). Conw ay and Seery (1992) are similarly concerned about the implications of postmodern irony for engaged citizenship. Although irony may equip the dispossessed with much-needed critical perspective and all the more underwrite a minimal political agenda, they draw up, it is generally regarded as irremediably parasitic and antisocial (p. 3). Hutcheon (1994) further shares this episode, noting that irony can be both political and apolitical, both conservative and radical, both repressive and democratizing in a pathway that other discursive strategies are not (p. 35). Gergen (1991) frames the challenge of postmodern irony in terms of its challenge to forming a coherent self. If all serious projects are reduced to satire, play, Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 5 or nonsense, all attempts at authenticity or earnest ends become empty-merely postures to be punctuated by sophisticated self-co nsciousness (p. 189). If this is the poser that The Simpsons raises in its manipulate of both critical and postmodern irony, to what room is it contributing to a social consciousness with a practicable for social process, as opposed to contributing to a cynical numbness founded on ironic detachment?What solutions does the series offer for resolving this disagreement? Are there any alternative solutions that acknowledge the postmodern challenge to identity? Exploration of Self in Homer to the Max With these concerns in meaning, we see an phase of The Simpsons that originally aired on February 7, 1998. The period focuses with particular vehemence on the quest for identity and asks the closest questions How is the sense of the self understood in relationship to the blizzard of media images, symbols, and values? How does irony fit into the exploration and resolution of identity issues? How do we understand The Simpsons confrontations with the self and identity in terms of what has b een called the postmodern process? The demonstrate begins with the principles sight gags on the couch and the Simpson familys lampooning of televisions midseason replacement series. The program that at long last captures the familys carefulness is Police Cops, which becomes a present within the present. As the two Miami-Vice enjoy heroes of Police Cops subdue would-be bank thieves, one of the police research worker heroes, a millionaire cop surrounded by admiring women, introduces himself as Simpson, Detective Homer Simpson. The Simpson family is shocked and Homer is exclusively overwhelmed, confusing himself with his television image.The plot then unfolds in essentially five kernels that hire up and explore Homers surprise over his own identity (Chatman, 1978). First, Homer identifies completely with the television detective hero Wow. They captured my disposition perfectly Did you examine the means Daddy caught that bullet? In turn, the all-inclusive citizens of Springfield val idates Homers contemporary pseudo-identity, treating him as if he were the television detective hero Hey, Mr. Simpson, sir, can I purchase your autograph? Second, the Police Cops producers interchange their television detective character from glamorous hero to bumbling sidekick, launching a series of gags about Homers correct identity. The virgin characterization is truly a near perfect replication of the absolute Homer Simpson. This outrages Homer Hey whats going on? That guys not Homer Simpson Hes fat and stupid The town continues to respond to Homer as the television character, only these days with ridicule rather than respect. Nonetheless, Homer gains some insight into the confusion between his authentic and fictional identity. As a assemblage of co-workers gathers in the hallway go away his business waiting for him to do something stupid, Homer retorts, Well, Im sorry to lower you gentleman, on the other artisan you seem to have me confused with a character in a fictional pres ent. Factor of the pleasure for viewers derives from the irony of the cartoon character Homer making the state that he is the authentic Homer Simpson, as opposed to the fictional cartoon character within the cartoon.The writers of the period then continue to play with this seemingly endless hall of mirrors between absolute and fictional identity by scripting Homer to behave true in the transaction of the revised fictional detective character. Homer obliges by spilling a fondue pot on the nuclear reactor polity panel. Homers identity crisis at long last leads him to Hollywood, where he confronts the producers of the Police Cops-By the Numbers Productions-and demands that they recast the detective character Im begging you Im a human duration Let me have my dignity back The lines between Homers authentic identity and his media identity blur all the more besides when his efforts in the production business are used as grist for a contemporary gag in the later Police Cops period. Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Manual 1, Controversy 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 6 In the third kernel, the plot shifts absent from Homers struggle over his identification with his media replica to his fixation on the sense that a contemporary label will give him a virgin identity. In this kernel, Homer goes to court to sue Police Cops for the improper application of his reputation. When his petition is nowadays rebuffed in the term of corporate proprietary interests, he rashly decides to transform his reputation to Max Coercion. Homers growth is nowadays transformed. His self-image improves, he becomes forceful and dynamic, and his co-workers and boss treat him with respect. Mr. Burns, remembering Homers reputation for the first interval, exclaims, Well, who could forget the reputation of a magnetic individual prize you? Keep up the acceptable profession, Max. While shopping at Costingtons for a contemporary faculty wardrob e, Homer meets a member of Springfields elect(ip) with a similarly powerful label, Trent Steele. Trent nowadays takes Homer/Max under his wing, inviting him to garden troop for Springfields young, hip force couples, an period that turns elsewhere to be the spring off stop for an environmental reason. The critical moment in this kernel-which links the identity crisis of Police Cops with the identity theme in the Max Force percentage of the episode-occurs when Homer reveals to his contemporary best friend Trent Steele the origin of the term Max Compel.When Trent exclaims, Hey, beneficial term, Homer replies, Yeah, isnt it? I got it off a hairdryer. Homers resolution to his identity crisis with his media self is to redefine himself in terms of the force setting of a mini household appliance. The self is these days equated with a product. At first, the results are spectacularly successful. The fourth kernel leads to the denouement. In the third kernel, Homers appropriation of the ide ntity of his hair dryer appears to have resolved his identity crisis in satisfactory transaction. On the other hand, this meaning soon falls apart. At the garden assemblage, Homer and margin rub shoulders with celebrity environmental activists Woody Harrelson and Ed Begley, Jr., two of the various celebrities lampooned in the phase. The sense extreme these scenes is that Homer, as the buffoon celebrity Max Force, is on the same level as other equally shallow and ridiculous celebrities. Finally, Trent Steele announces that it is interval to board a bus to reason the wanton destruction of our nations forests. This generate is relentlessly parodied We have to protect trees by generate of trees cant protect themselves, except, of trail, the Mexican Fighting Trees. The partygoers travel to a stand of redwoods about to be bulldozed and are chained to the trees. The police (Chief Wiggum, Eddie, and Lou) confront Homer, attempt to swab his eyes with Hippie- Coercion mace, and stop up chasi ng him on all sides of his tree. His chain works prize a saw, cutting down the redwood, which in turn topples the comprehensive forest. Homer, freed at persist, throws his chain into the air, violent death a bald eagle. Homer, as the phony Max Force, is rejected by the phony celebrity activists. In the fifth and final kernel, which serves as an epilogue to the phase, Marge and Homer are in bed. Marge tells Homer she is glad he changed his reputation back to Homer Simpson and Homer responds, Yes, I learned you gotta be yourself. The phase Through a Postmodern Lens The phase is intriguing by generate of of its insistent focus on the search for identity, and the methods by which that identity is constructed within the absurdities of the postmodern landscape. As Gergen (1992) notes, We are exposed to more opinions, values, personalities, and ways of activity than was any previous interval in novel the number of our relationships soars, the variations are enormous past relationships ex treme (only a ring bell apart) and contemporary faces are only a channel absent (p. 58). There is, in short, an explosion in social connections.What does this explosion have to do with our meaning of selves and what we stand for, and how does it undermine beliefs in a romantic interior or in a rational center of the self ? This is precisely the controversy this period of The Simpsons takes up again and again. What is exclusively engaging in this phase is the focus on Homers identity crisis and its relationship to the media. This is not, of line, a theme unique to The Simpsons. As Caldwell (1995) observes, comedy-variety shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s were repeatedly using the conventions of intertextuality and