To me the Simpsons and a lot of older shows have been a bellweather for how things used to be and how they’ve changed. As a late millennial who was once Lisa’s age but now more like Marge and Homer, I often think about how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job, they don’t have a lot of stuff but they have some basic securities that I’ve been trying to work towards my whole life, and still haven’t gotten there - maintaining a 90s style of living is just not realistic in the 2020s, though we have many new distractions and things to engage with to make up for it.
> I often think about how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job, they don’t have a lot of stuff but they have some basic securities that I’ve been trying to work towards my whole life, and still haven’t gotten there
This was a common trope on TV shows of that era: Everyone had a cool house with a lot of space. It wasn't a reflection of reality, it was how sets were designed and shows were drawn.
The Simpsons even made fun of the fact in the famous Frank Grimes episode where they pointed out how absurd it was that Homer was a doofus who had a big house and beautiful family.
Somewhere along the line, we started confusing this TV reality with how families actually lived at the time.
You want aspirational, look to Family Guy. Somehow Peter Griffin can afford a helicopter, a jet pack, and whatever expenses are required to obtain the foot of the statue of liberty.
>maintaining a 90s style of living is just not realistic in the 2020s
I think even in 1989, when the show debuted, two income families were starting to be (or already had been) pretty typical. I think the Simpsons might have been poking fun at the 1960s and 1970s family sitcoms where the dad went to work and the wife stayed home.
Edit: But you're right that in the 80s and 90s you would have a decent chance of buying a house (on those two incomes).
Agreed. The funny thing about this is that, when I mentioned it to wife's family, they did not think it was particularly representative and was dismissed as faux Americana. I still think about it, because as I re-watched older episodes recently, I can't help, but think that they did not want to acknowledge it being true, while it was just that.
> how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job
It isn't - especially if you watch the original first season of the Simpsons [0] (Homer's Odyssey - the 3rd episode of the Simpsons written right as the 1990 recession was kicking off) as well as that Frank Grimes episode back in 1997 [1].
The older Simpsons episodes weren't that common on syndication from what I can remember growing up - at most you might see an episode from 1994 in the early 2000s, so I wouldn't be surprised if these episodes may have been forgotten.
Simpsons in it's original iteration during it's golden age (1989-1999) was essentially lampooning the 1960s American dream (which itself was legally unattainable for a large portion of Americans in the 1960s - there's a reason why we had a Civil Rights Movement as well as normalized anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Greek, anti-Spanish/Portuguese, and anti-Jewish sentiment until these communities assimilated into being "white" in the 1980s and even heritage Americans in vast swathes of America lacked indoor plumbing, medical care, education beyond the 5th grade, etc) being punctuated by the harsh realities of America at the time [4] (eg. $pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling) from 1993).
What I've noticed from the comments on HN (as well as the viciousness of the community when I point this out) is most HNers grew up in middle and upper-middle class households in the 1980s-90s that in most cases weren't representative of the lives the median American would have lived then, and a lot of the rose tinted glasses appear to betray that upbringing.
For example, from 1989 to 1994, household incomes in the US dropped at the same rate as they did during the Great Recession and the COVID Pandemic [2] and didn't recover until 1997, but because most HN users today weren't the head of a household during that period they view the 1990s as a golden age.
It's the same with 1980s nostalgia with everyone ignoring the 1980s recession which is lampooned in Mr Mom [3] - strip the 80s humor and it's basically a story about a single earner household where the primary breadwinner is made structurally unemployed right when the Rust Belt was starting to rust due to Japanese and German automotive exports becoming more competitive than American exports.
> most HNers grew up in middle and upper-middle class households in the 1980s-90s that in most cases weren't representative of the lives the median American would have lived then, and a lot of the rose tinted glasses appear to betray that upbringing
Guilty as charged! I also do think that there’s an additional sense within those communities of the “normalcy” of homeownership both within the spaces, and reflected back via mass culture. True, nobody in New York has an apartment like they did on Friends, but the shows made to appeal to middle class America, even the ones like Married with Children still held “well there’s a house” even though the main character is a deadbeat - this isn’t played for laughs or out of irony, it’s just the default.
Even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms and shows you rarely see people renting - homeownership rates are pretty steady around 62% back to the 60s. Among white Americans it’s like 75% or something. So I don’t think it’s entirely rose tinted glasses, even if there is a point to be made about the biases of the HN crowd.
> Even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms and shows you rarely see people renting - homeownership rates are pretty steady around 62% back to the 60s. Among white Americans it’s like 75% or something. So I don’t think it’s entirely rose tinted glasses, even if there is a point to be made about the biases of the HN crowd
Sure, but you have to remember only 58% of Americans today are non-Hispanic White.
For the other 42% of us, we would have been legally segregted in much of America deep into the 1970s as it took the DoJ a lot of effort to litigate against explicit and implicit attempts to sidestep the civil rights act. For us, while there may be a kernel of truth in what you described, the reality is we would have been second class citizens if we were born then.
If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then.
It's insensitive.
> True, nobody in New York has an apartment like they did on Friends, but the shows made to appeal to middle class America, even the ones like Married with Children still held “well there’s a house” even though the main character is a deadbeat - this isn’t played for laughs or out of irony, it’s just the default
Few shows represent the bottom 50% of society irrespective of race let alone back in the 1990s or even today. The only prime time shows I can think of that showed that bottom half of society as independent individuals was Shameless.
Even "The Jeffersons" back in the 70s was basically a standard upper middle class sitcom despite being revolutionary in showing African Americans on primetime.
Heck, the HDI of much of America in 1990 [0] is comparable to Russia, Serbia, and Belarus today [1].
And even Marc Andreessen would often recount growing up in the rural Midwest without indoor plumbing and having to take a s#it in the freezing cold. He was born in 1971.
> don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven
I understand where you're coming from, and hope you've not been given the idea that I'm idealizing the past - I'm only alive today because the present isn't the past. Weird to bring up.. Marc Andreessen of all people as authority after that. Not the pull I'd expect
I don't think there's ever been a panacea, and things have always been been rougher for anyone not white. But I do think that everyone's getting choked out by housing and inflated asset prices in ways that no living generation has. Since '85 rent has gone up 325% more than incomes. I understand you wrote a lot, but don't take what I said and extrapolate my other beliefs - I'm a much more complex person.
>> If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then.
>> It's insensitive.
Stop problematising everything, complete with Twitter style mic drops. OP didn't say the 70s were heaven, they're saying that home-ownership is slipping ever more out of reach. This is a true point for people of all races, religions, sexual orientations, etc.
There's nothing constructive about trying to slyly imply white people are more problematic for wanting homes to live in than people of other races. It's pointlessly divisive, and undercuts the sorely needed pro-housing coalition.
You're playing into what the elites want: an opposition that is fractious, navel-gazing, and delightfully (to the elites) impotent.
> they're saying that home-ownership is slipping ever more out of reach
The why don't you guys say that instead of reflexively fawning over a period that is objectively worse for us.
> slyly imply white people are more problematic for wanting homes to live in than people of other races
I never implied that, and that is why is said the following: "If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then".
To be brutally honest, whenever I and others point out that the historical nostalgia is not really positive for a large portions Americans, commenters like you reflexively try to shut us down.
Because you get to have housing, or you get to be right, but you don't get both. You'll never build the necessary coalition if you spend half the time weaving in truth telling about slavery and indigenous genocide.
The left has forgotten what power and politics is. It's not cathartic posting. That's why we keep losing.
Was it right that the gay marriage fight required us to seek the approval and acquiescence of straights for same-sex love? God no, it was grotesque. Did we win? You bet your ass we did. If the trans fight wasn't fought in the idiotic way it was, Trump wouldn't have had his best attack ad, and this might be a much better world for trans people.
I don't give a flying fig about who was in the wrong in the 50s about race (as if there's any doubt about that). Outcomes are much more important than never-ending reconciliation and truth telling, especially for marginalised people. Endless talking is a privilege. Do you want houses or not?
Fred Sanford owned a small business and lived in Los Angeles in an era when the majority of African Americans were working unskilled wage jobs [0] and overwhelmingly living in the South.
He and Lamont were middle and upper-middle class by African American standards as was seen in the 1970 Negro (the then term for African Americans) Census by the the US Department of Commerce.
And by overall American standards back then they would have probably been around the 50th to 60th percentile of households by income and would have been earning at least 60% than their racial peers in the South at the exact same time.
If you go through US Census data from 1970 - almost a decade after the Civil Rights Act was passed - it is harrowing. Now imagine how much worse it was before that.
Sadly, a lot of that authenticity fell to the wayside when the original Simpsons writers left the show to work on "Futurama" and "The Critic" and Fox retooled the show for syndication.
I'm personally more of a KOTH fan - I found it to be a much more grounded example of middle class life in the late 1990s and early 2000s while also recognizing that the Hills had it good. I find a similar strain of authenticity in Bob's Burgers (unsurprising since much of the team worked on KOTH).
> Frank Grimes is one of the best characters on TV
I remember getting enraged as an elementary schooler watching that episode because his statement hit true, but we were also a family of 4 living in a 1 bedroom apartment at the time and newly immigrated, and even then I felt similar to Grimes when watching the Simpsons.
When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.
<< When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.
Interesting. This is not how I interpreted it at all in my initial viewing ( or subsequent ones for that matter ). If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer. If it was a meta-commentary, it was certainly not drawing a distinction between reality of Grime's life and the imaginary one income head of the household doing surprisingly well given the circumstances. Grimes story was a story of a guy, who just had a bad luck.. over and over again, but even when the good luck did show, he failed the test and focused not on what he gained, but others have despite being, in his eyes, lesser than him.
That is the moral of the story. Don't be Grimes. He may wish he can be Homer Simpson, but he sure can't touch those high voltage signs.
Who would have thought the median American life, something havily satirized and made fun of in The Simpsons, would become what people most long for. That, more than anything else I think, is strong evidence of how far we've fallen.
It's sounding like the plan is to make all of this even harder to obtain as well. It's a shame we just cannot be nicer to each other, even if just for a decade.
800 is a huge achievement. But I have to admit, around 2011 I had completely given up on the Simpsons. Story and content aside, they did something with the audio. The quality of the voice is so clear that it sounds un-natural. You can see the same effect on many shows around that time. The voice is disconnected from the background music and sfx.
Anyway, they also improved the way the characters are drawn so much that it lost it's crude nature.
The cell layers constraint led to better art. The detail in the background was minimal and the artists world compensate for it by interesting framing and lighting. Go back and watch one fish two fish or the black widower episodes from early seasons - just incredible animation.
You can see the number of lines drawn go up like crazy around season 10 or so, making it feel less realistic. Coincidentally, the writing also started to get worse around this time.
1. As a sporadic viewer of the newer Simpsons, the quality appears to vary. How can any show remain consistently humorous through nearly 40 years of content? And across how many writers, over time? That being said, it's fair to expect quality. I wonder where the funding and viewership is coming from presently (if those remain related).
2. This is not strictly related to the article content, but I hope I'm not the only one disturbed by the low quality of writing coming from even AP. I don't try to look for nits to pick but this article is a good example. E.g. "triumph tinged with perfectionism." -- This is poor wording. I think I understand the meaning -- that perfectionism, which has downsides, has removed something from what is otherwise triumphant. But it is not written clearly. Another: "Nancy Cartwright arrived at her 1987 audition expecting to read for Lisa Simpson. She had other ideas." -- This reads like a line AI wrote. There are other examples scattered throughout the content.
I guess it's not really important, and I guess there's no reason for me to be picking on this article. But this is a top-of-the-line publication (in theory) and a relatively high-visibility article. I know writers are under pressure to produce content. But there are plenty of writers who perform well under pressure, and editors exist for a reason -- what does it imply that AP, among others, is disinterested in the quality of their own articles?
I haven't read much into it, but The Simpsons to me became terrible around the same time Family Guy came out. I don't know if trying to be like Family Guy made the show worse, or if the type of humor The Simpsons championed for so long became unfashionable.
A lot of people say Family Guy copied the Simpsons, but in reality I actually found that the Simpsons tried to copy Family Guy's style of humor and did a very terrible job at it.
There's probably a term of art for it, but that Family Guy style cut to some previous reference hadn't really been done before, certainly not to the extent that Seth McFarlane did it. Simpsons copied it, but it never felt good when they did.
If you watch The Simpsons DVD commentary on the very first season DVDs, they talk about how Matt Groening's team would draw the key frames and then they would ship them to an asian animation studio to provide the animation frames. The very first time they did this, they got an animation style that was all over the place - not just the quality of drawing, but the actual animation style was jello-y and way more wobbly than they wanted. You can see it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-wjF5AMmk
The main reason that they sent it back was that the style and physics represented in the cartoon wasn't the one they were going for, and it changed how the show felt. I feel like the rapid cut references they adopted from Family Guy did a very similar thing. It changed the flow of the show, which, maybe (?) is actually more of a sign of the times and attention span than animated show style, but still, I wasn't a fan and I didn't feel like The Simpsons did it naturally or that it fit, and it takes me out of the narrative every time they do it.
I remember reading years ago that in the early days the executive producer had a two year tenure, then from season 8 or 9 it's been the same guy with no change.
There seems to have been a big turnover of writers in 98-99. As in very few people who were there in the beginning were left by that point. You're not considering that the original charm of the show was lost with the original creative force.
Family guy debuted in 1999. It's hard to say Simpsons tried to copy family guy's style. Family Guy is really known for its cutaways (usually to some non sequitur) & somewhat crude humor. A lot of the jokes at this time hinged on Stewie not being understood by anyone but Brian, Brian himself being a dog. There were also a lot of references to musical theater. The Simpsons was different from this.
The Zombie Simpsons explanation paints it (fairly convincingly) as a combo of deaths, turnover in the writing room, and the influence of The Simpsons and other “subversive” shows affecting the mainstream so much that it was no longer distinctive, with the result that the show became a heightened, silly, absurd, but basically straight, and (more, at least) earnest, version of the family sitcom it had started off lampooning.
Under this explanation, the early show is basically a totally different thing from what it became by somewhere around season 10. Even if it didn’t “get worse” (I think it definitely did also do that, but it’s not necessary for this explanation to work) it became something so different that it’s not surprising that a lot of people who liked the early show, don’t like what it has been since the change.
I recommend watching _The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened_ [0]. It goes though how the comedy went from sharp an witty to laugh track quality.
Personally, the only show that was also focused on sharp and witty was _Futurama_. That show was able to retain it better through out the years. Every series finally episode was a masterpiece.
I have a lot of respect for the actors at the Simpsons, but listen to some clips of their voices now versus when they were in their prime. They can't go on forever.
15 years is more than generous. It's been terrible for nearly 30 - the drop-off around season nine or ten was precipitious and it's only gotten worse since then.
"Do these characters have the emotional memory of the 800 things that have happened to them? ... I don’t really know the answer to that.”
They do have a history, because in the Grimes episode he talks about things Homer did in other episodes, and the characters themselves sometimes make reference to things in the past.
But it must be a fun writing challenge to take characters that don't age but somehow seem to rack up a lifetime of experience.
Part of the secret to the Simpsons' longevity is that is is something the majority of people on earth can catch a few seconds of in the background and still be able to follow by sheer recognition alone. This was always the majority of television, but the majority of television shows are cancelled and forgotten long before now.
It is now simply an extremely cost-efficient form of content relative to the value of the ad slots and licensing of the IP. People working on it now are technicians delivering a product to spec that is basically a perfect use case for generative AI.
"Hey claude, write me an episode of the simpsons where Homer starts investing in NFTs while Lisa and Bart goes to a comedically sinister horseback riding summer camp with a guest star that has a movie coming out this summer."
Or even:
"Write a skill that creates standard length 22 minute new simpsons episodes scripts and scene video prompts by combining a trending news topic with two or more simpsons characters. IMPORTANT: make it wacky!"
Hopefully they embrace AI. 800 episodes is such a rich corpus and there could be such bright-line guardrails in a "Springfield style guide". If AI can replicate the 90's Golden Era through voice cloning + an intentional hand-drawn cel animation quality aesthetic, I would unironically love to create my own AI-generated episodes from a random premise.
It’s absolutely possible. Intelligent enough AI could do anything. Make you an entire film where Mark Wahlberg plays every character at once. Make you a music album. Write you a novel.
To me the Simpsons and a lot of older shows have been a bellweather for how things used to be and how they’ve changed. As a late millennial who was once Lisa’s age but now more like Marge and Homer, I often think about how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job, they don’t have a lot of stuff but they have some basic securities that I’ve been trying to work towards my whole life, and still haven’t gotten there - maintaining a 90s style of living is just not realistic in the 2020s, though we have many new distractions and things to engage with to make up for it.
> I often think about how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job, they don’t have a lot of stuff but they have some basic securities that I’ve been trying to work towards my whole life, and still haven’t gotten there
This was a common trope on TV shows of that era: Everyone had a cool house with a lot of space. It wasn't a reflection of reality, it was how sets were designed and shows were drawn.
The Simpsons even made fun of the fact in the famous Frank Grimes episode where they pointed out how absurd it was that Homer was a doofus who had a big house and beautiful family.
Somewhere along the line, we started confusing this TV reality with how families actually lived at the time.
>they own a house on a single income.
You want aspirational, look to Family Guy. Somehow Peter Griffin can afford a helicopter, a jet pack, and whatever expenses are required to obtain the foot of the statue of liberty.
>maintaining a 90s style of living is just not realistic in the 2020s
I think even in 1989, when the show debuted, two income families were starting to be (or already had been) pretty typical. I think the Simpsons might have been poking fun at the 1960s and 1970s family sitcoms where the dad went to work and the wife stayed home.
Edit: But you're right that in the 80s and 90s you would have a decent chance of buying a house (on those two incomes).
Agreed. The funny thing about this is that, when I mentioned it to wife's family, they did not think it was particularly representative and was dismissed as faux Americana. I still think about it, because as I re-watched older episodes recently, I can't help, but think that they did not want to acknowledge it being true, while it was just that.
> I often think about how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income
I don't relate to this comment. I was Bart's age and both my parents worked.
My mom and the majority of her woman friends were teachers.
The generation before us, Gen X was the one stereotyped as "latchkey kids" due to stereotypically having two working parents.
We're all Frank Grimes
[dead]
A nuclear plant operator can easily afford a smallish home in the suburbs on one salary.
Plus, as a union man, he gets better compensation than his non-union counterparts, including a great dental plan.
Dental plan!
Lisa needs braces.
Bullseye!
Somewhat related: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ggozng/comme...
> how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job
It isn't - especially if you watch the original first season of the Simpsons [0] (Homer's Odyssey - the 3rd episode of the Simpsons written right as the 1990 recession was kicking off) as well as that Frank Grimes episode back in 1997 [1].
The older Simpsons episodes weren't that common on syndication from what I can remember growing up - at most you might see an episode from 1994 in the early 2000s, so I wouldn't be surprised if these episodes may have been forgotten.
Simpsons in it's original iteration during it's golden age (1989-1999) was essentially lampooning the 1960s American dream (which itself was legally unattainable for a large portion of Americans in the 1960s - there's a reason why we had a Civil Rights Movement as well as normalized anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Greek, anti-Spanish/Portuguese, and anti-Jewish sentiment until these communities assimilated into being "white" in the 1980s and even heritage Americans in vast swathes of America lacked indoor plumbing, medical care, education beyond the 5th grade, etc) being punctuated by the harsh realities of America at the time [4] (eg. $pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling) from 1993).
What I've noticed from the comments on HN (as well as the viciousness of the community when I point this out) is most HNers grew up in middle and upper-middle class households in the 1980s-90s that in most cases weren't representative of the lives the median American would have lived then, and a lot of the rose tinted glasses appear to betray that upbringing.
For example, from 1989 to 1994, household incomes in the US dropped at the same rate as they did during the Great Recession and the COVID Pandemic [2] and didn't recover until 1997, but because most HN users today weren't the head of a household during that period they view the 1990s as a golden age.
It's the same with 1980s nostalgia with everyone ignoring the 1980s recession which is lampooned in Mr Mom [3] - strip the 80s humor and it's basically a story about a single earner household where the primary breadwinner is made structurally unemployed right when the Rust Belt was starting to rust due to Japanese and German automotive exports becoming more competitive than American exports.
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1W8O-CKNw
[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UNj2nlFttCM&t=71s&pp=2AFHkAIB
[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
[3] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xth2v727PiQ
[4] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iTuHQxIC7rY
> most HNers grew up in middle and upper-middle class households in the 1980s-90s that in most cases weren't representative of the lives the median American would have lived then, and a lot of the rose tinted glasses appear to betray that upbringing
Guilty as charged! I also do think that there’s an additional sense within those communities of the “normalcy” of homeownership both within the spaces, and reflected back via mass culture. True, nobody in New York has an apartment like they did on Friends, but the shows made to appeal to middle class America, even the ones like Married with Children still held “well there’s a house” even though the main character is a deadbeat - this isn’t played for laughs or out of irony, it’s just the default.
Even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms and shows you rarely see people renting - homeownership rates are pretty steady around 62% back to the 60s. Among white Americans it’s like 75% or something. So I don’t think it’s entirely rose tinted glasses, even if there is a point to be made about the biases of the HN crowd.
> Even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms and shows you rarely see people renting - homeownership rates are pretty steady around 62% back to the 60s. Among white Americans it’s like 75% or something. So I don’t think it’s entirely rose tinted glasses, even if there is a point to be made about the biases of the HN crowd
Sure, but you have to remember only 58% of Americans today are non-Hispanic White.
For the other 42% of us, we would have been legally segregted in much of America deep into the 1970s as it took the DoJ a lot of effort to litigate against explicit and implicit attempts to sidestep the civil rights act. For us, while there may be a kernel of truth in what you described, the reality is we would have been second class citizens if we were born then.
If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then.
It's insensitive.
> True, nobody in New York has an apartment like they did on Friends, but the shows made to appeal to middle class America, even the ones like Married with Children still held “well there’s a house” even though the main character is a deadbeat - this isn’t played for laughs or out of irony, it’s just the default
Few shows represent the bottom 50% of society irrespective of race let alone back in the 1990s or even today. The only prime time shows I can think of that showed that bottom half of society as independent individuals was Shameless.
Even "The Jeffersons" back in the 70s was basically a standard upper middle class sitcom despite being revolutionary in showing African Americans on primetime.
Heck, the HDI of much of America in 1990 [0] is comparable to Russia, Serbia, and Belarus today [1].
And even Marc Andreessen would often recount growing up in the rural Midwest without indoor plumbing and having to take a s#it in the freezing cold. He was born in 1971.
[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/USA/?levels=1+4&ye...
[1] - https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks
> don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven
I understand where you're coming from, and hope you've not been given the idea that I'm idealizing the past - I'm only alive today because the present isn't the past. Weird to bring up.. Marc Andreessen of all people as authority after that. Not the pull I'd expect
I don't think there's ever been a panacea, and things have always been been rougher for anyone not white. But I do think that everyone's getting choked out by housing and inflated asset prices in ways that no living generation has. Since '85 rent has gone up 325% more than incomes. I understand you wrote a lot, but don't take what I said and extrapolate my other beliefs - I'm a much more complex person.
>> If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then.
>> It's insensitive.
Stop problematising everything, complete with Twitter style mic drops. OP didn't say the 70s were heaven, they're saying that home-ownership is slipping ever more out of reach. This is a true point for people of all races, religions, sexual orientations, etc.
There's nothing constructive about trying to slyly imply white people are more problematic for wanting homes to live in than people of other races. It's pointlessly divisive, and undercuts the sorely needed pro-housing coalition.
You're playing into what the elites want: an opposition that is fractious, navel-gazing, and delightfully (to the elites) impotent.
> they're saying that home-ownership is slipping ever more out of reach
The why don't you guys say that instead of reflexively fawning over a period that is objectively worse for us.
> slyly imply white people are more problematic for wanting homes to live in than people of other races
I never implied that, and that is why is said the following: "If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then".
To be brutally honest, whenever I and others point out that the historical nostalgia is not really positive for a large portions Americans, commenters like you reflexively try to shut us down.
Why should we accommodate your pearl clutching?
Because you get to have housing, or you get to be right, but you don't get both. You'll never build the necessary coalition if you spend half the time weaving in truth telling about slavery and indigenous genocide.
The left has forgotten what power and politics is. It's not cathartic posting. That's why we keep losing.
Was it right that the gay marriage fight required us to seek the approval and acquiescence of straights for same-sex love? God no, it was grotesque. Did we win? You bet your ass we did. If the trans fight wasn't fought in the idiotic way it was, Trump wouldn't have had his best attack ad, and this might be a much better world for trans people.
I don't give a flying fig about who was in the wrong in the 50s about race (as if there's any doubt about that). Outcomes are much more important than never-ending reconciliation and truth telling, especially for marginalised people. Endless talking is a privilege. Do you want houses or not?
Sanford & Son.
Fred Sanford owned a small business and lived in Los Angeles in an era when the majority of African Americans were working unskilled wage jobs [0] and overwhelmingly living in the South.
He and Lamont were middle and upper-middle class by African American standards as was seen in the 1970 Negro (the then term for African Americans) Census by the the US Department of Commerce.
And by overall American standards back then they would have probably been around the 50th to 60th percentile of households by income and would have been earning at least 60% than their racial peers in the South at the exact same time.
If you go through US Census data from 1970 - almost a decade after the Civil Rights Act was passed - it is harrowing. Now imagine how much worse it was before that.
[0] - https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1971/demographi...
Frank Grimes is one of the best characters on TV. "I live in a single room above a bowling alley and bellow another bowling ally"..
Very few shows, show actually living situations (flight of the choncords is the only other I can think of).
> flight of the choncords
The episode where an unplanned purchase of a second cup for tea leads to a bounced payment and cascading fines was too real
Amen to that!
Sadly, a lot of that authenticity fell to the wayside when the original Simpsons writers left the show to work on "Futurama" and "The Critic" and Fox retooled the show for syndication.
I'm personally more of a KOTH fan - I found it to be a much more grounded example of middle class life in the late 1990s and early 2000s while also recognizing that the Hills had it good. I find a similar strain of authenticity in Bob's Burgers (unsurprising since much of the team worked on KOTH).
> Frank Grimes is one of the best characters on TV
I remember getting enraged as an elementary schooler watching that episode because his statement hit true, but we were also a family of 4 living in a 1 bedroom apartment at the time and newly immigrated, and even then I felt similar to Grimes when watching the Simpsons.
When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.
<< When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.
Interesting. This is not how I interpreted it at all in my initial viewing ( or subsequent ones for that matter ). If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer. If it was a meta-commentary, it was certainly not drawing a distinction between reality of Grime's life and the imaginary one income head of the household doing surprisingly well given the circumstances. Grimes story was a story of a guy, who just had a bad luck.. over and over again, but even when the good luck did show, he failed the test and focused not on what he gained, but others have despite being, in his eyes, lesser than him.
That is the moral of the story. Don't be Grimes. He may wish he can be Homer Simpson, but he sure can't touch those high voltage signs.
> If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer
That's what I meant, though it absolutely was a form of meta-commentary as well.
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And 235lb was comically obese
Don't overlook that interest rates were much higher in the early 90s. So lower sticker prices still didn't mean you could afford it.
Who would have thought the median American life, something havily satirized and made fun of in The Simpsons, would become what people most long for. That, more than anything else I think, is strong evidence of how far we've fallen.
It's sounding like the plan is to make all of this even harder to obtain as well. It's a shame we just cannot be nicer to each other, even if just for a decade.
800 is a huge achievement. But I have to admit, around 2011 I had completely given up on the Simpsons. Story and content aside, they did something with the audio. The quality of the voice is so clear that it sounds un-natural. You can see the same effect on many shows around that time. The voice is disconnected from the background music and sfx.
Anyway, they also improved the way the characters are drawn so much that it lost it's crude nature.
> they also improved the way the characters are drawn so much that it lost it's crude nature.
Computers.
I, too, liked the rawness of the earlier hand-drawn ones.
The cell layers constraint led to better art. The detail in the background was minimal and the artists world compensate for it by interesting framing and lighting. Go back and watch one fish two fish or the black widower episodes from early seasons - just incredible animation.
You can see the number of lines drawn go up like crazy around season 10 or so, making it feel less realistic. Coincidentally, the writing also started to get worse around this time.
1. As a sporadic viewer of the newer Simpsons, the quality appears to vary. How can any show remain consistently humorous through nearly 40 years of content? And across how many writers, over time? That being said, it's fair to expect quality. I wonder where the funding and viewership is coming from presently (if those remain related).
2. This is not strictly related to the article content, but I hope I'm not the only one disturbed by the low quality of writing coming from even AP. I don't try to look for nits to pick but this article is a good example. E.g. "triumph tinged with perfectionism." -- This is poor wording. I think I understand the meaning -- that perfectionism, which has downsides, has removed something from what is otherwise triumphant. But it is not written clearly. Another: "Nancy Cartwright arrived at her 1987 audition expecting to read for Lisa Simpson. She had other ideas." -- This reads like a line AI wrote. There are other examples scattered throughout the content.
I guess it's not really important, and I guess there's no reason for me to be picking on this article. But this is a top-of-the-line publication (in theory) and a relatively high-visibility article. I know writers are under pressure to produce content. But there are plenty of writers who perform well under pressure, and editors exist for a reason -- what does it imply that AP, among others, is disinterested in the quality of their own articles?
I haven't read much into it, but The Simpsons to me became terrible around the same time Family Guy came out. I don't know if trying to be like Family Guy made the show worse, or if the type of humor The Simpsons championed for so long became unfashionable.
A lot of people say Family Guy copied the Simpsons, but in reality I actually found that the Simpsons tried to copy Family Guy's style of humor and did a very terrible job at it.
There's probably a term of art for it, but that Family Guy style cut to some previous reference hadn't really been done before, certainly not to the extent that Seth McFarlane did it. Simpsons copied it, but it never felt good when they did.
If you watch The Simpsons DVD commentary on the very first season DVDs, they talk about how Matt Groening's team would draw the key frames and then they would ship them to an asian animation studio to provide the animation frames. The very first time they did this, they got an animation style that was all over the place - not just the quality of drawing, but the actual animation style was jello-y and way more wobbly than they wanted. You can see it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-wjF5AMmk
The main reason that they sent it back was that the style and physics represented in the cartoon wasn't the one they were going for, and it changed how the show felt. I feel like the rapid cut references they adopted from Family Guy did a very similar thing. It changed the flow of the show, which, maybe (?) is actually more of a sign of the times and attention span than animated show style, but still, I wasn't a fan and I didn't feel like The Simpsons did it naturally or that it fit, and it takes me out of the narrative every time they do it.
I remember reading years ago that in the early days the executive producer had a two year tenure, then from season 8 or 9 it's been the same guy with no change.
There seems to have been a big turnover of writers in 98-99. As in very few people who were there in the beginning were left by that point. You're not considering that the original charm of the show was lost with the original creative force.
Family guy debuted in 1999. It's hard to say Simpsons tried to copy family guy's style. Family Guy is really known for its cutaways (usually to some non sequitur) & somewhat crude humor. A lot of the jokes at this time hinged on Stewie not being understood by anyone but Brian, Brian himself being a dog. There were also a lot of references to musical theater. The Simpsons was different from this.
The Zombie Simpsons explanation paints it (fairly convincingly) as a combo of deaths, turnover in the writing room, and the influence of The Simpsons and other “subversive” shows affecting the mainstream so much that it was no longer distinctive, with the result that the show became a heightened, silly, absurd, but basically straight, and (more, at least) earnest, version of the family sitcom it had started off lampooning.
https://deadhomersociety.wordpress.com/zombiesimpsons/
Under this explanation, the early show is basically a totally different thing from what it became by somewhere around season 10. Even if it didn’t “get worse” (I think it definitely did also do that, but it’s not necessary for this explanation to work) it became something so different that it’s not surprising that a lot of people who liked the early show, don’t like what it has been since the change.
I recommend watching _The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened_ [0]. It goes though how the comedy went from sharp an witty to laugh track quality.
Personally, the only show that was also focused on sharp and witty was _Futurama_. That show was able to retain it better through out the years. Every series finally episode was a masterpiece.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk
I have a lot of respect for the actors at the Simpsons, but listen to some clips of their voices now versus when they were in their prime. They can't go on forever.
https://youtu.be/0H2KAtsSI3A?si=n_JI9FpmI2xy92IY&t=518
Kill it already. It's been terrible for 15 years now.
15 years is more than generous. It's been terrible for nearly 30 - the drop-off around season nine or ten was precipitious and it's only gotten worse since then.
The technical term seems to be "Zombie Simpsons".
Their ratings would tell another story. Still one of the top rated shows.
"Do these characters have the emotional memory of the 800 things that have happened to them? ... I don’t really know the answer to that.”
They do have a history, because in the Grimes episode he talks about things Homer did in other episodes, and the characters themselves sometimes make reference to things in the past.
But it must be a fun writing challenge to take characters that don't age but somehow seem to rack up a lifetime of experience.
Along with the favorite montage of tons of stuff happening and Homer remarking: 'what a week'.
"I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jHQM9cCK4Qw
Its sad that one of the funniest and subversive shows on television has become a rotten husk of itself.
Zombie Simpsons has been on longer than the golden and silver age of the Simpsons. They really need to let it go.
Part of the secret to the Simpsons' longevity is that is is something the majority of people on earth can catch a few seconds of in the background and still be able to follow by sheer recognition alone. This was always the majority of television, but the majority of television shows are cancelled and forgotten long before now.
It is now simply an extremely cost-efficient form of content relative to the value of the ad slots and licensing of the IP. People working on it now are technicians delivering a product to spec that is basically a perfect use case for generative AI.
"Hey claude, write me an episode of the simpsons where Homer starts investing in NFTs while Lisa and Bart goes to a comedically sinister horseback riding summer camp with a guest star that has a movie coming out this summer."
Or even:
"Write a skill that creates standard length 22 minute new simpsons episodes scripts and scene video prompts by combining a trending news topic with two or more simpsons characters. IMPORTANT: make it wacky!"
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Hopefully they embrace AI. 800 episodes is such a rich corpus and there could be such bright-line guardrails in a "Springfield style guide". If AI can replicate the 90's Golden Era through voice cloning + an intentional hand-drawn cel animation quality aesthetic, I would unironically love to create my own AI-generated episodes from a random premise.
Dan Castellaneta's voice has aged so much that he just sounds like Grandpa Simpson.
The Simpsons is advanced ai fortune telling simulation /s but their predictions are really out there and on the money a lot of the time...
The simpsons is absolute slop now and has been for decades at this point.
The Treehouse of Horror episodes are still great imho
I wonder if it's plausible that AI could generate an entire (good) Simpsons episode in the future.
ChatGPT can already expand on any premise, no matter how ridiculous[0].
[0] "Tell me a bedtime story about a light cobblestone and a heavy cobblestone". It was already late and I was out of ideas for improvised tales.
It’s absolutely possible. Intelligent enough AI could do anything. Make you an entire film where Mark Wahlberg plays every character at once. Make you a music album. Write you a novel.