The opening of The Simpsons has become an emblem of the American TV shows. Starting in 1989, it was watched by generations until nowadays. Its theme song is one of television’s most recognizable. Its specific parody genre throughout the series is enhanced by the use of animation which fades the harsh reality of the society’s setbacks.
Accordingly, this exposure of the society’s flaws starts since the title sequence by a satire about television and its impact on society. The use of different authors and their ideas on the media will be used to look deeper into the use of television as a social influencer on its viewer but also on the characterization of television and how this idea is represented in the The Simpsons title scene to point at the differences and similarities with cinema.
Buonanno starts by saying that ‘television presented its first consumers with an experience of sociability’ in which families, neighbours are meeting up to watch their shows. This idea of a medium capable of reuniting people together was already existing with the cinema. People were making nights out to the movie but the difference with television is that the medium is watched in a domestic place ‘allowing a slice of the outside world to come into one’s own home in the group of relative, circle of friends or neighbour.’
This idea was emphasised by Roger Silverstone’s point of view that ‘television is a domestic medium. It is watched at home. Ignored at home. Discussed at home.’
It is depicted in The Simpsons with the family members shot one by one leaving their occupations to go home where they all end up on the couch to watch television. It relates with McCormick’s ‘appointment tv’; the illusion of knowing the fictional characters and to have this ‘reunion’ with them every week or day as if they were people you knew compelling the viewer to be at his television at a specific time. It is a distinctive tool used by television as opposed to a film in which the characters are unknown to the viewer at the beginning and does not imply any deep knowledge and intimacy between him and the characters. It is depicted by the urge of the Simpsons’ to go home to be there on time at the beginning of the episode.
Buonanno mentions the ‘electronic neighbourhood’ which is that television ‘straighten ties within groups but constituted an unwelcome and threatening intrusion into intimate family life’. This idea is relevant in our extract with the characters rushing in the house without caring about each other (Bart skates on his father’s car, Marge’s car does not park correctly…), they are magnetised by the power of television that makes them forget their ‘intimate family life’.
The viewer is also intruded in the Simpsons’ privacy since he is coming in their house which symbolises the ‘two-way traffic of the outside world coming in and the imaginative experience going out’ by which ‘television remodels the particular configuration of privacy to a significant degree. Indeed, by allowing us to follow them, the characters are not only letting ‘a slice of outside world into home’ by looking at the external world shown on television but also by having us as voyeurs.
It depicts the absurdity of television focusing on personal stories shared with the viewer who have the ‘pleasure of staring unseen at a stranger without having to feel embarrassed by our impertinence’.
Television is represented as a domestic medium that exerts a hold on its viewer by creating a feeling of intimacy with its characters. This idea is emphasised with the nearness of the screen. It is shown in our extract with the mise-en-abime of the television within the television. The camera is going from the couch to the Simpsons’ television to tell us that the episode is about to start and thus prepare us to focus and enhances our faculty of sight. This leads us to Buonanno’s idea of the ‘polysensorial medium’: television engaging both sight and hearing’. The viewer is alerted by the recurrent image of the clouds and the theme song which enhances his awareness about the show starting. This kind of alert is not possible in films (apart for franchised ones that play on the same pattern).
Furthermore, the idea of multiple sense is followed by the Springfield’s aerial shot which relates to McCarthy’s ‘sense of travel’ to another place at home and in the fictional town. The viewer is taken into another world by being drawn by the familiar aspects of the show which makes him more intimate and faithful with the storyline and characters compared to the screening of a film.
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The Simpsons’ title sequence depicts the characteristics of the television and its impact on our way of living. Consequently, we can assume that The Simpsons represents how TV shows are used in a different form of medium compared to films. To prove this point, we made a parallel with Buonanno’s arguments that television is watched as a domestic medium which is sold as an ‘experience of sociability’ when it is actually setting social groups apart by breaking the intimacy of relations. Moreover, television creates a feeling of intimacy and trust with its viewer by awakening his senses with things he saw before and making him ‘travel’ to places he already visited. Thus, television creates a feeling of loyalty with its viewer, a tool that cannot be used in cinema due to the individuality of each film that does not allow the same recurrence and acknowledgment in details. Along these lines, we can say that television is closer to its viewer and thus can be more daring in his subjects which makes its particularity in comparison with cinema.
Bibliography:
Buonanno, Milly, The Age of Television :Experiences and Theories, UK, 2008
McCormick, Casey, ‘Forward is the battle cry’ : binge-viewing Netflix’s House of Cards in Kevin McDonald and Dnaiel Smith-Rowsey, The Netflix effect, New York, Bloomsbury, 2016
Silverstone, Roger, Television and everyday life, London and New York, Routledge, 1994
