Friday, July 14, 2006

Celluloid families



I remember Bart as the googly-eyed boy who yelled "Eat my shorts!" at adults and advised his dad, Homer, to "chill out, homeboy." That was in the mid-'90s, I believe.

The Simpsons quickly became the poster family for everything wrong in modern American culture (rude kids, oafish fathers, a thumb in the eye of authority).


It's amazing how things change. Or maybe the more positive traits of The Simpsons were something I merely overlooked. Or maybe lumped together with the rest of what TV has to offer nowadays, this show comes out as positive viewing fare...

...the show is something of a paragon of conservative, traditional mores. Hard work is rewarded. Characters drift from church, but always come back (sometimes God makes a special guest appearance on the show to drag a character Рusually Homer Рback to Church). Marriages are tested, but in the end, Homer and Marge always stick together. Bart, for all his mischief, really loves his family. And Homer, for all of his simple-mindedness and naivet̩, is a good father.


Read "Dopey and dysfunctional, but not depraved" at MercatorNet

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