essay critique

A Critique of The Simpsons , Hyper-Irony , and the Meaning of Life

Carl Matheson , in his essay The Simpsons , Hyper-Irony , and the Meaning of Life examines formula that made The Simpsons the successful comedy that it is lasting for almost 18 years and going strong and even duplicated its success in the big screen when it opened at number one for Simpsons the Movie . He believes he has pinned it down and labeled them a quotationalism and hyper-ironism . He opines that today 's comedies are wrought with these , The Simpsons most especially . He went

on to draw on episodes selected from out of the more than 400 episodes of the show to prove his statements

He defined quotationalism in the context of comedy as essentially depend (ent ) on the device referring to or quoting other works of popular culture ' Let is look into the background of the show . The Simpsons is a half-hour comedy created by Matt Groening with the first episode aired on the Fox network on December 17 , 1989 . It featured :the first mainstream animate characters who drank beer to excess , bet the family savings on dog track and said `damn , `hell , and `ass ' like the rest of us (Apter 5 . It quickly soared up the ratings charts and consistently dubbed a one of the best television shows

According to Matheson , quotationalism in The Simpsons is used in a more mature form compared to earlier comedy shows in that they are very funny ' that they are allusion ' and that the most impressive feature of this pattern of allusion is in its pace and density ' This is actually the characteristic that is simultaneously praised by its fans and derided by its detractors . Those who get the in-joke proclaim it as the smartest show on television (Apter 5 ) and on the other side derided as coarse and perverts our society or .reflects the inherently perverted nature of our society (Yenter 1 . Being a cartoon somehow gives it license to be able to say things unimaginable for other shows with real life actors and when it makes serious political points it is always successful in making it funny rather than horribly derisive and sad . Moreover , it 's never biased or predictable . Nothing and no one escapes notice - the two-party system , the educational system , the local government , the corporation , the immigrants , gay rights , religious denominations , and even the Fox network

Matheson 's other device label is hyper-ironism which he used to describe comedy as the humor offered .is colder , based less on a shared sense of humanity than on a sense of world-weary cleverer-than-thou-ness ' To give his thesis a sense of academic credibility , he went on further to use phases in painting , science and philosophy as a standpoint for the phenomenon (of The Simpsons ) as a crisis of authority ' where hyper-ironism is the best form of comedy ' However , I agree with his position that the show does not promote anything .because its humor works by putting forward positions only in to undercut...