As Halloween approaches, my mind becomes filled with memories of the holiday as a kid. Visions of free candy, pumpkin carving, haunted houses, Christian protests, and potentially razor-blade laden caramel apples dance through my head. The leaves of the neighborhood trees are doing the color-changing thing now, the vibrant greens of spring and summer giving way to the autumnal colors of… autumn. I begin to think about dusting and cleaning out the small wood stove that keeps my home toasty warm while the wind and rain whip up a frenzy outside, but then I end up just stocking up on schnapps instead and cooking with the oven open.
And, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably anticipating that hallmark of this time of year, that tradition upheld in many households all across the globe, observed by members of many faiths and races, regardless of animosity between them the rest of the year, that tradition that brings us together in the name of a higher power… yes, I speak, of course, of the watching of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Halloween Special.
When I was in elementary school, there was probably nothing cooler to be talking about than The Simpsons. My parents, having previewed one of the first episodes, forbid me to watch it. If I knew then about my parents what I know now, I would have outright blackmailed them. Alas, I was naive and they were the tyrannical rulers of my tiny world.
Years passed and I endured the slings and arrows of really lame fortune, as my friends spoke ceaselessly about this great show, this king of cartoons, about which I knew nearly nothing. I feared being ostracized, at the tender age of ten, cast out from my geeky little niche and for what? Because my parents chose one particular moment to be prudish? I mean, they were otherwise pretty liberal about my upbringing: they let me try sushi just as it was gaining steam here in the States (I loved it), they let me engage in violent athletics (I participated in a Kempo Karate sparring league when I was nine, where we beat the snot out of each other every week) and they let me watch incredibly frightening movies without batting an eye (well, I thought The Dark Crystal was pretty scary…). Well, damn them, I had a plan.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid. Actually, as far back as I can remember in my childhood, which is only since my seventh birthday (I think I might have been brainwashed. “Good heavens what kind of sicko would brainwash an infant?”), I spent nearly all my younger life with my grandparents.
Usually, in the evening, my grandparents would settle into their easy chairs in their apartment’s living room, my grandfather with a glass of bourbon and 7-Up in hand, and turn on the television to watch KQED, channel 9. This was the only remotely educational channel on TV back then, and that was what they watched, or more frequently didn’t watch because they busied themselves instead. My grandfather would read Dante, and my grandmother would do needlepoint. And so I’d be stuck with a choice between reading, doing a puzzle I’d done a Brazilian times before or watching a program on the daytime habits of red squirrels.
But, sometimes, perhaps less frequently than every blue moon, my grandfather would pick up the remote and he’d look for a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and it was upon this fact that my plan hinged. The man had a soft spot for Tom and Jerry and, while it wasn’t my favorite cartoon, it was preferable over having to learn something at that point in my life. When he’d find one, it was like Christmas morning.
No, wait, it was better than Christmas. It was like Mega-Christmas, where you get everything you ever wanted, plus things that you were going to want in the future and duplicates of everything in case something breaks within the first five minutes, because you know it’s going to happen, stupid mass produced G.I. Joes…
Well, one evening, with my grandparents all settled into their chairs, and the hour of 8 o’clock just a moments hence, I put my plan into motion. It went something like this:
“Grandfather (yes, I called him grandfather), there’s, umm, this program, umm, a cartoon that I’d like to watch. It comes on soon and it’s on channel two and, umm, I’d really like to watch it,” I articulated.
“A cartoon? This late at night? Well, that’s new. What’s it called? Does it involve a cat and mouse?” he asked.
“The Simpsons, I think. It’s about a family… and I think there’s a cat and mouse, too…” I trailed off.
“Oh, it’s a family show? Well, that sounds fine with me. Where’s that remote?”
I couldn’t believe it worked. As he blew the dust from the remote control, I prepared myself to absorb every single frame of the show with my eyeballs. I would be a sponge, I would take notes, and I would prepare an opinion for school the next day.
The channels flicked by and rested on “2″ and here’s exactly what played:
(Note: If this clip gets taken down, it was The Simpsons episode “A Streetcar Named Marge”.)
Needless to say I only made it up to about 48 seconds in, where Bart calls Boswell (the man behind those Worst Dressed Lists) “such a bitch”. Really, Simpsons? The first time I’ve ever heard bitch uttered in television, let alone in a cartoon, had to be the first episode of The Simpsons that I ever saw and right in front of my grandparents?
My grandparents looked at me as though I had written and drawn the episode myself. They held me personally accountable for the swearing and it was a long time before I saw anything other than educational television in their home again, aside from watching Victor Borge a few times, whom I grew to love.
Of course, that sort of edginess was what made The Simpsons so damned cool to begin with. Bart is subversive, radical, and he plays out our inner desires for us. He is the Jungian archetypal trickster. When we watched Bart telling Principal Skinner to get bent, WE were telling off our own principal, in a way. When Bart called someone a bitch, well, we were kind of doing that, too. Which, come to think of it, may be why my grandparents held me responsible after all. Harumph.
A few short years later, after buying a television at a garage sale and hooking it up in my room all by myself, I was free to watch whatever I wanted, free to stay up late drinking Jolt cola, eating Pop-Rocks, and watching offensive cartoons all night if I pleased. And, you know how sometimes you wait for something for a really long time, you look forward to being old enough to take part in it or you hype it up in your own mind for months and months and then, when you finally get it, when you finally watch it or possess the thing you once wanted with all your being, it’s not nearly as amazingly mind-blowingly awesome as you thought it might be?
Well, I’m not going to lie to you, Marge: this totally wasn’t one of those times. The Simpsons WERE exactly as awesome as I thought they’d be, even better in some episodes. The jokes showed insight into human nature, the plots were well-written, and the show left no pop icon un-skewered, even itself on occasion.
Amazingly, the older episodes have held up over the years pretty damn well, too, considering how idiotic other shows have become after a few years (Beavis & Butthead, namely). And, what’s more, it’s been around long enough now that several generations have grown up with it playing in the background. I can talk to my nephews about the Simpsons, tell them about older episodes they should check out online, and impress them with my Comic-Book Guy impersonation.
It has become a widely regarded part of our culture, this crazy cartoon show, and it has spawned so many derivative shows that you simply can’t keep up with them. And the best part of it is that you can still watch new episodes, every Sunday, just like when I was a kid. The saying “they don’t make them like they used to” doesn’t hold up in regards to Homer and Marge and Bart and Lisa. It’s a testament to the greatness of the show that it’s survived through several presidential administrations, persecution by cuckoo conservatives who think it’s destroying society, and the fleeting attention spans of today’s medicated youth.
It gives me hope that, maybe someday, I will be able to sit down in the TV room with my own kids, on a Sunday night, a big bowl of popcorn within arm’s reach, and not let them watch it either.
