Reconstruction 8.2 (2008)
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The Simpsons and the Nuclear Family / Joanne Knowles
"Thank you most of all for nuclear power, which has yet to cause a single proven fatality. At least in this country. Amen."
Homer Simpson ('O Brother Where Art Thou?', 1991)
<1> The Simpsons is best known for its portrayal of a modern-day, often lovable but usually less than idyllic nuclear family. The term "nuclear family" takes on an added significance, however, in a show where the status of the Simpsons' family home on Evergreen Terrace is rivaled, a focal point for Springfield as for the show itself, by the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. The power plant is the corporate center of Springfield, and exemplifies the strata within such corporate bodies, from Monty Burns, the ruthless capitalist at the top of the pile, to the exploited incompetents at the bottom, as represented by Homer Simpson. Instead of home being a haven to which Homer can escape, the power plant frequently casts a shadow into his living room.
<2> The aim of this essay is to examine this dual sense of the "nuclear family" in The Simpsons as a cultural and imaginative trope through which the show debates the importance of family models, suburban values, and everyday life, and explores attitudes to citizenship, politics, and the nuclear industry in contemporary American culture. My analysis will draw on the cultural history of nuclear energy and its public perception in the USA, examining the show's use of genre and gender in negotiating its dual status as both sitcom and satire, and describing the strategies used in The Simpsons to work across these generic boundaries in linking everyday life with public policy and larger issues. Animation techniques, as I will show in a detailed episode analysis, offer potential for non-realist representation that can be skillfully deployed in The Simpsons to enhance, rather than disrupt, the show's generic grounding in realist characterizations of American life.
<3> There are a number of contextual reasons for the prominence of the nuclear power plant in the show. The Simpsons has a complex cultural identity, being an animated show - conventionally either the province of children, or an outlet for adolescent or "underground" humor – that is also a prime-time situation comedy. It is located within a mainstream scheduling slot and a genre usually seen as conservative, but with perhaps unusually subversive aspirations, frequently functioning as political satire. [1] Therefore, it is often overtly concerned with the political and social value of nuclear energy, which simultaneously represents and satirizes the contemporary cultural politics and social awareness of "typical" American society, and in particular, the suburban American community for which Springfield stands. Beyond that, it portrays the nuclear power plant as an integral part of American suburbia, which maintains the hegemonic dominance of industry moguls like Monty Burns, the SNPP owner. While the traditional format of the sitcom usually requires a working father whose role as an employee (whether white- or blue-collar) can be utilized for comic purposes, the choice of a specific sector – the nuclear energy industry – as the show's representative American company is a significant one, which has implications for the show, its audience, and the contemporary TV and real-life culture it seeks to define and describe.
<4> The decision by the producers of The Simpsons to locate Homer's dysfunctional working life in a nuclear power plant has clear ideological implications as well as comic potential. The subtext of the SNPP's importance in the show lies, I will argue, in the show's dual focus on the nuclear industry and the nuclear family, polarizing the domestic and the industrial in a way recognizable as part of the sitcom's repertoire, but with a specific and contemporary focus on the "nuclear" status of both, as a trope which both unites and polarizes these social institutions. Springfield functions as a site where two contemporary social issues, the value of nuclear power and the value of the nuclear family, are united. Similarly, as a family, then, the Simpsons themselves represent the interconnection of these issues as both personal and, inevitably, political concerns.
<5> The use of nuclear power, whether in a military or a civilian context, has always been a highly politicized and controversial issue. A great deal of the unease over its domestic use can be attributed to its associations with war and destruction. [2] The military applications of nuclear power have been the primary focus of most anti-nuclear campaigns and organizations, and have thus taken priority in most political discussion of the problem, something shown in recent years by the world-wide disapproval of nuclear testing by France, the escalating nuclear rivalry between neighboring countries such as India and Pakistan, and most recently, the widespread political anxiety felt about the potential for hostile states such Iraq and North Korea to use nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction against Western nations. However, from 1989 – the year in which the Cold War ended and The Simpsons first aired - till the end of the twentieth century, the terrors of the nuclear age became less immediate. Bart and Lisa Simpson were shown to be growing up in a period where the threat of nuclear war had steadily diminished and been relegated to the background of political activism, with damage to the environment in general taking its place as a threat demanding immediate attention. For example, in the first months of George W. Bush's presidency, more concern was engendered globally by his refusal to endorse the Kyoto treaty on global warning than his interest in constructing a new version of Reagan's "Star Wars" defense system. [3] Yet the "peaceful" use of nuclear fission for power generation is the area where personal and political concerns over the nuclear question intersect most clearly, and this intersection is frequently the underlying subject of Simpsons episodes in which the SNPP features prominently. The corporate face of nuclear energy generation is inextricably bound up with its domestic reception.
<6> Nuclear energy is a significant but declining source of power in contemporary America. At the beginning of the year 2000, there were 104 nuclear power reactors in the United States, with three more under "deferred construction". These reactors produce around 20% of the nation's electricity. However, the productive output of these reactors is expected to decline by at least 23% during the coming years, due to a combination of factors. One notable influence is the decision by the Carter administration in 1977 to ban the use of recycled material in the generation of nuclear energy. This in turn is part of a wider and less manageable reaction: the American public's dislike and distrust of nuclear energy and its management (mirrored in other nuclear-powered nations such as the UK) and their growing unwillingness to increase their dependency on it.
<8> In spite of the initial controversy associated with nuclear power, initiated by the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War, its popularity has not always been in decline. As a consequence of the oil crisis of the 1970s, and of concerns over the finite resources and pollution hazards represented by the large-scale use of fossil fuels, nuclear power came to be presented as the best future method of supplying society's energy requirements, an idea only seriously discredited by the occurrence of two nuclear disasters: Three Mile Island in 1979, and Chernobyl in 1986. The early 1980s marked a turning point in public opinions on nuclear power, as reported by Rosa and Dunlap:
In 1981 the Reagan administration ordered the production of the neutron bomb, previously abandoned by President Carter, and continued to deploy missiles in Western Europe. As a result, American nuclear activists shifted their efforts from nuclear power plants to nuclear weapons [...] This anxiety about nuclear weapons peaked in early 1982, at precisely the time of the reversal in attitudes towards constructing more nuclear power plants, suggesting that weapon worries had spilled over to the domain of commercial nuclear power. The spillover appears to have initiated a steady growth in opposition to nuclear power plant construction that continued to the very end of our data series. (Rosa and Dunlap, 298)
In late 1989, when The Simpsons first aired, public opposition in the USA to building more nuclear power plants was above 60% and increasing (Rosa and Dunlap 1994, 299). The anxiety frequently expressed by the Springfield community can be read as a realistic representation of a political issue, which, during the 1980s, had become a source of genuine personal unease to many Americans. If, as David Marc says, the sitcom "insists on a portrayal of reality that can best be defended with statistics", then Rosa and Dunlap's findings eloquently justify the realist basis for The Simpsons (Marc 1997, 25). However, resistance to building more power plants is not accompanied by a wish to reduce current nuclear provision. Rosa and Dunlop's research shows that while opposed to constructing more nuclear power plants, the majority of the public does not want them dismantled, but would prefer the industry to be maintained at the existing level (Rosa and Dunlap, 302). It seems that while the nuclear menace should be prevented from encroaching further, its existing presence has to be borne with.
<9> Americans cannot revoke their dependence on nuclear power, only attempt to deny it by preventing that dependency from growing. For example, while the use of depleted uranium in a military setting meets mostly with public apathy, large-scale, high profile nuclear detonation would be regarded quite differently. Correspondingly, while maintenance of the nuclear industry is an enduring element of public policy, politicians cannot afford to give it too much explicit support or encouragement.
<10> As a result of these attitudes, the output of nuclear power stations is expected to decline, and this decline to accelerate, in the coming years. The image, then, of nuclear reactors as an increasingly menacing risk to society is less accurate than is generally believed; yet this image remains evocative. Nuclear power is still perceived as a symbolic, insidious threat to the ordinary American people it purports to be serving.
<11> This image is skillfully exploited in The Simpsons' presentation of the SNPP. Safety standards are theoretically upheld, but in fact neglected, by Homer in his role as safety inspector, while the plant as a whole is shown to be incompetently run and dangerous. Almost any of the episodes whose plots focus on the SNPP, such as "Homer's Odyssey", "Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish", and "Homer's Enemy", show the plant oozing radioactive waste and, when inspected, condemned as extremely hazardous. Moreover, as an animated show The Simpsons is able to fully utilize the gap between its (largely) realistic plot and character elements, and its anti-realistic format and style. Nuclear material is depicted in a literally "cartoonish" way while retaining the status as an empirically observed part of suburban life – a menacing social subtext. Even when the SNPP is not the main focus of The Simpsons, this image of the plant is reinforced in the titles of every episode. As the working day draws to a close Homer, wearing a protective suit (which he rarely does within episodes) casually throws his work aside, and on the way home removes a stray fragment of a uranium rod from his shirt, which narrowly misses hitting Bart as he hurls it from the car. Ingrained by its repetition, the impression is of nuclear power as an underestimated and almost unnoticed menace, lurking in this prosaic introduction of the family routine.
'What good is money if it can't inspire terror in your fellow man?' - Montgomery Burns
<12> Homer is by no means solely responsible for this hazardous state of affairs; as proprietor of the SNPP, Montgomery Burns should be held ultimately responsible for its condition and maintenance. The characterization of Burns as a totally unscrupulous operator encapsulates The Simpsons' satirical presentation of authority figures. Burns's position in the show, however, is unique in that he occupies the role of villain while, outside minor setbacks and fines, escaping unequivocal punishment; he is a character that viewers love to hate, who bounces back not through personal appeal but by ultimately maintaining his invulnerability to normal social prescriptions. For all his underhand dealings, Burns is an essential part of the Springfield community as a businessman and employer, aligned with its governing forces rather than in opposition to them. He is, like the nuclear energy industry he represents, a necessary evil to the average citizen.
<13> To some extent, the institutionalized evil of Burns is separate from the specific controversies associated with nuclear power. Burns is shown to act with consistent unscrupulousness in any situation, and clearly functions as an archetypal representation of the unprincipled business mogul, as is Smithers of the sycophantic middle manager. While these characteristics are threaded through the series, "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk" (or "Burns Sells the Power Plant"), in which Burns sells the SNPP to a German consortium, exemplifies this. The episode's title highlights the comparison made between the corporate strategies of Burns (as an American businessman) and his German counterparts, and suggests that Burns's modus operandi represents the ruthless efficiency thought to be typically Germanic more than the Germans themselves do. The new German plant owners implement a startlingly employee-friendly administration policy, with the aim of creating a productive and efficient workforce. They convert Burns's office into a crèche, and offer alcoholic employees a six-week drying-out program in Hawaii, from which they will return to their jobs at full pay. Since Homer is the one employee whose performance is unaffected by these incentives or by the Teutonic work ethic, there is no place for him in the German-style power plant. The return of the Burns administration is accompanied by a return to dictatorial management, inattention to safety standards and repairs, and the comforting inefficiency and outright buffoonery guaranteed by Homer's presence. In contrast to the well-meaning, but ultimately too well-meaning, business economics of the Germans, the all-American power plant represents a combination of tight control and unconcerned slackness, with Burns cutting corners at every opportunity while down in sector 7G (Homer's station) safety is neglected and the bare minimum of work carried out. The episode's satire on the condition of the SNPP is focused on the irony of that situation being generic and perennial; the status quo of a self-interested management and an ignorant, inert workforce which will inevitably survive any more progressive business ethic.
<14> However, episodes where the plot centers on the SNPP do often appropriate the controversies specifically associated with the nuclear energy industry - most notably, the problems of pollution, and the potential danger of negligence. In "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk", the deplorable condition of the SNPP involves green glowing liquid dripping from the ceiling and being caught in a pan, similar fluid seeping from a crack in the cooling tower, and raccoons nesting in the consoles. These are typical examples of visual pollution gags from episodes featuring the power plant; it's fairly standard that any scene set within the SNPP will feature the familiar green glowing substance leaking, apparently unnoticed, in the background. While the defamiliarization is effective, its recurring role reintegrates it into accepted Springfield normality. The nuclear trope is an ideal vehicle for highlighting the way in which the sometimes unstable events in both domestic and industrial spheres become absorbed into the mundanity of suburbia.
'Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you want to succeed in business'. - Montgomery Burns
<15> Among the many institutions satirized by The Simpsons is the family - both in its dysfunctional fin-de-siècle mode, and in the stereotypical form of the nuclear family. This is demonstrated by the fact that this otherwise subversive family embodies some surprisingly traditional familial traits: Homer works in a manual, industrial job while Marge is (with intermittent exceptions) a housewife and mother. Homer illustrates many of the contemporary dilemmas facing the male blue-collar worker; similarly, the neglect of Marge's intellectual potential in her occupation as a housewife and mother is addressed in her periodic attempts to take on a job outside the home. However, the appeal of the Simpsons family is located in its representation of the familiar elements of a stereotypical nuclear family - being composed of a father, mother, slightly more than the average 2.5 children, and family pets, plus a grandparent living outside the family home - and yet presenting an alternative to the radiant, optimistic portrayals of such a model traditionally seen in sitcoms. L.L. Cornell observes that the image of the nuclear family was originally posited as providing the greatest potential for domestic happiness and unity:
Malinowski's approach to the family, especially his identification of family love as one of its principal defining characteristics, has led scholars to assume that family life is inherently peaceful and harmonious. Discord at any level is perceived as deviant behavior. (Cornell, 71)
The 1990s saw the proliferation of sitcoms and other television series that featured consciously dysfunctional families, such as Roseanne, Married - With Children and King of the Hill. These families are generally also lower-class, and defiantly so: Cornell's statement that "Analysis of the family concentrates disproportionately on families now, in the United States, who are middle-class, and who are white", is a tendency which is being challenged by the preferences of contemporary television audiences, at least in terms of class (Cornell, 70). The appearance of The Simpsons in 1989 marked the beginning of, and was at least partly responsible for, this shift in the focus of television comedy. Sonia Livingstone claims: "The nostalgia with which sitcoms and soaps are imbued derives in part from our intertextual and extratextual knowledge of other ways of living, knowledge which is routinely excluded from these genres" (Livingstone, 98). The Simpsons has been groundbreaking in evoking sitcom nostalgia while portraying "other" families and "other" forms of cultural knowledge, rather than excluding such "otherness" from its apparently conventional suburban setting, and has led the way in challenging these traditional parameters of the sitcom.
<16> The Simpson family are not only working-class, but yellow-skinned; a trait which goes beyond even the white-trash ethic represented by the other series mentioned above, and which is a core element of the blend of the "cartoon realism" constructed by the show's animated format. This visual effect removes the Simpsons from any easily definable racial category. It seems to correspond to 'whiteness' (since there are black and Asian characters, such as Karl, Dr Hibbert and Apu, whose skin tones indicate these other, recognizable ethnic backgrounds), and other features of the Simpsons' family identity also suggest this – their socio-economic position, their cultural attitudes, and their formative resemblance to the traditional, mainstream sitcom family. Nevertheless, the alteration of their expected skin color removes them from this straightforward racial categorization, and identifies them with whiteness on a cultural basis rather than a visual one, permitting a greater degree of appeal to cross-racial viewing groups than might otherwise be possible, and subverting media expectations of this conventional sit-com family. [4]
<17> All of these contextual characteristics support the defining quality of the Simpsons: they consistently satirize the image of the nuclear family as engendering a loving, peaceful and harmonious lifestyle. This alternative nuclear model is portrayed as more realistic and representative of the zeitgeist. In contrast, the Flanders' family life - a reflection of the 1950s sitcom family - is presented as the stuff of fantasy, only available to those of an unnaturally pious disposition, and ultimately untenable in contemporary society. The writers and producers of The Simpsons are clearly more sympathetic to the problems of the Simpsons, as a modern nuclear family, than they are to the SNPP as representative of the nuclear industry. However, the two share a mutual status as beleaguered institutions, ultimately, maintained as a necessary evil. Both have, in their time, been posited as the best model of their kind for society, and have also been criticized as claiming to represent health and "normality" while actually being rotten at the core, dictating to society rather than serving its needs.
<18> What individual episodes show, then, is that the fortunes of the domestic nuclear family, and those of the SNPP, are interdependent. Tensions at the plant tend to spill over into tensions in the home, and vice versa: in "The Last Temptation of Homer", Homer comes closest to being unfaithful to Marge when he almost begins an affair with Mindy, his new and like-minded female colleague. When the threat to the Simpson marriage is dispelled, Marge, symbolically, takes Mindy's place in the hotel room that she and Homer were meant to have shared at a nuclear energy conference. The corresponding episode for Marge, "Life on the Fast Lane", in which she is almost tempted into a fling with her bowling coach Jacques, includes a scene where Homer is humiliated at work by Marge's call to a local radio station's phone in show, complaining about her neglect by her husband, which is heard and laughed at by his fellow workers. When Marge resists the lure of infidelity, she and Homer are again united in the workplace, when she enters the factory and, in a scene parodying the end of An Officer and A Gentleman, is carried from the building by Homer, who announces that he's taking his wife to the back seat of the car and "won't be back for ten minutes!" ('Life on the Fast Lane')
<19> The Simpsons draws on established sitcom patterns of conflict and resolution in that the intersection of Homer's domestic life with his working life is the reciprocal cause of and solution to many difficulties. In "Homer's Odyssey", he loses his job through being distracted by Bart, who is visiting the plant on a school trip. However, the motivation for Homer taking on his new role of safety crusader, and regaining a purpose in life, stems from protecting his family from danger, apprehending them before they can walk into the path of a speeding van - which inspires him to campaign for a "Stop" sign at that location. The most destructive and also most rewarding instance of how Homer's domestic and public roles intersect is in the episode "And Maggie Makes Three", in which he takes up his dream job, working in the bowling alley. When Marge is revealed to be expecting Maggie, he is eventually forced (after some creative but, as ever, bungled attempts to make the bowling alley more profitable and merit a pay rise) to return to his old job at the SNPP. The episode ends with the family photographs of Maggie seen decorating Homer's desk at the plant: the support of his nuclear family represents both the necessity, and the inspiration, for him to remain in the nuclear industry. The connection between the two is recognized, and indeed played upon, by the show's creators, and (a sure sign of its establishment) even by the producers of Simpsons merchandise, which provides the example pictured here. [Image from postcard] The caption, "America's Most Nuclear Family!", explicitly connects the unstable family life of the Simpsons with the explosive qualities represented by the SNPP, and this is emphasized by the unusually apprehensive expressions on the faces of the family (Santa's Little Helper, the dog, looks almost vicious) which belie the "Welcome" message on the doormat. This image neatly summarizes the Simpson family's status as representative of the extreme qualities, both adverse and beneficial, of the nuclear institutions with which they are identified. The updated sitcom ethic of The Simpsons, where dysfunctional departures from the traditional nuclear model are not only tolerated but celebrated, shows the inevitability, and perhaps necessity, of discord in the high-pressure nuclear environment, whether it be domestic or industrial.
'They say we're contaminating the planet!' - Burns
'Well, nobody's perfect'. - Homer
<20> To fully illustrate my argument, I will examine one episode that demonstrate the nuclear intersection between the personal and the political, and shows the use and abuse of nuclear energy to maintain the hegemonic balance between Burns, as amoral capitalist, and the domestic morality of the Springfield community. "Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish" was first broadcast in November 1990, as part of the show's second season. It is perhaps the best example of how The Simpsons takes on the threat of nuclear pollution. As a relatively early episode, it illustrates the characteristic fear of nuclear energy that dominated public opinion in the early years of the show, yet it also shows a development from the optimistic conclusion of "Homer's Odyssey", screened less than a year earlier, into a more cynical indictment and also acceptance of the nuclear threat.<21> "Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish" is concerned with the events set in motion by a government inspection of the SNPP which pronounces it unsafe. An unthinking suggestion from Homer that if Mr. Burns was the state governor, he could overrule such judgments, prompts Burns to enter the current gubernatorial campaign, running against the beloved governor Mary Bailey. He almost succeeds in hoodwinking the public until Marge, who has opposed Burns's plan all along, serves him a three-eyed fish from the SNPP's cooling lake at a staged "family" dinner. Burns chokes on the fish and his campaign is ruined; the Simpson marriage, however, put under strain by the conflicting loyalties of the election, is rescued.
<22> The episode constructs several oppositions through use of both dialogue and visual effects, developing the potential of the animated medium to express the fantastic within the suburban. The safety and comfort of the domestic, family scene is contrasted with the stark, menacing arena of the SNPP. The plant, and what it represents, launches a challenge to family values. This is established at the beginning of the episode, which opens with a pastoral scene, dominated by green and blue, in which Lisa and Bart are fishing peacefully by the charmingly rustic '"Ol' Fishin' Hole"'. The first intrusion into this haven is a dark, purple car bearing Dave Shotten, an investigative reporter, who arrives to question the previously silent children about what they are doing, and is fortuitously present to witness Bart catching a three-eyed fish. The shot focuses on the nearby purple cooling towers of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, which supersedes Dave Shotton as a menacing intrusion into, and corruption of, the innocent pleasures of fishing.
<23> The scene at Evergreen Terrace that follows establishes another gender-based distinction that shapes the episode. Marge hopes that Governor Mary Bailey will "do something about that hideous genetic mutation", while Homer's corresponding concern is that she will not secure him enough paid days off work. ('Two Cars'). As he leaves for the plant, Lisa says, "Try not to spill anything, Dad", while Bart adds, "Keep those mutants coming, Homer". The female characters, Marge, Lisa, and the saintly, beleaguered Mary Bailey, form a group who resist the insidious advancement of the nuclear power plant's pollution and the treacherous masculine world of profit and politics, opposing it with domestic wisdom and concern for the community rather than the individual. Women, according to Sideshow Bob in the episode "Brother From Another Series" as the major consumers of nuclear energy, are, perhaps naturally, the ones who decide it has encroached to too great an extent. Homer, Bart and the rest of the cast are drawn into the opposing camp, in which the potential threat to the community posed by the SNPP's pollution and by Burns's political ambitions is played down for the sake of personal benefit, or at least an easier life. In reply to Marge's, "Homer, we're a Mary Bailey family", Homer points out, "Mary Bailey isn't going to fire me if I don't vote for her". Ethics and integrity are found in the home, not in the workplace, and in political terms are identified firmly with the feminine community rather than the masculine one. Lisa asks Burns's media team if "he's contaminating the planet in a manner that may one day render it uninhabitable", and is instead told to ask, for the benefit of the cameras, "Your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?" Afterwards she expresses her self-disgust at succumbing to the media circus, to which Marge replies, "Lisa, you're learning many valuable lessons tonight, and one of them is to always give your mother the benefit of the doubt". Her presentation of the mutant fish as a home-cooked main course brings Burns face to face with the problem for which he is responsible: tackling the nuclear issue as one which directly disrupts domestic life. Naturally, Burns cannot swallow the product of his anti-social conniving – once the nuclear conflict enters the arena of the home, Marge's domestic wisdom triumphs. In this episode, Marge's actions are a practical demonstration of John Fiske's assertion that though television is "produced by the culture industry and bears within it the lines of hegemonic force, it is met by the tactics of the everyday" (Fiske, 75). In fact, they encapsulate the external strategy of the show itself as a continual battle between hegemonic forces and the "tactics of the everyday".
<24>The episode's portrayal of the SNPP as a haven of mismanagement and hazards is more sustained, though in itself no harsher, than is usually the case. The "Government Inspection Team", carefully not identified with any official body, find gum used to seal a crack in the cooling tower, a plutonium rod used as a paperweight, and green liquid dripping from the ceiling and flooding one area to knee level. Burns's responses are almost Homeric: "That shouldn't be", "I'm as shocked as you are", and "Yes, well, that's always been like that". Indeed, Burns himself comes across as almost pitiful in this first segment of the episode. When he learns that the plant has 342 safety violations and will cost $56 million to repair, he spends the evening alone in his office, descending into drunken despair and quietly singing, "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime". It is hardly surprising that when Burns's gubernatorial campaign gets underway, most of his political ideas take the form of attacks on the "bureaucrats in the state capital", whom he berates as the source of all Springfield's problems in answer to any question he is asked. At the beginning of "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish", the enemy is not so much Burns the individual as bureaucracy itself, intruding into the Springfield community to pronounce harshly on it, without providing a solution to the problem.
<25> Burns's solution to his problem is to appropriate the institutional political power that has been used against him: as Homer says, "If you're governor you decide what's safe and what isn't". Burns's reversion to his familiar evil self, then, takes place in the context of his running for governor and employing a team of spin doctors to manipulate his public image. While to begin with Burns was identified as the individual in opposition to the faceless bureaucrats of the Government Inspection team - and in doing so is seen to bond with Homer, another individual manipulated by the establishment - he is again integrated successfully into an institutional position. The political campaign becomes a struggle between institution and community, each seeking to impose its values on the other, while individuals like Homer and Marge struggle to determine where their loyalties lie.
<26> Viewers of The Simpsons, as a cross-generational group, are likely to include members of the troubled American public identified by Rosa and Dunlap, skeptical about nuclear energy itself but also about the nation's ability to cope without it, as well as younger viewers who share Bart and Lisa's position, growing up in a world where the threat of nuclear war is a fading pre-Cold War nightmare, and where the issue of damage to the environment, and particularly their local environment, is much more immediate. The show's writers, belonging to the older group, might be imagined to be purposely reminding their audience of a social problem which has been eclipsed rather than resolved. However, when discussing The Simpsons's treatment of nuclear energy, its production team stress that they have no political axe to grind, stating firmly that nuclear power is simply a rich comic target. Writer and producer Sam Simon (admittedly responsible for many of the show's anti-nuclear jokes) said of "Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish":
I sat in a college classroom where a college professor was telling students that it was the most pointed piece of political satire that had aired on prime-time television in the last 10 years! [...] honest to God, two of us sat in my office for a couple of days and strung together some jokes. There was no point to it. (Simon)
Simon's statement seems overly disingenuous. There may have been no 'point' to the episode in terms of visible political results; the audience did not fill the streets of their respective Springfields to protest about the danger on their doorsteps, as happened in "Homer's Odyssey". Yet any regular Simpsons viewer would recognize the show's lampooning of nuclear power as part of its staunch refusal to be afraid of overtly political targets for its humor. As David Marc observes, "The Simpsons is perhaps the most morally exacting critique of American society that has yet appeared on television" (Marc, 193). It has never been reticent about tackling sensitive or controversial issues and, moreover, has a proven ability to appropriate them as suitable subjects for comedy, without treating them frivolously. The writers of this show are, if anything, more than usually aware of the political implications in their choice of satirical targets. Simon's attitude can be partly explained as a desire to demonstrate an even-handed attitude, rather than appearing to promote a one-sided nuclear agenda. He describes the show's entanglement with the "real" nuclear industry as follows:
When the show started, the United States Council for Energy Awareness, which is a fairly powerful nuclear power lobbying group, said 'You're having fun at our expense. Why don't you come down to a nuclear power plant and see what it's really like?' There's no way the writers on this show would turn down a chance like that. It was a really fun field trip that taught us, in some ways, our show was unrealistic, but, in other ways, it was more realistic than we would have ever thought possible. They got angry that we weren't completely turned around by the field trip so they issued a press release stating how upset they were. I was called by the Associated Press and I essentially said, 'I'm sorry they feel bad about it'. Then the anti-nuclear people got upset because they don't want to hear anything but a complete anti-nuclear agenda and they wanted equal time […] people on both sides of that particular controversy don't have a sense of humor, and I'm glad that I do. We're going to keep having fun with nuclear power on the show. (Simon)
The producers of The Simpsons would rather be seen as artistically motivated than politically motivated when writing about nuclear power, because groups interested in the issue tend to have extreme opinions one way or the other. This intent to proclaim political disengagement on this particularly thorny point seems like an uncharacteristic retreat by The Simpsons and its production team. It is interesting to note, though, that while Sam Simon is happy to name his pro-nuclear challengers, explain who they are and describe their hostility, he refers only vaguely to their opposite numbers as "the anti-nuclear people", and avoids direct reference to their actions. A certain sympathy towards the negative view of nuclear energy, reinforced by the tenor of the show's humor, is unconsciously present even in a statement anxious to proclaim its neutrality. Simon's declaration of his (and the show's) apolitical stance may be disappointing, yet that is countered by the unconvincing nature of this disengagement.
<27> This "neutral" position, avoiding the extremes of pro- and anti-nuclear views, is nevertheless justifiable on the grounds that it is in harmony with the views of the American public, and therefore the show's primary audience. Rosa and Dunlap summarize their findings on the public's opinion of nuclear energy as endorsing cynical but resigned neutrality:
The picture that emerges from these items is not one of a knee-jerk public passionately committed to the riddance of nuclear energy but of a pragmatic public weighing technological risks against unforeseeable future energy needs. As a hedge against a shortfall in future energy supply, Americans appear willing to leave the nuclear option open. (Rosa and Dunlap, 302)
The uneasy reaction privately felt is thus represented publicly by The Simpsons, in which the dominant attitude to nuclear power parallels that expressed in Rosa and Dunlap's surveys; acknowledging the importance of resistance to nuclear energy but also the futility, and potential error, of action against it. The show certainly encourages healthy skepticism about the value of nuclear power (a feeling shown to be latent in the majority of the public anyway) but, in accordance with Sam Simon's remarks, is not aiming to fuel active, politicized opposition to it.
<28> The
continued hegemonic status of this attitude is most strongly
demonstrated in terms of audience preferences regarding the
popularity of the show's major characters. Monty Burns, regardless
of his machinations, far outstrips Marge, most often his ethical
opponent (as she is in "Two
Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish"
and many others) in popularity. [5]
In fact, though Marge is more politically active, thoughtful and
analytical about the nuclear industry than her husband, who is part
of it, Homer's choice of bemused co-operation mingled with contempt
for the SNPP is ultimately endorsed by his supreme popularity with
Simpsons
fans. Whatever conceptual objections the family have to nuclear
power, to Homer it's "just a job", and inevitably has to be
regarded, and tolerated, as such. The Springfield Nuclear Power
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Notes
[1] The Simpsons was a landmark show in this respect when it debuted as a discrete series in late 1989. Since then other animated shows have followed its lead in satirising contemporary culture – such as Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and South Park. Yet while these shows have found similar mainstream success, probably only South Park has shown a comparable willingness to depict political figures – having featured Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden – and still falls short of the engagement with political movements and institutions, particularly domestic institutions and figures (including Presidents Carter, Bush (senior) and Clinton) that has been a frequent feature of The Simpsons' lengthy and successful run. [^]
[2] See, among others, Walter C. Patterson's Nuclear Power (1977) for an account of the parallel developments of nuclear power for civilian and military application. Chas Newkey-Burden's Nuclear Paranoia (2003) is an excellent brief overview of the fear of nuclear war in twentieth-century culture. [^]
[3] Before 11 September 2001, Bush's pro-industry, anti-environment stance was probably the most high-profile aspect of his presidency outside the USA, with regular disapproving comments in the European press and globally. The worldwide political consequences of the World Trade Centre attacks has, of course, affected public perceptions of the likelihood of nuclear war, as has the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the associated controversies surrounding alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by a number of nations. At the time of writing, there are still many unresolved issues over global stocks of WMD (including nuclear arms and material procured from former nuclear energy plants) and the situation continues to change. It is still too early for data to be produced that can reliably be compared with the public's corresponding fears during the Cold War. [^]
[4] The popularity of TV shows varies considerably between black and white audiences. However, recent research has suggested on one hand that there is a substantial divide (Younge 2003), but also that this divide has been significantly narrower since the protest in 1999 (Hernandez 2003). However, The Simpsons has a reasonable claim to be bridging the gap, being one of only two shows to be in the top twenty for both black and white audiences in February 2003 (Campbell 2003). Most commentators agree that comedy is the genre least likely to appeal across racial divides, making this feat especially noteworthy. Burton (accessed 2003) gives an interesting outline of the development of the "black" sitcom and the Fox network's role in this. [^]
[5] In "The Simpsons Character Poll", conducted between December 1996 and April 1998, 3210 votes were cast and Homer received 776, more than twice as many as Bart, who took second place with 318 votes. Burns occupies fifth place, with 100 votes, and Marge thirtieth, with 23 votes; just behind the school bully, Nelson Muntz, with 24. It should also be mentioned that, on undertaking a random search of the Internet for Simpsons character websites, it is generally easy to find several featuring Homer, and probable that at least one devoted to Burns and/or Smithers will be found. I have yet to locate any website which focuses on Marge. [^]
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