Of the Simpsons, and why I'm conflicted about it

I am, like most Americans and many people around the world, a Simpsons fan. Have been for a long time. I am however , fully aware of the shift that the show seems to have taken from being edgy, cutting comedy to being rather wholesome fare. I was relatively sure of this feeling until last night when I saw this:



In case you couldn't tell, that was the opening couch gag for last night's episode. Dark, huh? Also, it was storyboarded and directed by Banksy, marking the first time that an outside artist has designed the couch gag.

This causes conflict for me largely because, I had just been having a conversation about how the Simpsons was no longer as daring as Family Guy, but also because the episode which followed it was still pretty non-outrageous fare.

Now, it's not that I don't like shows like the one last night, (Professor Frink's line about baseball only being understood by the Poin-dexterous was great), and I do like having my heart warmed occasionally by ep's like last season's "The Squirt and The Whale", but I find it hard to hold them in the same esteem as Family Guy, largely because the shock value that standalone jokes provide is missing. The Simpsons still puts out 26 new well-crafted episodes a year, which is an accomplishment, but maybe the show has failed to shift with society. Maybe The Simpsons becoming a global icon, meant that they couldn't shock us anymore, because now we have the sensibilities of their writing staff. The Simpsons is preaching to the choir, which sadly means that Family Guy is on it's way there too. Oh well, things could be worse, and I'll always remember lines like this one from Family Guy's season premiere:

Carl: So in the bear world, are pandas like your version of interracial children?
Bear: Yeah Pandas are something I don't agree with.
Carl: They're cute though right?
Bear: Just when they're babies.

And now, for something entirely different

Well, not entirely different, but I figured I'd take a break from what is shaping up to be a post-heavy month, to mention a few basic things about myself and why I started blogging in the first place.

• My name is Leonnie Dickens, which you already know, I feel no need to hide my identity as this isn't a terribly personal blog anyway.
  
• I don't think I'm a very interesting person most of the time. Now, don't misunderstand that; I'm a very confident person, and I think of myself as being very smart and very funny, I just know that I tend to be very excited by things which most people don't comprehend/ care about.
  
• I am preparing to attend UC Berkeley in the Spring to obtain a B.A. in English (w/ a minor in linguistics). Before people ask, yes I plan to teach. Hopefully, I can pursue my Master's at Berkeley too.
  
• I wouldn't be pursuing this degree if I felt that being a writer was a viable career decision, but clearly it takes a lot of luck to get Dan Brown rich.
  
• I obviously like to write, mostly poetry because it has always come easier to me, but occasionally fiction, which may pop up here if I ever finish one of the 20 stories I've started in the last 6 months(sadly, that's not hyperbole, I have at least 20 stories at various stages of incompletion on my computer right now)
  
• I like getting critical feedback on my work, and I haven't found too many places for that to happen out there on the interwebs, so I decided to start a blog where I could post most of my pieces without dealing with the hit or miss internet poetry scene
  
• I seriously dislike what I have witnessed in the past year while looking for people to share my poetry with. I appear to be much less thin-skinned about my writing than other people, although I just think that criticism is necessary sometimes if you want to improve.
  

So that's a bit about me and mine, and I'm sure that I'll elaborate on many of these points as time goes on, but for now, I think that those will suffice to explain my motivations, as well as to give an idea of the writer behind the writing. Oh and because I know how tedious all this text looks...

Image via Wikipedia

Banksy, I am such a fan