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[CW Epstein] Oh,
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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Truly! I have a lot of respect for the great writing & characters on Seinfeld, but occaisionally a joke hinges on something a bit... problematic. Fortunately if I remember from recent rewatches, those moments don't show up much, instead show suffers simply from being 30 years old. We've changed a lot culturally.
Everyone should watch the episode where Elaine is dating a communist (S6E10 - The Race).
As for the Simpsons, Homer treats Marge like absolute shit a lot of the time and she just takes it, or forgives him waaayyyyyy too easily. Her sister's Patty & Selma are the butt of jokes a lot for not... being attractive I guess? e.g. they don't shave their legs. They're (rightfully) constantly talking shit about Homer.
The moment I figured out that Seinfield was only funny when I was stoned was when I started to see the real problems with it. But like stoned, it can be downright fucking hilarious at times. Same phenomenon happened with Full House but for a different reason.
I'm curious about what I'd feel if I went back and watched those shows now but also sober.
One thing about The Simpsons that never really made sense to me was that I identified with Lisa and Milhouse the most and thought I was supposed to be Bart. In hindsight it makes sense because Milhouse seems like he Autistic-coded and Lisa is a little lefty.
But yeah even Homer being a dumb jerk most of the time didn't do great for an already misogynistic masculine-forward culture that was so prevalent even back then. Men can be masculine without being toxic, can be amazing parental and spousal figures, and also not be bumbling oafs.
As for Patty and Selma, I think I need to reanalyze that because I wonder if that is what formed my early idea of what a woman was supposed to be. My wife almost never shaved her legs and such and for the longest of time I let that previous notion of "womanhood" get in the way. Took me a long time and a lot of self reflection but I'm over that road bump now but still feel like shit trying to dictate her having to shave or whatever. Which is weird because I'm not a "girls should wear makeup" person. I guess I was a shitty person all this time lol.
The Simpsons is such a long-running show that it’s hard to make blanket characterizations about how it portrayed characters. I would say they should make a term for characters changing over the course of a show, but Simpsons did it.
Homer was originally supposed to be Average Joe incarnate. It was only later that he became dumb and rude.
Not a Simpsons expert but I think even Milhouse was portrayed more sympathetically at the start.
Lisa isn’t really supposed to be a lefty, more like a specifically liberal busybody. One who the viewer is supposed to understand is technically correct but a buzzkill.
Flanderization is what I've also loosely called "caricaturization" actually. Think of how Kevin in the office started out but then look at how he changed because of the cookie monster bit. It was a definite, noticeable shift in his character.
I agree with the rest too. I can concede to the Lisa analysis. I'm really recalling watching the show back when I identified as a Dem so was probably conflating what I thought "the left" was at that time.
caricaturization?
Oh right, I figured I would spell it wrong.
Spellcheck doesn't like it with an s or a z. Language is dumb sometimes.
it's all good I just wanted to make sure I knew what you were getting at
Yeah no thanks for asking. I have a history of typos and even using words incorrectly and I'm always going back and editing my stuff when I catch it.
I appreciate it lol.
my theory is that in the first season, homer was explicitly written to be abusive, a bad father and a bad husband. the part of the punchline of the first of many save-the-marriage episodes is that homer is incapable of changing, but marge is prevented from finding anything better by her own self-doubt and societal pressure. by the third season, they had realized that audiences would connect with homer no matter what, so they might as well make him a loveable oaf. it's why fan complaints about "jerkass homer" in the post-golden era never really made sense to me. like, he used to strangle his son! it's not subtext, it's just text!