Throughout its three and a half races, “The Simpsons” has apparently managed to parody almost all aspects of popular culture. From major developments in political history to emblematic cinema scenes, the program’s ability to recreate historical moments has always been part of its charm, and “The Simpsons” acted as a means of presenting the talents of the animators (at least at the golden age).
The parody of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” of the opening of the episode of season 3, “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love”, is one of the best examples. The recreation drawn by the hand of the escape of Indy of the temple of the warriors of Chachapoyan, redesigned while Bart escapes from his house while being prosecuted by a rabid circuit, was a truly impressive demonstration of the capacities of the animators, and in addition to being funny, proved that the series was made by the real craftsman.
As the show continued, the parodies of the film remained a coherent element, with “The Simpsons” recently parodying an underestimated film by Martin Scorsese in the episode of season 36 “desperately looking for Lisa”. Sometimes, the long -term series even parodied the whole intrigue of a film, as was the case with the “brilliant” segment of “Treehouse of Horror V”, which essentially revealed the whole intrigue of “The Shining” to a generation of children who are too young to have seen the film by Stanley Kubrick.
But there is always a parody that the creator Matt Groening wants to do for decades that remains to be made, and it could be the most ambitious parody of the show to date.
Matt Groening wants to make a simppasy for decades
“The Simpsons” has become the longest series of screenwriters in prime time a long time ago and has broadcast since. Now in his 36th season, the show refuses to die despite the dominant wisdom that he lost his magic a long time ago. Things have not been helped in this regard The acquisition by Disney de Fox, which was completed In 2019 and seemed to be the perfect symbolic development for the way “The Simpsons” had lost almost all the subversive power that helped make such success in the 90s. However, Disney’s acquisition could be exactly what Matt Groening needs to finally achieve his long -standing idea for what could prove to be the most important parody of the history of the show.
Disney had a simple message for “The Simpsons” after the merger, which was essentially equivalent to “continue to do what you do and we will stay outside”. This is exactly what fans, and undoubtedly the writers who had appreciated decades of non-intervention of Fox hoped. But Groening could actually accommodate cooperation of its new suzerains, because the creator has planned a parody “Fantasia” for decades.
During the DVD comment track for the episode of season 4 “A Streetcar Named Marge”, the writer and former showrunner Mike Reiss recalled how a table was read for the sequence in which Maggie escapes his daycare center caused the end of the reading. The sequence itself was a parody of “The Great Escape”, but the extensive instructions of the script meant that reading the table had become a bit of a bore to cross. The old showrunner, Al Jean, explained: “This is one of the reasons why we do not have long stage directions because they generally closed the table to read cold. We are now going to put things in parentheses that we do not want to read because it slows laughter.”
It seems that this is why the parody of “fantasia” of groening has never materialized, with Reiss adding: “I know that Matt, for 12.13 years that you wanted to do ‘simptasia’ ‘,` `You wanted to do’ fantasia ‘with` `the Simpsons” and it is like, nobody wants to write this script of 30 pages of scenarios.
Do we really need a parody of Fantasia Simpsons?
The legendary animated musical of Disney “Fantasia” went from a box office bomb during its beginnings in 1940 to a cultural touchstone. The most ambitious animated feature film attempted by Walt Disney at the time, “Fantasia” brought the best out of the company’s team of animators, and presents some of the most beautiful animations on the screen, with legendary animators like Bill Tytla contributing timeless sequences to the film. We hope that a “Simpsons” version would do the same for the program’s own animators, although I can’t help but think that the time for such a parody has been spent for a long time.
Over the years, “The Simpsons” has actually parodied certain sections of the film. The episode “Itchy & Scratchy Land”, for example, reveals that the creator of the show animated in a show, Roger Meyers Sr., supervised the creation of “Scratchtasia” which featured a section based on the segment “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” of “Fantasia”. Elsewhere, in “Treehouse of Horror IV”, Homer claims to be smarter than the version of Ned Flanders of Satan, before Flanders turns into Chernabog of “Night on Bald Mountain”. There are several other moments like this when “The Simpsons” has recognized the fundamental animated function of Disney, but the “Simptasia” idea has never been produced.
Now, with the animation so clean and lacking in this hand drawn by hand which made the golden age episodes so charming, a “fantasia” parody propelled by methods of digital animation made to imitate the style of masters drawn by hand seems to be another way to remind us all that “the Simpsons” is not what it was in the past. Although the acquisition by Disney de Fox surely brings the idea of ”simptasia” closer, so that does not necessarily look like something that the spectacle must do at this stage.
