Media Literacy after The Simpsons

Media Literacy after The Simpsons mark Simpson Explains our post currentist Identity crisis,Whether we Prize it or not Media Literacy after The SimpsonsABSTRACTThis oblige suggests that The Simpsons is a sophisticated media subject most media that forces educators who t all(prenominal) media literacy into an encounter with postmodern judgment. The sense of postmodern judgment for media discipline is seekd done a steering on ii now themes in The Simpsons the changing judgment of private individuation and the consequences of a deplorablely ironic worldview. Icons of popular finishing house be employ to teach about philosophical constructs. From its inception The Simpsons has represent a significant ch all toldenge to educators.The programme, which ridiculed all forms of influence and turned bar unrivalledt Simpson into a wildly habitual anti- virtuoso, initially provoked an intense reply from the education citizens, in some schools influential to the banning of parap hernalia direction Barts images and habitual denunciations of the serial. As the series grew in popularity- and eventually was joined by oppositewise sketch series that were send withdrawn to be all the to a greater extent(prenominal) more educationally offensive, such as Beavis and Butthead and South Park-the furor died down to a now on the otherwise artisan passive hostility toward the program, at least in the classroom. It certainly didnt facilitate the educational communitys disagreement to stimu new-fangled Interval magazine reputation the series the best video program of the 20th century, or to corroborate the poet laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky, praise the series, stating that it penetrates to the creative activity of television itself-importance (Owen, 2000, p. 65). Nor did it facilitate that various teachers went habitat, turned the program on, and laughed themselves silly. All the more another(prenominal) abbreviate has been created amongs t the floriculture of children and the culture of education, a gummed cross out that has been perhaps all the more more painful for media educators, various of whom comply Hobbs (1998) target that the texts of everyday cargoner, when constituted as objects of cordial confederation, provide the theory for combining textual, historical, and ideological examination in slipway that relieve students and teachers give way beyond the limits of traditional disciplines and contr everyplacesy argonas (p. 21). To be undeniable, there arrive at been efforts by media educators to bring The Simpsons into the classroom. Our debate of the media literacy literature and media literacy sites revealed a number of examples of pro make up slightons incorporating the series, from examining The Simpsons as a everlasting(a) variant of cordial satire to comparing The Simpsons family to other television families. On the other hand, in al more or less every dispute, we sensed that the strange qua lities of the series eluded these efforts. The basic tools of media education and literacy as typically agreed upon by numerous media literacy communities-tools which regulate our train to basic precepts such as the significance that the media be constructed- break by not to be enough to turn The Simpsons from renegade habitual culture into a teachable moment (Aufderheide, 1993 Media Aw beness Ne iirk, 2000). Perhaps the cardinal poser with The Simpsons is that it seems to drag the media literacy examination onto the unfamiliar and all the more forethought terrain of postmodernism, where issues of image and transcript open to fall apart, a terrain where sporadic media educators be willing or able to follow. Of line, there has been an effort to define, critique, and bring postmodern impression to bear on educational judgment and application, expressly from advocates of exact pedagogy (e.g., Aronowitz Giroux, 1992). All the more this has been a theory- determined effort tha t has not reached make headway far into educational scholarship, and has do almost no headway into the frontlines of educational duck.Various teachers Studies in Media Info Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 pick out never heard of the label postmodernism. The same mould is equally, if not more pronounced, in the media education citizens. Our examination of media literacy literature and key media literacy web sites in the United States and Canada revealed an almost comprehensive absence of controversy and examination on postmodernism. There bugger off been, of pathway, notable exceptions (McL atomic number 18n, Hammer, Scholle, Reilly, 1995 Steinberg Kincheloe, 1997). The outcome of this empty margin is another censorious abbreviate, in this dispute not between students and educators, on the other artisan between media educators and media theorists. In examining this section, we are struck by t wo observations. First, the gap between media education fix and media judgment comes precisely at the moment when teachers and media educators are finding themselves overwhelmed by strange modern fixedness cultural texts for which the unfamiliar category of postmodernism may potentially be the most fruitful interpretative handle. Second, the persuasions of students and media theorists stand in the succeeding birth. Students are support inside an increasingly postmodern regular(a) cultural participation that media theorists are attempting to label, define, and scan. The puzzle is that students dont necessarily flip the vocabulary to generate importation of their participation, and the vocabulary that theorists have developed seems to make believe substance unaccompanied in polish seminars. The Simpsons offers a promising opportunity to strategically conformity these issues, highlighting the limits of accomplished media literacy tools, illustrating the aesthetic quiz of postmodernism, and providing some vocabulary to label that examine. In effect, it serves as an dispute of how the solution of postmodernism can be used to develop a present-day(a) range of particular proposition interpretive skills for constructively engaging this ontogeny trend in habitual culture.Our article presents a mini admittance to postmodernism and a grounded surgical process of the benefits and limits of applying this judgment. Our reason is not to provide an exhaustive or all the more spread out introduction to postmodern judgment. Rather, it is to position The Simpsons as a media subject that can be used as a starting give notice for exploring postmodern judgment. Fear of Postmodernism If everyone loves The Simpsons, postmodernism has its position participation of critics. Writing in U.S. Material and Field Report, Leo (1999) argues that postmodernism has created a address that no one can understand, a language that is used to intellectually bully readers in to agreeing with outlandish propositions. The academic area, on the other artisan, has offered more double assessments. Hebdige (1988) argues that we are in the presence of a buzzword, a expression which, piece confusing, does appropriate an influential companionable or cultural transition. Kellner (1995) agrees, observing that . . . the label postmodern is often a placeholder, or semiotic marker, that indicates that there are virgin phenomena that demand mapping and theorizing (p. 46). In the infrequent instances where references to postmodernism do appear in media literacy literature, its ambiguous area is emphasized. For process, Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1997), in their effort to launch charting the challenges posed by multimedia education in an increasingly digitized media area, believe that postmodernism, although guileful and sweeping, offers a beneficial pathway to characterize a number of enormous tender and cultural transformations. Some of the changes that contro l Buckingham and Sefton-Green embrace the area of consumption, the blurring distinctions between production and consumption, the poaching of texts and symbols, and the rejection of the elitist and sterile showdowns between high and habitual culture (pp. 289-292). Given the slipperiness of the sense, postmodernism on the other hand marks a critical modern moment in the scan of media and likeness. Building on the business of Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1997), we open by asking what is postmodernism and what can we do with it? With its disbelieving of truthfulness and its subject of the politics of media representations, postmodernism, once it is understood properly, can be a rich source of pedagogical judgment and curb. The Postmodern engagement Definitions and Symptoms What true is the label postmodernism softening to receive? There is, graduation exercise, the sense of opposition to modernism.In essence, modernism secernates that individuals and nations, guided by logical thinking and Studies in Media proponent Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 2 scientific achievements, are moving toward a more homosexuale, more just, and more economically flourishing ultimate. In other contents, modernism embraces overture, view it as a elongated and inexorable phenomenon with acceptable outcomes. Accordingly, the publish in postmodernism stands for the meaning that there is no longer any guarantee of progress. In point, there is further flyspeck consensus as to what progress all the more wealth. Postmodernity typically is distinguished by an undermining of force, the denigration of novel by turning it into a style or evocative nostalgia, the question of progress, and the head to impression the ultimate as empty. otherwise postmodern symptoms embrace the meaning of image plume, intertextuality (the on the face of it random quoting of one subject by another), a heightened mea ning of media self-reflexivity calling control to replica as a hall of mirrors, and pastiche, defined as the sense to cause disjointed images and subject fragments. Finally, the postmodern process is marked by commodification overload (the head to turn everything into a product or marketing opportunity), jeering overload (the elevation of mockery as the dominant rhetorical posture), and the increase questioning of the sense of personal individuality brought on by viewing the self as a social construction. In short, the meaning of postmodernism calls control to the ways in which a beneficial deal of everyday regular culture is at once fully informed by, if not driven by, the basic media literacy precept that media construct social naked truth. In act, all the more of regular culture relentlessly draws judgment to the further whimsicality of almost every aspect of our social participation, as well as the moral and epistemological foundations on which social participation depends. In other contents, the curriculum of regular culture has outstripped the curriculum of the classroom, all the more the media education classroom. The vocabulary of postmodernism allows us to launch to contemplate and term the various ways in which this is taking fix, on the other share it further leaves us at a loss about how to proceed. Recognizing this disagreement, memo and educational theorists have attempted to clarify what is to be gained by drawing on the social and theoretical insights generated by the deconstructive influence of postmodern criticism. At the same detachment, they have tried to demonstrate how to tame this influence in the utility of modernist value such as human rights, equality, freedom, and democracy (Aronowitz Giroux, 1991 Best Kellner, 1991 Giroux, 1997 Kellner, 1995 Rorty, 1989 Wolin, 1990).A critical postmodernism encourages us to solicit contemporary questions about all claims to influence (scientific or otherwise), about how contemporary forms of replica and contemporary inflections in the style of replica made practicable through technology and commodification exchange the quality of sense, and about how cultural dominance is produced and maintained through the patterns of contrasts used to define social and linguistic categories (Aronowitz Giroux, 1991 Scholle Denski, 1995). Postmodernism offers contemporary tools for critical comment and modern responsibilities for connecting media and cultural interpretation to democracy as a form of native land that enables critical reflection and activism, making us understand the ways in which our on the face of it private individual identities are formed, through language and symbols, in kind to each other and the broader social and political citizens (McKinlay, 1998, p. 481). For The Simpsons audience, an ambivalence toward technology and progress is guideline fare. This judgment of the ultimate as empty and without guarantees has further been associated with the vegetable ma rrow individualism of Hour X, whose slogan might glance at We have seen the forthcoming and it sucks. While any aspect of postmodernism discussed above can be found in and explored within The Simpsons, two concepts in particular- badinage overload and the questioning of identicalness-will serve as reference points in our reconsideration of the series. The puzzle of personal individualism is a central complication for all young citizens, on the other artisan it is a puzzle that is not duration satisfactorily addressed, minded(p) the growing levels of hopelessness, cynicism, despair, and suicide among teenagers. Of particular control to us is that The Simpsons repeatedly focuses on this further subject the puzzle of selfhood in an increasingly absurd culture pulverized with images, symbols, value, irony, commercialization, and hucksterism. What lessons does The Simpsons teach? What lessons can be learned as the characters on the demonstrate are thrust into many battles for selfho od within the postmodern terrain? whoop it up all the more postmodern Studies in Media Info Literacy Education, manual of arms 1, controversy 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 3 culture, The Simpsons, is staring(a) with irony and obsessed with issues of imperative identity operator, expressly in relation to media culture. Our task is to articulate an interpretive stray of reference to facilitate media educators and viewers open to cause critical meaning of these symptoms.The Challenges of Postmodern Selfhood Gergen (1991) notes that postmodernists abbreviate version into three epochs, each of which corresponds to a particular judgment of personal identity or selfhood. These periods are labeled as the pre-modern (romantic hour), the contemporary era, and the postmodern. From the pre-modern or romantic tradition, we derive our meaning in a stable center of identity. In Gergens contents, powerful forces in the deep midland of ones dur ation are held to be the source of inspiration, creativity, genius, and moral courage, all the more madness (Gergen, 1992, p. 61). Modernism redefined the self, shifting the emphasis from deep, mysterious processes to human sentience in the here and these days, always in control with such values as efficiency, stable functioning, and progress. The self in its virgin form-what Gergen calls the postmodern or comparative self-is no longer viewed as a separate target, on the other artisan is increasingly understood as a relative construction, defined by and spread across the humanity and activity experiences each individual encounters throughout her or his field. In short, as McNamee and Gergen (1999) argue, there are no independent selves we are each constituted by others (who are themselves in like manner constituted). We are always already related to by fairness of shared constitutions of the self (p. 15). Linked to this sense is the sense that a certain understanding of ours elves as beings occurs through language, which is itself a fundamentally relational sense, and that our identity grows and develops in relationship to the endless dialogues that we have with others, with culture, and with ourselves. In this meaning, our interactions with the media cause late significant. Moreover, this contemporary consciousness of the relational sense of the self comes at correct the moment when the relationships we enter into and which contribute to our definition of self are multiplying at an exponential rate and are duration increasingly spread over a in a superior way and in a superior way span of hour and amplitude. It is one baggage to see the sense of the relational self when we think of, claim, two friends engaged in a mutually sustaining and defining examination. In this scenery, the sense of the relational self is promising, perhaps all the more reassuring. On the other hand, extending the meaning of relationship to subsume every symbolic encounter in which we willingly or unwilling participate-from intentional relationships to unintentional and forced relationship with 3,000 commercial messages per day-presents modern challenges. A critical postmodern perspective calls control to this crisis of identity, a crisis in which the media of memo and their commercial foundations are deeply implicated. Of line, thinking of the self as a relational construct not only gives insights into the crisis of the self, on the other share it further offers a means of thinking about how to residence that crisis. In this more hopeful and acceptable meaning, the relational self offers a glimpse of those selected aspects of human participation and identity that may be used as a moral foundation in the face of the deconstructive whirlpool of commercial postmodern culture. The relational self suggests a moral hollow that is based less on the received truths of religion or accomplishment than in the manner by which we draw up ourselves and our commun ity through ceaseless and inevitable physical, linguistic, and psychological dependence upon one another. Drawing on the duty of Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jurgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Jerome Bruner, McNamee and Gergen (1999) deposit elsewhere a independent and thoughtful introduction to what a moral ethic organized on all sides of the relational self would see enjoy. They have called it relational responsibility, defining relationally responsible actions as those that sustain and enhance forms of exchange elsewhere of which influential process itself is made practicable. Isolation, they argue, represents the negation of citizens (p. 19). The guideline of relational responsibility is in stark contrast to the deconstructive tendencies of postmodernism. As such, it can serve as a critical bridge linking the interpretive coercion of a critical postmodernism to the modernist values associated with progressive democracy.Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Tome 1, Su bject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 4 At the same hour, it is autonomous that the deconstructive tendencies of postmodernism (as a fix of virgin conditions) have influential implications for personal identity construction. Giddens (1991), for process, warns of the looming threat of personal meaninglessness. It is this threat that directs us back to a carefulness of one of the central tropes of postmodern discourse irony. As noted above, relentless irony is a hallmark of both The Simpsons and the postmodern era. As individuals scrape to confront postmodern challenges to identity, there is grounds to solicit whether there is any valuation in the postmodern strategy of irony. Thus, the implications of irony both for identity formation and relational responsibility must be considered. banter, Identity, and the Disagreement of state The Simpsons is regularly celebrated for its incisive wit and social satire, for its force to manipulate i rony to bell control to the absurdity of everyday social conventions and beliefs. Irony functions as a critical form that helps us to break through surface sense to examine and understand the correct area of things in a contemporary and deeper means. It is a vehicle for enhancing critical consciousness, and it represents a moral coercion of skilled in the function of eradicating constituted pathetic (Rorty, 1989). As Hutcheon (1992, 1994) notes, critical irony is intimately linked to politics. The compel of deconstructing can be a first development to political dispute, and ironys oppositional character can be a major critical compel. The subversive functioning of irony is related to its status as a self-critical and self-reflexive resources that challenges hierarchy, and this influence to undermine and overturn is tell to have politically transformative coercion. On the other share this is not where the manipulate of irony ends in The Simpsons, nor does it appropriate the postmod ern turn in the meaning of irony. Postmodern irony is ambiguous and its solution is contested.It can be construe by adherents as playful, reflexive, and liberating opponents, on the other hand, contemplate it as frivolous, deviant, and unrepentant (Hutcheon, 1992, 1994 Kaufman, 1997 Thiele, 1997). In postmodern irony, clarity in moral delineation begins to disappear. For process, in virgin comedy, as in all social behavior, all actions are controversy to satire from some perspective. Besides, by reason of postmodern irony begins with the assumption that language produces all sense, a kind of emancipatory indulgence in irony is evoked-an invitation to reconceptualize language as a form of play. As Gergen (1991) writes, we neednt recognise such linguistic activities with profundity, imbue them with deep significance, or fix elsewhere to interchange the nature on their novel. Rather, we might play with the truths of the hour, shake them about, try them on wampum funny hats (p. 188) . In other contents, postmodern irony invites us to avoid saying it straight, using linear logic, and forming smooth, progressive narratives (p. 188). The Simpsons is saturated with this form of postmodern irony. On the other facilitate where does that leave media educators move to duty with this enormously regular series? On the one artisan, media educators would prize to engage the series fully by practise of it raises various challenges to conventional ideas of mould and selfhood on the other share, they are unwilling to lead students to examine media literacy as a form of deconstruction that leads only to meaninglessness or play. Some media scholars contemplate postmodern irony as a fleshy challenge for teachers committed to linking media literacy with productive citizenship. Purdy, for dispute, laments that between Madonna and the fist-fight between deliverer and Santa Claus that opened the cartoon series South Park, there is less and less left in society whose flouting can e licit shock. Irony, he concludes, invites us to be self-absorbed, on the other facilitate in selves that we cannot believe to be particularly interesting or significant (p. 26). Conway and Seery (1992) are similarly touch on about the implications of postmodern irony for engaged citizenship. Although irony may render the dispossessed with much-needed critical perspective and all the more underwrite a minimal political agenda, they draw up, it is generally regarded as irremediably parasitic and asocial (p. 3). Hutcheon (1994) further shares this episode, noting that irony can be both political and apolitical, both conservative and radical, both repressive and democratizing in a pathway that other discursive strategies are not (p. 35). Gergen (1991) frames the challenge of postmodern irony in terms of its challenge to forming a coherent self. If all serious projects are reduced to satire, play, Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Tome 1, Subject 1 (February 2001), 1-12 Un iversity of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 5 or nonsense, all attempts at authenticity or earnest ends become empty-merely postures to be punctuated by sophisticated self-consciousness (p. 189). If this is the poser that The Simpsons raises in its manipulate of both critical and postmodern irony, to what room is it alter to a social consciousness with a practicable for social process, as opposed to contributing to a cynical numbness founded on ironic detachment?What solutions does the series offer for resolving this disagreement? Are there any pick solutions that acknowledge the postmodern challenge to identity? Exploration of Self in Homer to the exclusive With these concerns in meaning, we see an phase of The Simpsons that originally aeriform on February 7, 1998. The period focuses with particular vehemence on the quest for identity and asks the closest questions How is the sense of the self understood in relationship to the efflorescence of media images, symbols, an d values? How does irony fit into the exploration and courage of identity issues? How do we understand The Simpsons confrontations with the self and identity in terms of what has been called the postmodern process? The demonstrate begins with the principles sight gags on the couch and the Simpson familys lampooning of televisions midseason replacement series. The program that finally captures the familys carefulness is jurisprudence Cops, which becomes a present within the present. As the two Miami-Vice enjoy heroes of Police Cops subdue would-be bank thieves, one of the patrol detective heroes, a millionaire cop surrounded by admiring women, introduces himself as Simpson, police detective Homer Simpson. The Simpson family is shocked and Homer is exclusively overwhelmed, confusing himself with his television image.The eyepatch then unfolds in essentially five kernels that hire up and explore Homers admiration over his own identity (Chatman, 1978). First, Homer identifies co mpletely with the television detective hero Wow. They captured my personality perfectly Did you examine the means dadaism caught that bullet? In turn, the all-inclusive citizens of Springfield validates Homers contemporary pseudo-identity, treating him as if he were the television detective hero Hey, Mr. Simpson, sir, can I purchase your sign? Second, the Police Cops producers interchange their television detective character from glamorous hero to bumbling sidekick, launching a series of gags about Homers correct identity. The virgin characterization is truly a near perfect replication of the out-and-out(a) Homer Simpson. This outrages Homer Hey whats going on? That guys not Homer Simpson Hes flump and stupid The town continues to respond to Homer as the television character, only these days with ridicule rather than respect. Nonetheless, Homer gains some insight into the confusion between his authentic and put on identity. As a assemblage of co-workers gathers in the hallway a bsent his business waiting for him to do something stupid, Homer retorts, Well, Im sorry to disappoint you gentleman, on the other artisan you seem to have me disunited with a character in a fictional present. Factor of the joyousness for viewers derives from the irony of the cartoon character Homer making the state that he is the authentic Homer Simpson, as opposed to the fictional cartoon character within the cartoon.The writers of the period then continue to play with this seemingly endless hall of mirrors between absolute and fictional identity by scripting Homer to behave true in the transaction of the revised fictional detective character. Homer obliges by spilling a fondue pot on the nuclear reactor polity panel. Homers identity crisis eventually leads him to Hollywood, where he confronts the producers of the Police Cops-By the Numbers Productions-and demands that they recast the detective character Im begging you Im a human duration Let me have my dignity back The lines be tween Homers authentic identity and his media identity blur all the more besides when his efforts in the production business are used as grist for a contemporary gag in the later Police Cops period. Studies in Media Counsel Literacy Education, Manual 1, Controversy 1 (February 2001), 1-12 University of Toronto Press. DOI 10.3138/sim.1.1.002 6 In the third kernel, the speckle shifts absent from Homers struggle over his identification with his media replica to his fixation on the sense that a contemporary label will give him a virgin identity. In this kernel, Homer goes to court to sue Police Cops for the uncomely application of his reputation. When his petition is instantly rebuffed in the term of corporate patented interests, he rashly decides to transform his reputation to Max Coercion. Homers growth is nowadays transformed. His self-image improves, he becomes forceful and dynamic, and his co-workers and boss treat him with respect. Mr. Burns, remembering Homers reputation fo r the first interval, exclaims, Well, who could forget the reputation of a magnetic individual prize you? harbour up the acceptable profession, Max. While shopping at Costingtons for a contemporary faculty wardrobe, Homer meets a member of Springfields elite with a similarly powerful label, Trent Steele. Trent nowadays takes Homer/Max under his wing, inviting him to garden flock for Springfields young, hip force couples, an period that turns elsewhere to be the jumping off stop for an environmental reason. The critical moment in this kernel-which links the identity crisis of Police Cops with the identity theme in the Max Force computer software of the episode-occurs when Homer reveals to his contemporary best friend Trent Steele the origin of the term Max Compel.When Trent exclaims, Hey, beneficial term, Homer replies, Yeah, isnt it? I got it off a hairdryer. Homers resolution to his identity crisis with his media self is to redefine himself in terms of the force setting of a min i household appliance. The self is these days equated with a product. At first, the results are stunningly successful. The fourth kernel leads to the denouement. In the third kernel, Homers appropriation of the identity of his hair dryer appears to have resolved his identity crisis in satisfactory transaction. On the other hand, this meaning soon falls apart. At the garden assemblage, Homer and Marge rub shoulders with celebrity environmental activists birchen Harrelson and Ed Begley, Jr., two of the various celebrities lampooned in the phase. The sense fundamental these scenes is that Homer, as the buffoon celebrity Max Force, is on the same level as other equally shallow and ridiculous celebrities. Finally, Trent Steele announces that it is interval to board a bus to reason the wanton destruction of our nations forests. This generate is relentlessly parodied We have to protect trees by generate of trees cant protect themselves, except, of trail, the Mexican trash Trees. The pa rtygoers travel to a stand of redwoods about to be bulldozed and are en mountain chained to the trees. The police (Chief Wiggum, Eddie, and Lou) confront Homer, attempt to swab his eyes with Hippie- Coercion mace, and stop up chasing him on all sides of his tree. His chain works prize a saw, cutting down the redwood, which in turn topples the comprehensive forest. Homer, freed at persist, throws his chain into the air, killing a bald eagle. Homer, as the phony Max Force, is rejected by the phony celebrity activists. In the fifth and final kernel, which serves as an epilogue to the phase, Marge and Homer are in bed. Marge tells Homer she is glad he changed his reputation back to Homer Simpson and Homer responds, Yes, I learned you gotta be yourself. The Phase Through a Postmodern lens The phase is intriguing by generate of of its insistent focus on the search for identity, and the methods by which that identity is constructed within the absurdities of the postmodern landscape. As G ergen (1992) notes, We are exposed to more opinions, values, personalities, and ways of activity than was any previous interval in novel the number of our relationships soars, the variations are enormous past relationships extreme (only a ring bell apart) and contemporary faces are only a channel absent (p. 58). There is, in short, an explosion in social connections.What does this explosion have to do with our meaning of selves and what we stand for, and how does it undermine beliefs in a romantic interior or in a rational center of the self ? This is precisely the controversy this period of The Simpsons takes up over again and again. What is exclusively engaging in this phase is the focus on Homers identity crisis and its relationship to the media. This is not, of line, a theme unique to The Simpsons. As Caldwell (1995) observes, comedy-variety shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s were repeatedly using the conventions of intertextuality and