Simpson Family Values

_"The Simpsons: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family" by Paul A. Cantor, in Political Theory (Dec. 1999), Sage Publications, 2455 Teller Rd., Thousand Oaks, Calif. 91320._

No issue has roiled American politics and for many who decry their decline, more than "family values" in recent years, Exhibit A is the popularity of TV’s dysfunctional cartoon family, the Simpsons. What unwholesome role models! traditionalist critics wail. But they should take a closer look, argues Cantor, an English professor at the University of Virginia. "For all its slapstick nature and its mocking of certain aspects of family life, The Simpsons . . . ends up celebrating the nuclear family as an institution. For television, this is no minor achievement."

While focusing on the nuclear family, the series relates it to larger institutions— church, school, and even political institutions, such as city government—satirizing them, to be sure, but at the same time acknowledging their importance, Cantor says. The show makes fun of small-town life, but "simultaneously celebrates the virtues of the traditional American small town."

The subtext of The Simpsons, creator Matt Groening has said, is that "the people in power don’t always have your best interests in mind." This view of politics, adds Cantor, "has something to offer to both liberals and conservatives. The Simpsons is based on distrust of power and especially of power remote from ordinary people. The show celebrates genuine community, a community in which everybody more or less knows everybody else (even if they do not necessarily like each other). By recreating this older sense of community, the show manages to generate a kind of warmth out of its postmodern coolness, a warmth that is largely responsible for its success with the American public."

The Simpsons, "hip, postmodern, selfaware," is hardly a simple reprise of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet or the other TV family shows of the 1950s, Cantor acknowledges. But "for roughly the past two decades, much of American television has been suggesting that the breakdown of the American family does not constitute a social crisis or even a serious problem," and in that context, The Simpsons’ unorthodox defense of the nuclear family stands out.

"In effect," writes Cantor, "the show says, ‘Take the worst-case scenario—the Simpsons—and even that family is better than no family.’ In fact, the Simpson family is not all that bad." Though young Bart’s "disrespect for authority and especially for his teachers" appalls some critics, Cantor believes he is "an updated version of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn."

But what about Homer, the "dumb, uneducated, weak in character, and morally unprincipled" Simpson father? "Homer is all those things," says Cantor, "but at least he is there. He fulfills the bare minimum of a father: he is present for his wife and above all his children. . . . He continually fails at being a good father, but he never gives up trying, and in some basic and important sense that makes him a good father."

In one episode, Cantor points out, "the question of whether the Simpson family really is dysfunctional" is explored. The civil authorities decide that Homer and his wife, Marge, are unfit parents, send them off to a "family skills class" for reeducation by experts, and turn the Simpson children over to the God-fearing parents next door. But neither "the old-style moral/religious family" nor "the therapeutic state" proves superior in the end. The show concludes, Cantor says, "that the Simpson children are better off with their real parents . . . simply because Homer and attached to Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, since Marge are the people most genuinely the children are their own offspring."