Bart and Blue Jeans as Revolutionary Counter-Culture

Bart Simpson Mania of the 1990s (part one of two)

Please note

I originally wrote this as an analytical reading synthesis for a rhetoric and communications class. I have edited it and broken it into two parts to make it easier to read. This is part one of two. I hope you enjoy!

J.C. Penney — doing it wrong?

“You’re killing kids!” an angry grandmother accused Nancy Overfield.

In 2019, Willa Paskin interviewed Nancy Overfield regarding Bart Mania of the 1990s on her podcast, Decoder Ring. In the early 90s, Overfield was head of marketing for the children’s division of J.C. Penney. When the department store began selling T-shirts featuring Bart Simpson with the slogan “Underachiever, and proud of it”, moral panic ensued. One particularly enraged customer told Overfield that following Bart Simpson as a role-model would lead to youth dropping out of school, turning to drugs, and inevitably overdosing.

During his second — and unsuccessful — campaign, former president George W.H. Bush accused The Simpsons of degrading the American family, stating he wanted to “make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons”. School principals all over the…