The Simpsons: Donut Hell
The Simpson’s Satirical Approach to Religion
As the longest running television show in history, The Simpsons show’s writers were bound to use religion as a topic several times throughout its comedic repertoire. The show has been credited as both blasphamous and hilarious, demonstrating its ability to intersect popular culture and religion. “Though The Simpsons has been criticised by some Christian fundamentalists for its mockery of their religion — mostly via the character of the maddeningly irritating Bible-thumper Ned Flanders — others have recognised that the show’s position on most issues is profoundly moral if slightly sceptical towards organised religion generally. (Homer: ‘I’m not normally a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman!’)” (Delingpole). The show has been one of the focuses of discourse on the subject of religion in popular culture and allows for a critical analysis of how people percieve religion through popular mediums such as television shows.
Olivia Kang’s post The Simpsons: Teachings of Hinduism, demonstrates how the popular comedic cartoon television show allows the viewer to witness a traditional Hindu marriage ceremony. Though this particular episode does have factual basis and reflects the actual Hindu ceremony, the rest of the series is stocked full of religious satire, mocking religion, and completely theoretically detours from the forms of religion we consider today. The following article demonstrates the amount of religious related jokes that fills this television show, making it both funny, but controversial:
The show even creates its own versions of religion to reflect the ‘sins’ of the characters, for example:
Rachel Wagner discusses the digitally sacred, and how in the new age of technology, “We want to customize our religion for our own personal well-being as much as we want to customize our smart phones or game avatars” (Klassen 178–179). This applies to The Simpsons in the sense that the writers have created heir own interpretations of religion and their own customized religions. Though the show does once in a while exhibits actual real life religious applications and dogmas with positive moral messages, it- as a comedicshow- also turns them into the sources for comedic relief and mockery.
Works Cited
Delingpole, James. “What ‘The Simpsons’ can teach us about life”. The Telegraph (London, UK). Jan5, 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6872394/What-The-Simpsons-can-teach-us-about-life.html
Klassen, Chris. “Religion and Popular Culture.” In Religion and Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Appproach. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2014.
