How the Simpsons Effect Children?Essay title: How the Simpsons Effect Children?How The Simpsons Affect ChildrenMany people believe that what we hear, say, and watch reflect how we act in society. The Simpsons is a cartoon sitcom which makes fun of everyday issues which Americans in todays society are faced with. The question is whether or not the information being conveyed is okay for our society, and especially the children of today? Most people believe that this so-called cartoon show is a bad influence towards children, because the ideals that The Simpsons conveys are not always wholesome, and sometimes not even in good taste. Is allowing our children to watch a show where so much violence, and mature content okay for our youth to watch? The answer to this can go both ways, but I say yes, it is a good way to illustrate life, and people should know that this sort of television show is, for the most part, a comedy, and it in no way, shape or form is entirely true. This television show allows us to observe actions from a different angle, allowing us to think twice about the difference between whats moral and immoral.
It was on December 17, 1989, when “The Simpsons” received their televisiondebut. The Christmas special, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” where Fox received their highest ratings for the television show The Simpsons. Out of an estimated 92,100,000 viewer, and estimated 13,354,500 people sat and watched The Simpsons debut.(Goldberg 4) In this episode Bart received a tattoo, much to Marges dislike. Their Christmas money was spent to remove Barts tattoo with a laser. At the same time, Homer, still on his morning coffee break at 4:00 in the afternoon, learns that he will not receive a Christmas bonus from the factory. When he learns that Marge is relying on the money for Christmas, he decides that he will do the Christmas shopping for the year. He quickly buys Marge panty hose, Bart paper, Lisa crayons, and Maggie a dog toy. When he realizes that he is not doing very well, he gets a second job as a mall Santa for the extra money. On the way home from work, he steals a Christmas tree. This example goes to show how a child may be corrupted into believing that all of this non-sense is true. That receiving a tattoo is ok, stealing is tolerated, and that lying isnt deceitful. Much to our demise this stuff would happen without the television. Exploring is what children and adolescents do best, and many people believe that it is shows like The Simpsons which influence them in a bad way. School influences have more of an effect on children and teenagers than a television show, because its reality, instead of fiction.
Children began showing their affection for The Simpsons by buying Simpsons merchandise, and before we knew it, it was all over America. Every kid wanted an “Underachiever and Proud of It, Man” or an “Im Bart Simpson, Who the Hell Are You?” shirt. Hats could be seen everywhere Bart was dressed like a devil saying “Go For It, Dude!” or with Homer, his arms open, lunging forward saying “Why You Little.” The most popular shirt was a family picture with Homer choking Bart. During the first week of school in 1990, two thirds of the sixth graders in America wore Simpsons paraphernalia. (Dale and Trich, 43) Paraphernalia is a brilliant idea for a network to be seen outside of the television and for certain messages to be reached across the world. These T-shirts and hats have a much larger effect on people because they are experiencing them first hand, and paraphernalia is what shapes America.
In an American school, I would always be told to get into a field on my playground. I always wanted to learn. Every year, as I went to graduate school, I would get more creative and become more famous. I was always on an art school board for a period of several years, but I never got into any art schools because I learned on my own. Once you go to art school and see a lot of art, you get to know many things.
And then, back to my own children. When I went to college, I went through my first art school, but it was only for a few years, after I turned 17. In college, a couple of years later, I started my own studio. I did a pretty good job with it, but as I got older, I felt like I did not get into the right school or the right art schools, so I went to a few different school’s and I did better that year.
I didn’t have anything else, so I worked through it and started doing research on other people’s art. Of course, I would be like, “Oh boy, I’m so sorry that somebody is so different from me”. Even when I wasn’t doing art-related research, I always got creative. So, every year or so, I’d have a meeting where I met someone they liked and they’d ask, “What are your first things?” I always felt inspired. And I always felt like I got better at painting and then later maybe I started to do stuff for other artists with my own personal works.
So when I started being creative, it was really like, “Oh man… I’m so different from everyone else. I have all these different kinds of skills and I can do great shit with almost any material. I like to play video games. I do comics. I like to read comics. I like to dress up like Spider-Man and I love to read comics. I’m the kind of person that gets into art, and that’s a really kind people thing. I do it a lot…” I would see kids and I said, “Come on. That’s awesome. Is that what happens when you go to New York for two weeks and you do all this crazy shit?” And they’d say, “Oh yeah, I go to art school every year and never really go to art school… oh man I don’t know anymore.” I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, that’s it!” I was like, “All right boy, come on.”
You do get excited, and you go into a certain aesthetic that goes beyond the art of what you see. The kid who is wearing those glasses in the classroom with the cartoons, it’s something that happens to me all the time. I never try to be like that, so that’s just how that went down. But in college, I found out my art school was different than any other I ever had. When I started doing a lot of comics and I felt like we were doing something interesting and different from the things you see today – I just kept getting drawn to those things. I tried to be more creative and I went from being like, “This is what I love about cartoons” to “This is what I look for in a guy that likes to be crazy about cartoonism.” I kept
As the popularity of The Simpsons grew, so did parents fears. To their horror, Bart Simpson became a role model. “Aye Carumba!” which litteraly means oh my god, was a popular expression among kids. Almost anything a child did wrong was attributed to “last Sundays Simpsons television show.” (Dale and Trich, 45) Bad ideas continued to be broadcasted into kids minds, but were they really being influenced by The Simpsons? In the third episode, a baby-sitter robbed the Simpson household of most of its belongings. In the fourth episode, Homer caused a nuclear accident, got fired, and attempted suicide. Bart stole the head off of the statue of Jebidiah Springfield, Springfields founder in the sixth episode. In the eighth episode, Bart took a picture of Homer with an exotic dancer and distributed them to the entire town. Marge had an affair in the ninth episode. These episodes are doing nothing more than telling the truth. These actions happen everyday right in front of our eyes.
Some episodes have answered the question of them affecting children on their own. Once, Marge began to protest Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. Itchy is a psychopathic mouse whose only purpose is to kill and torture Scratchy, a cat.