[#197] SUS SIMPSons: The Secret Origins of America's Bad Boy & The Neoliberal Triumph of the ‘Toon

Dimitri and Khalid record what is probably the last SJ episode before their assassinations by apoplectic Simpsons reply guys lashing out in the throes of total ego death. Topics include: the dominance of “Gen X irony” in 1990s pop culture, the rise of contextual/information-based toy culture, Pynchon’s cameos, reflections on Bartmania, the modern tendency to view the Simpsons as both profound and deeply left-wing, “the purpose of a Simpsons is what it does”, the Trump trial self-immolator’s anti-Simpsons manifesto, DSA Lisa teaching us to perpetuate official LIES… The Simpsons as reflection “of the cynicism at the heart of the neoliberal economy”, FOX’s deliberate “selling” of Gen X, Douglas Coupland’s generation-defining book, the inversion of words like “stupid” and “bad”, the centrality of the hot couch and “ironic consumption”, “the Simpsons is to Fox what Bart Simpson is to Principal Skinner”, similarities with the fourth wall-breaking WWF Attitude Era, the 1993 paper “Homer Simpson’s Eyes and the Culture of Late Nostalgia”, Time vs. “Megatrends”, Bill Cosby’s “ontological run-in with Bart” and his defeat by the “superior intelligence of the ‘toon”… The secret etymology of the “Bad Boy” and precursors to the Bart Simpson archetype in Gilded Age America - specifically the creepy neotenous “Yellow Kid” comic strip, as well as the wildly successful “Peck’s Bad Boy” series by Wisconsin Governor George Wilbur Peck… Bart failing to embody the Nietzschean übermensch while inoculating you to the nihilism of the neoliberal 90s, The Simpsons as information conversion spectacle, Matt Groening’s revolting foot massage on the Lolita Express, the inexplicable number of Harvard mathematics Ph.Ds on the Simpsons writing staff, and why all “floating timeline” adult-oriented ‘toons are structurally conservative and inexorably sus.