Oh, inverted world.
"Menard (perhaps without wishing to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the hesitant and rudimentary art of reading: the technique is one of deliberate anachronism and erroneous attributions. This technique, with its infinite applications, urges us to run through the Odyssey as if it were written after the Aeneid..."
-- Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges
I have no need for Borgesian textual games. I already live in a world of inverted referents; I was, after all, raised by The Simpsons.
My initial exposure to many cultural products has been through parody.
I saw Cape Feare before Cape Fear and The Shinning prior to The Shining.
My first thought from reading "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side" was not the Scarecrow mangling the Pythagorian theorem, but Homer Simpson's allusive imitation after stealing Henry Kissinger's glasses.
Worse still, I actually thought it was a joke that Bush had a son named George Bush Jr. Apparently, so did the writers.
The moral of the story is that if I start laughing at some bizarre or inopportune moment, such as the radio play of Falco's Rock Me Amadeus or the purchase of a can of Del Monte, The Simpsons has probably once again recoded and enriched my hesitant and rudimentary life.
-- Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges
I have no need for Borgesian textual games. I already live in a world of inverted referents; I was, after all, raised by The Simpsons.
My initial exposure to many cultural products has been through parody.
I saw Cape Feare before Cape Fear and The Shinning prior to The Shining.
My first thought from reading "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side" was not the Scarecrow mangling the Pythagorian theorem, but Homer Simpson's allusive imitation after stealing Henry Kissinger's glasses.
Worse still, I actually thought it was a joke that Bush had a son named George Bush Jr. Apparently, so did the writers.
The moral of the story is that if I start laughing at some bizarre or inopportune moment, such as the radio play of Falco's Rock Me Amadeus or the purchase of a can of Del Monte, The Simpsons has probably once again recoded and enriched my hesitant and rudimentary life.
posted by d l wright at 2/14/2007 07:41:00 PM
4 Comments:
It's too bad that The Simpsons is only a shell of what it once was. But you point out the precise reason why it can no longer have that sort of meaning.
They've already done almost everything that they're capable of doing within the context of the show. And with as many episodes as there are, even when they do something interesting it ultimately ends up referencing itself.
The Simpsons is almost like Borges library. Perhaps there will one day be an episode that enacts the perfect method for making an episode.
i saw the South Park You Got Served before the real You Got Served.
i never saw a gay till homerphobia.
I heard the episode on last Sunday was pretty good and involved Bart going to the only state that would allow a 10 year old to get married... Utah.
"Only one wife? What are you, gay?"
a Simpson parody > a South Park parody
and I think Tim Hardaway needs to see Homerphobia :(
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