Life According to The Simpsons

In a recent essay about pop culture references in TV comedy, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote about “The Simpsons,” the longest running animated show of all time. In discussing the episode “Krusty Gets Kancelled,” Seitz wrote “if it were a poem, it would need to have nearly as many footnotes as “The Waste Land”.” Indeed, my childhood experience was often filtered through the cultural “footnotes” that “The Simpsons” provided, and my primary source for learning about many public figures was America’s yellow family. For example, I recently read a piece written by Tom Wolfe. The first thing I thought when I read his name was “oh yeah, he was on a Simpsons episode!” In the episode, he was hosting the Word loaf festival along with Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Frazen (I’m still not sure who they all are). I suppose I felt smart just for knowing the name.

But, “The Simpsons” has provided me with more than just an inflated ego. Many times throughout my life, I have come across moments that have perfectly mirrored an incident on an episode of my favorite TV show. Of course, I immediately have to point out the connection, an impulse that generally receives quizzical looks from friends and family. When I bring up these mediated epiphanies, my mom often says, while rolling her eyes, “life according to ‘The Simpsons,’” but I can’t help it. To know that someone out there must be experiencing the same things I’m going through and coming out the other side with nothing but laughter is encouraging. The fact that that man happens to be the brilliant Matt Groening is even more exciting. Is Seitz’ T.S. Elliot comparison accurate? I think so.