The genre parody is certainly not a new ordeal but is definitely attached to the ideas of postmodernism, and most of us have at some point come across a genre parody in film or television. The early 2000s, for example, brought us the Scary Movie series, overflowing with parodies of the horror film genre in order to entertain and mock the codes we have all come to associate with horror. Also a notable example is This Is Spinal Tap (1984), that played off the documentary film and successfully breathed life into the mockumentary genre’s strategies that now plagues new media.

What is a genre parody though? To understand parody, we must first understand pastiche. Pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists (Wikipedia). Pastiche can be similar to paying homage to an earlier work or celebrating it. Parody employs the same strategy but instead the intention behind imitating is to mock or critique the content it is imitating, though there are exceptions that simply imitate for the sake of imitating. For this piece, however, I will focus on The Simpsons and its importance within genre parody.

In his book Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality, author Jonathan Gray “[examined] how audiences consume with a whole barrage of other images and structures learned from other items of media.” Gray’s analysis provides evidence that this is true by narrowing down three preexisting forms of media that the show critiques in its content—advertising, television news, and, the focus of this post, the “domesticom” genre.

The ‘domestic comedy’ is a category that was coined by Horace Newcomb but is also known as the family sitcom. The Simpsons is a perfect example of a commentary on this genre because it takes codes associated with it and reevaluates what they mean, inviting their audiences to decode a hundred different new meanings from the structure they have chosen to dismantle.

Like the sitcom, each episode of the The Simpsons is a self-contained narrative with a beginning, middle, and end—there is a catalyst that will set the action in motion or create chaos but at the end the natural order of things will be restored. In family sitcoms it seems problems within the family are always so easy to address or deal with, leaving the resolution to always be a peaceful one. Something terrible may have happened but it is never drastic enough to change the entire course of life for the characters.

But perhaps that mode of addressing the problem is not reflective of reality and this is where The Simpsons likes to question it—Bart, Homer, Lisa, Maggie, and Marge face altercations that may not always be fixable and sometimes downright ridiculous but never out of the realm of domestic life. And even when they are resolved they are not addressed in the same docile manner as the domestic comedy. They purposely challenge the structure of family and audiences can then question the authenticity of the ideologies that most family sitcoms present—like the myth of the ‘American Dream’ and the perfect family home. The relationships between the characters are not conventional ideas of sweet, loving siblings with parents that are representative of the ideal marriage between a man and a woman. Homer is this mess of a man who can’t quite seem to do much right but Marge somehow continues to say with him, Bart is a troubled youth who knows the principal’s office by heart and doesn’t have a strong suit in academics, and Lisa is presented as an often overly outspoken kid who refuses to conform. But despite their most unconventional characteristics, they still remain true to the idea that family love is unconditional, something they share above all else with the family sitcom.

The possibilities for analysis of the entire series may have no short end, in fact the list of meta references for this show keep growing but its success has certainly proven it to be worthy of its criticism/mockery of the family sitcom. So on that note and in true RHE 315 fashion, here’s a short video essay on The Simpsons.

 

“Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.“

In regards to the quote above, can the same be said in reverse?

 

Orient/oriental is an umbrella term that throws people of Asian descent into a neat little box with no further questions. The way we generalize people of certain skin color, ethnicity, nationality, and background has all to do with the norms established long before we learned what any of these things really meant. When Edward Said coined the term Orientalism, there was a sense of an US vs THEM mentality among society and its media that has been going on for hundreds of years—West vs. East. It’s prevalent in our daily lives, ingrained in our pop culture. How many times will we see white writers and directors take on projects that involve presenting an aspect of a certain culture to us before we begin to negate said content that ultimately doesn’t do the culture justice?

The perpetuated stereotypes presented by Western media for Asian men: sexual predators to white women, asexual/emasculated men, flamboyant villains, and Kung Fu masters.

The perpetuated stereotypes presented by Western media for Asian women: hypersexualized, the Lotus Blossom, the narrative of the white man saving the Asian woman during colonial and military history (aka China Doll), and the Dragon Lady (even if Lucy Liu looks like a badass).

                    

As much as we enjoy these characters sometimes (believe me, I love me some Kill Bill) it’s also a matter of being aware that these depictions aren’t as accurate as they could be. It’s just a lot more fun if we can see a culture from a more exotic perspective than a realistic one, isn’t it? White writers would never give you that. It’s the same reason cultural appropriation is a thing–we like the exotic appeal of things, not the true nature of them.

With race relations in the U.S. at an all-time controversial high, it’s safe to say that more and more people are questioning the status quo, asking why it’s still the same group that gets to decide what normal is. The reason this quote cannot be said in reverse is the same reason reverse-racism is not a real thing—who holds the power? If you’re not white you’re a minority, right? So the majority rules—literally. That’s not to say being a minority means you’re free of prejudice or don’t have the ability to push the same racist stereotypes but the shift in power would never be handed over to a minority group. In the grand scheme of things nothing really changes in the overall attitude of society if say a black person is prejudiced against a white person, white is till the norm therefore white remains in power despite whatever the black person does against them. But the problem with who gets to establish what the norm goes far back beyond what we see now.

When Europeans came to settle in North America, they came with a very narrow mindset of what was right and wrong—there were no other groups to tell them otherwise, besides the Native Americans and well that didn’t go down too well. Native Americans were seen as savages, uncivilized, heathens who didn’t know how to govern themselves. Europeans took over and decided that they knew what was best for this group of people. They established a norm just by believing it and enforcing it—because if we stop to think about it, every norm is but a social construct not a rule of nature. Race is a social construct that those same European settlers created when slavery became a “necessary evil” in their minds. To justify their treatment of African Americans they established this ideology that these people with darker skin color were destined to be inferior than them. All throughout slavery’s history, it was widely accepted as the white man’s duty to in some form or other save the black people because without them they wouldn’t know what to do with their poor, uneducated selves. When America was establishing itself as a nation, the more people came in the more diverse society became. With that diversity came conflict and if you open an American history book void of a white-washed perspective, you’re hard-pressed to find that a major non-white culture ever co-existed peacefully with the pre-established notions of race this country had. Racism has always been and remains to be about who holds the power which is why white has to this day remained the default for everything that matters, everything that’s “normal”.

 

I find it incredible that Hillary Clinton’s image can generate the same conversations now as it did then when she was the First Lady. There’s just that one big difference in the mix now: she wants to be our first female president. It’s difficult to agree that she has little control over her image in the public eye and the way she is portrayed in the media. Sure there will always be slip ups that she plays no part in, but I feel that given the amount of time she’s been in politics and the spotlight, it would be naive to assume she hasn’t accumulated at least some leverage to provide input on how people will see her. It only makes sense especially right now at such a crucial moment in her career. For some reason I have found it difficult to come across a good amount of anti-Hillary media when I’m surfing the web. Just about every major news outlet I follow on Facebook seems to favor her in every which way except for clearly stating so. The images I see that don’t put her in the best light are usually generated by users in the form of comments, memes, blog posts, etc. A lot of the positive coverage seems just as replayed and recycled as the article had suggested of news media back in the ’90s. So I guess we can say the narrative has been switched to play her up in the most favorable way possible and it’s pervasive across the internet. It’s constant and repetitive: this is what she stands for, this is what she’s doing for women’s rights, this is why she’s the favored candidate, this is why she’s more likely to win than her democratic opponent, and so on. It’s easy to see why people eventually buy into it, even more so now than possibly back then. The internet obviously amplifies this effect tenfold. Still, with the amount of scrutiny the candidates face today, there’s no doubt in my mind that she is fully aware her every move and word are being documented for the people of this country. Of course, she’s bound to step in the mud and no amount of control can stop the public from noticing. Who she surrounds herself with and who she chooses to advocate are also going to be scrutinized, either enhancing or diminishing her public image.  Which brings me to the forefront of her most recent debacles involving Madeleine Albright, Gloria Steinmen, and the issue of feminism.

The true nature of the generational gap between feminists wasn’t as apparent to most of us, I believe, until these two older women plastered it into our minds recently. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” The feminists of my generation did not take kindly to these words. It’s sexist to suggest a woman is only voting for Hillary based off gender. It’s also sexist to renounce those of us who might choose a different candidate who ISN’T a woman and suggest we meet Satan in the afterlife. Gloria Steinmen put her foot in her mouth when she implied young women were flocking to Bernie Sanders because that’s where the boys were at. Again, the feminists in my generation were not obliged to take that lightly. Many are outright unapologetic about the fact that Hillary just isn’t the candidate for them. But in all fairness one can see why these two women are so passionate about supporting their female ally, these women broke glass ceilings and have waited ages for this one crucial milestone. Even Hillary’s poll numbers show she’s gotten most of her female support from older women. Feminism to them growing up was in a lot of ways much different than the feminism we’re growing up in today. So while I may not agree with their words, I can understand why they chose to express them that way.