CodfishCartographer posted:

Krusty being Jewish is usually treated fairly respectfully, if I remember right. Smithers being gay is pretty bad looking back on it, many times the joke is just “Smithers is attracted to men, isn’t that weird?” but luckily it’s mostly a background aspect to his character and not the sole defining trait. I suppose people probably could get mad about Luigi and the Klav Kalash guy but they’re fairly minor characters at best, and there are multiple jokes about just how stereotypical they are. (I think Luigi even calls himself “an old Italian stereotype” at some point?)

The only other stereotype that sticks out to me as blatantly as Apu is Willie. I guess you could say Cletus but lol

CodfishCartographer posted:

Has recent Simpsons been this right-leaning in its politics? I’ve always pictured the show as fairly liberal, but I haven’t seen hardly any of the episodes from the last ten or fifteen years so

Season 28 Episode 19 posted:

A softball match is being played to little athletic achievement between teams from the Indian Point and Springfield Nuclear Plants. After Homer Simpson collapses on the field, Mr. Burns and the other coach talk about how the market for nuclear energy will be lucrative forever and ever.

Mr. Burns heads right away to Yale University to endow a chair in nuclear plant management, only to learn that the entire student body is now made of "highly entitled wusses" from the Whiffenpoofs on down, and who follow left-wing views that appall Mr. Burns. He then finds out that running a university can earn him a lot of money from a member of the Skull and Bones society named Bourbon Verlander. Mr. Burns then cuts a deal with Bourbon and withdraws all of his financial support to Yale in order to set up his own branch of the for-profit university system.

Back at the power plant, Mr. Burns burns all of his Yale University memorabilia and tells Homer, Lenny and Carl about his new university. The teachers he chooses to run the university are the power plant workers.

Homer and the others start working as teachers, but Homer is not doing well with his students and Lisa Simpson (who was horrified that Homer became a professor mainly because he didn't take the responsibility of educating people seriously) offers him a DVD box set of inspirational teachers movies. After watching them, he gets better at teaching and Mr. Burns sells Homer to Bourbon.

Homer meets Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ken Jennings, Suze Orman, and Robert McKee, and sees them being introduced to a group of young female "students" who are actually life-like humanoid robots that will all get into Yale and earn "financial aid" that gets funneled directly to Bourbon.

Six months later, Homer ruins Bourbon's integration of the robots at Yale University with a microaggression that makes them all explode.

In the final scene, the teachers then start teaching Lisa, Marge, and Bart at the Simpson residence.

ExplodingSims posted:

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Simpsons was also the first primetime cartoon to have a gay kiss in it, in the episode with Harvey Firestein?

Drink-Mix Man posted:

You know what I think pisses me off most about the latest seasons of this show? It's not just that the jokes are lazy and the premise is tired, it's the loving smugness they seem to have developed in recent years like in that Lisa clip.

Obvious the season 10-20 years were a sharp decline in quality from the decade before, but when I catch those episodes I can sometimes still be amused by the fact the writers seemed to be getting sort of cynical and were obviously throwing dumb poo poo at the wall with the attitude of, "we're totally getting cancelled this year." It was more of a self-aware "yeah, this show is really getting bad, sorry!" Now it's... I'm not even sure how to describe it. They're not just incredibly boring and lazy, but also seem kind up their own rear end.

Drink-Mix Man posted:

You know what I think pisses me off most about the latest seasons of this show? It's not just that the jokes are lazy and the premise is tired, it's the loving smugness they seem to have developed in recent years like in that Lisa clip.

Obvious the season 10-20 years were a sharp decline in quality from the decade before, but when I catch those episodes I can sometimes still be amused by the fact the writers seemed to be getting sort of cynical and were obviously throwing dumb poo poo at the wall with the attitude of, "we're totally getting cancelled this year." It was more of a self-aware "yeah, this show is really getting bad, sorry!" Now it's... I'm not even sure how to describe it. They're not just incredibly boring and lazy, but also seem kind up their own rear end.

CodfishCartographer posted:

The whole scene was basically “stop complaining, snowflakes!!” I mean poo poo, Marge’s redone story specifically mentions cisgender and net neutrality, both of which are portrayed in somewhat mocking tones. It’s as though Marge (and thus the writers) are making fun of people who think nonstandard gender identity and people fighting for net neutrality are just being overly sensitive kids. Before starting, Marge even says that making something inoffensive is directly tied to removing the spirit and character from a story, as though a story can’t have those things without being offensive. And of course after the story is over, Lisa immediately calls out how such a story is boring and has no growth, as though any story that isn’t offensive means the characters can’t grow or be dynamic.

Has recent Simpsons been this right-leaning in its politics? I’ve always pictured the show as fairly liberal, but I haven’t seen hardly any of the episodes from the last ten or fifteen years so

Improbable Lobster posted:

Matt Groening is extremely liberal but I have no idea about the current showrunners.

Drink-Mix Man posted:

I love how in that clip Marge says "inoffensive and applauded." Like, okay, inoffensive is dubious but LOL at the idea people were "applauding" the Apu caricature in the 90s

khwarezm posted:

There was a character called Karl in the very early episodes of the show who was clearly gay that they wanted to bring back in season 14 when they had a whole episode revolving around gay people in the simpsons, but the voice actor declined since he thought the episode in question was just a bunch of hackneyed gay jokes compared to the previous one.

The Simpsons somehow went backwards. And it's not like Karl or John in Homer's Phobia were the most progressive depictions either, but it was still better.

E;


Oh yeah that was the actors name, and I think you're correct.

Damo posted:

ok i made the mistake of clicking a few video links in this thread and already my youtube account is filled with garbage simpsons video recommendations

how do i get to that page of youtube where you tell it to stop recommending you poo poo based on the specific videos you watched

Uncle Wemus posted:

Damo posted:

ok i made the mistake of clicking a few video links in this thread and already my youtube account is filled with garbage simpsons video recommendations

how do i get to that page of youtube where you tell it to stop recommending you poo poo based on the specific videos you watched

Damo posted:

ok i made the mistake of clicking a few video links in this thread and already my youtube account is filled with garbage simpsons video recommendations

how do i get to that page of youtube where you tell it to stop recommending you poo poo based on the specific videos you watched

Uncle Wemus posted:

SweetMercifulCrap! posted:

by applauded they meant that people really liked him, not applauding the Simpsons for having a "progressive" character or whatever you're thinking.

Alan_Shore posted:

Did anyone actually watch The Problem with Apu? The Indian comedians mention that The Simpsons have racist caricatures of everyone, but their problem was that there were no other Indians on American TV, only Apu, so he became the de facto standard of an Indian to many Americans. That's why they all had people quoting "thank you, come again" at them. Plus of course the guy doing it is white.

Drink-Mix Man posted:

I just saw a screen grab and I did LOL at the fact Apu's framed picture is signed, "Don't have a cow. -Apu"

Ein cooler Typ posted:

Is Mike Judge a racist for voicing Monsignor Martinez

CodfishCartographer posted:

Maybe it's now lots of writers who grew up watching the show, and are smug that they're talented enough to write for their favorite show? Idk I'm just speculating and haven't bothered to look up the staff so I have no idea.

Uncle Wemus posted:

CJacobs posted:

This meme has always bothered me because in this clip Skinner is searching for Bart, who is cutting school, meaning in this example the children actually are wrong

CJacobs posted:

This meme has always bothered me because in this clip Skinner is searching for Bart, who is cutting school, meaning in this example the children actually are wrong