The Simpsons by the Data
toddwschneider.com
toddwschneider.com
Similar if Lenny and Carl's roles were reversed. The Simpsons would be slammed for making the black guy the dumber one.
It's simply safer to make it so white (well, yellow in The Simpsons universe...) males are the ones who are dumb, impulsive, try out hare-brained schemes, and so on, and since it is out of those things that most of the comedy arises, those characters are going to get the most words.
Then again, maybe it's a weird age demographic thing. Cause it seems like quite a few shows aimed at adults tend to make the male characters the dumb ones (like The Simpsons and Family Guy), but then a few more shows aimed at kids will let the female characters be the idiots (like say, Dexter's Laboratory).
Or if you want an example where both parents are dumb, any of Butch Hartman's shows seem to quality. The Fairly Odd Parents has both of the Timmy Turner's parents being about as dumb as Homer Simpson, and Danny Phantom could be similar in how it portrayed Danny's parents.
The Simpsons is probably one of the tamest, least hostile television shows I can imagine at this point. Comparing The Simpsons to the rest of TV, without bringing the broader premium cable, internet and subscriber systems into the mix, The Simpsons displays fairly mild jabs at so many tropes, and usually does so in ways that are at least a little more interesting than the rest of TV.
Beyond all of this, Matt Groening is fairly progressive in his humor. And even though, he's long since had much direct influence on the content of the show, his initial creativity still brought forward more unique themes in the 90's than what was previously common at that time. So many topics found a voice in The Simpsons' animation than ever before, and previously simply had no voice at all.
At this point, I'm pretty fatigued at this endless death march of character assassination wherever character may be found.
People who constantly look for a fight in anything at this point instantly lose my respect.
There is a gender imbalance in The Simpsons. There's also a gender imbalance in film (1). That doesn't indicate ill-intent but it may be reflective of society and media as a whole.
1. The Simpsons, as a microcosm (an individual show among a broad selection of shows) is not required to adhere to distributions and averages or promote any particular reality. To point out that it deviates from a pre-supposed preference for "normal" represents a needling criticism of an invalid detail.
2. As a property of a larger organization, and indeed The World At Large, the show is an individual offering available within a selection of many other offerings that cater to a broad array of tastes and preferences. That it's being attacked for "not being average and normalized" seems to be part of an effort silence anything which is not gruel.
3. In what way does the enduring popularity of a single show, one that has outlasted so many others, reflect poorly on society? Shows like The Simpsons do well, not because of artificial constraints preserved by some gender bias conspiracy. That the authors are male for THIS show, and that males write male characters well, is not a symbol of malevolence, when there were thousands of other shows which had just as much budget and opportunity, and have aged even worse than The Simpsons, despite having perhaps more preferable themes that cater to a different audience.
4. Why not shine a light on the horrific gender bias of other shows? If we're picking out targets, I have my own. Are those also perfectly fair, valid and sensible? Want to hear them?
It is fair to say though, that there are more movies that fail the bechdel test¹ than there should be. If you compare it to the reverse of the bechdel test you can see there is a bias so large, it can't be founded in the preference of movie viewers alone.
I believe very much that everyone falls prey to biases, stereotypes or even outside factors like a possible gender imbalance in voice acting. I would not criticize anyone for this, because if you fall prey to something it is never ill intend. I do however also believe that these biases are harmful to society at large and in many cases could be easily avoided by more awareness of content creators.
I'm not against stereotypes, they are even valuable to get a story across, but you should be aware of how you are utilizing them.
The Bechdel test can be failed by a movie which simply only had one woman in it, or was about a genderless robot, or was mostly about a heterosexual romance, or any number of other possibilities that have nothing to do with misogyny or any other form of gender bias.
It is however very relevant when half of all movies have no real female characters in it, while something like 95% do have strong male characters in them. It's really sad when disneys "Frozen" becomes the positive outlier.
And citing it (in my other post) doesn't mean that I consider that some specific series "must" be male or female dominated, it's just an interesting tidbit. Its meaning would be even clearer if the similar statistics would be made on other works too.
I personally see it as an explanation as why I more responded to the Simpsons than my girlfriends, who were less interested. At least I remember more stories where Lisa turned out to be much smarter than anybody else there, so that statistics is not everything, but it's interesting nevertheless.
Such as? Can you please share your observations, for us other readers to see if we can agree that they actually exist, and if they do, if they are actually as "charged" as you seem to experience them?
Not exactly sure why the author chose it, true "belief" or just provocation, tho.
"a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family" and also
"a society or community organized on patriarchal lines."
and Homer really has the most words in the series, and that fact can be summarized with that word. The word was used in the lede, which is good to be short. Why is that a "provocation" to anybody? And how is it "non-sensical" and why and by whom is it considered a "buzzword"?
These words have acquired specific meanings in contexts like these that carry other connotations than the mere dictionary definition.
In feminism patriarchy is not just about familial structures, it's about power and privilege. It's not about dominance in the metaphorical sense (Homer dominates the show by having more lines) but about social struggle (men dominate the show by minoritizing women).
Yes, this is nonsense, but that's the context in which pop-sociology articles (anywhere from universities to popular websites) exist these days. Whether the author intended the article to be understood that way is another question, but I think it's fair to think that the article might be intended to be read this way.
Yes, that is the point of these sorts of conversations: to blow your mind. That's where bias lives.
Isolation on all sides is really all that's derived from exercises like this. Pointless braying on and on. Have fun with that.
> Isolation on all sides is really all that's derived from exercises like this.
Helping fellow humans participate more fully in society is the opposite of isolation.
"Great, meaning large or immense!"
"We use it in the pejorative sense!"
Not only has it been happening for years, Simpsons writers have already mined the comic self-seriousness of self-appointed "helpers" who think it's a problem...
I think it says more about our society at large than it does about the Simpsons, anyway.
Interesting to read this. I agree, but I do remember when The Simpsons was first shown on local Australian TV 25+ years ago, there was a massive backlash from conservative groups that the show was a den of iniquity. Bart for example, was touted as coercing kids to talk back to their parents and even (gasp) responsible for a new generation of kids calling their fathers by their first name. Homer was castigated for being a bad role model parent/human being.
If memory serves me correctly, it was even discussed in parliament here when they considered banning it from local TV stations. How times have changed.
So it's possible that the imbalance in "words spoken" can be partly laid down to a conscious decision that "it's just funnier that way."
Picking genders to be "the good ones" or "the bad ones" is lazy writing, no matter which side it ends up flattering.
I believe this comes from two reasons:
- We are more inclined to believe men try and do dumb stuff. And we're more receptive, culturally, to men having "bad traits".
- TV's main demographic is women. Therefore, the "relatable character" ends up being a woman.
[EDIT] Why is the parent being downvoted? The imbalance may be bad, and the first step in fighting it is to understand why it happens.
But, there is one thing in TV that is totally men dominated. Sports.
I'm not an expert on the matter, but it's what I've read somewhere.
Funilly, I don't know how the demographics for News Channel are, but I'd expect it to be pretty even.
Only one.
Women are wonderful effect.
Everyone is flawed on that show, even ol' Painty Can Ned.
Most of the male (and female) characters are ridiculous, because the show is fundamentally about ridiculous people. But that's not the only kind of character they have.
Smithers in the archetypical yes-man.
Dr. Hibbert isn't so much a stereotype as much as a parody of Dr Huxtable.
I'd say, totally superior, this was in 2000:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_to_the_Future
"Lisa has become the (first female) President of the United States and tries to get the country out of financial trouble."
And I don't consider that "morality" was the major aspect of Lisa's superiority.
When the plot is about Home and Bart, the other two play counterpoint. But the opposite is true. Homer just ends up getting the main role so often that we assume that to be the default state of the universe.
Which is just how it goes. It's unfortunate but you can't strike a 50/50 balance. Even for side-characters written as female in the script, they're going to become male during production because you don't have female voice actresses who can make a "different" voice; it would just sound like Lisa or Marge. Really only Bart's voice actress can do it (she does Nelson, too, who sounds very different).
They're not for everyone, and the voices are still mechanical, but I've become a huge fan of English Vocaloid, especially Gumi.
Take Tara Strong. Sure, lots of her voices sound a little similar (you might hear Timmy Turner, then hear the girl in Batman, and think "oh yeah, they do sound similar" once you knew they were the same voice). But she can definitely "transform" her voice.
The male voice actors on The Simpsons have incredibly transformative voices, which I think comes from lots of practice in the industry. The first time I saw a chart of all the voices for each character they play, I couldn't believe it. After paying very VERY close attention, I can kind of hear Mr. Burns in Moe, but just barely.
Edit: he also did a made-for-YouTube miniseries wherein he re-enacts actual transcripts from the Nixon White House tapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9HtoWea72A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Simpsons_cast_memb...
In no way does it look like the cast is "mostly male", or that the women are cast into single roles.
The Simpson's were kind of famous for Bart being voiced by a woman, meaning the Simpson family has 3:1 Female:Male voice actor ratio.
Every TV show is a creation of a team. That team has certain members. You have to use these people. Absent special circumstances, such as one actor wanting to play at being a director or do a solo piece (Alan Alda, MASH) the work has to be balanced across the cast. Sometimes this is even dictated by contract. Recent seasons of TheBigBangTheory seem to follow contract math regarding screen time. Many episodes seem to alternate between male and female groupings. Friends did this, but TBBT seems more mathematical. One could probably reverse-engineer everyone's contracts from screen time alone.
So perhaps TheSimpsons' gender bias is based on the writers creating characters for the voice actors they have available, a cast setup long ago. Maybe they even are writing characters specifically for voices created by that cast. That would also create a gender bias.
That said, it can be hard to appreciate just how excellent it was for its time, since it changed the way a lot of series to follow write their humor.
My sarcasm detector is exploding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNGXoHQ0mps
It took a few viewings before I understood there were also jokes at a deeper level, but at first blush it's the anti-Simpsons.
"Near as I can tell, all of popular culture and most of the English language gets taken over sometime in the early nineties by something called The Simpsons. I know this because nobody from that time or later seems to be able to put a sentence together without quoting them, then everybody giggles like idiots, and if I ask them to explain, all anybody ever does is laugh and ask me a condescending question about Bananarama!" -- Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard
I had seen some of the shorts on the Tracey Ullman Show and the Butterfinger ads. I knew enough to make sure to watch "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" when it first aired.
It really was perfect timing.
"If we look at the supporting cast, the 14 most prominent characters are all male before we get to the first woman, Mrs. Krabappel, and only 5 of the top 50 supporting cast members are women.
Women account for 25% of the dialogue on The Simpsons, including Marge and Lisa, two of the show’s main characters. If we remove the Simpson nuclear family, things look even more lopsided: women account for less than 10% of the supporting cast’s dialogue.
A look at the show’s list of writers reveals that 9 of the top 10 writers are male."
Edit: Not so sure about my conclusions, as it seems that women made up about ~40% of the US Labor Force by 1990 [0] That article doesn't go into women's roles/titles though.
[0] - http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2009/10/01/the-harried-life-o...
Americans and their political correctness, 'nuff said.
We detached this one from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12599045 and marked it off-topic.