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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

>including all 30 seasons of The Simpsons;

Never thought I'd see the day when a Disney service would air the Simpsons. The idea of the simpsons airing on the disney channel back in the day would have been ridiculous. Seems so strange to go from being considered one of the most notorious shows around to being carried by Disney. The very antithesis of what it was when it started. Not sure what that says more about though, Disney or the Simpsons.

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I still remember growing up as a kid, my parents would constantly monitor the CRT to make sure I wasn't watching the Simpsons because it was "not for kids" :)

I haven't been following much of the show but it could also be the writers toned down the content as the show progressed through the years to the point where Disney wouldn't mind airing it? It could also just be them recognizing the pull the Simpson has on viewers and they're using it as the initial bait to attract subscribers but have it pulled once they have enough customers? Who knows, but either way I do agree this combination was one I would've never imagined as a kid.

It may be that the sway of the “Moral Majority” has lost its clout. When Ellen first came out as gay on her show it was a big deal in the 90s and Murphy Brown having a child out of wedlock was a talking point by the Vice President.

Now even cartoons aimed at kids show same sex couples (I can’t remember the name of the cartoon) and Disney and most corporations are ignoring them - including protest about an interracial couple.

You also have cartoons on Netflix and Hulu with full frontal nudity and graphic violence (decapitation, disembowelment, etc.)

I think what happened was the kids who weren’t allowed to watch The Simpsons, grew up, and realized the entire thing was silly, and they are the ones with kids now.

They've been displaced by a new moral majority. For example, the producers have decided to erase the Michael Jackson episode of The Simpsons from history. Now that the Right People are burning books, book burning is A-OK with the Simpsons crew.

The counter argument offered by the producers to this point is there’s a difference when the author(s) decide to make an edit. If you believe the accusations against Jackson it doesn’t seem unreasonable that living people may want to dissociate from him

Elaborate?

Just wait until they buy pornhub.com :)

Disney is not just Disney+. It's Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, ABC and many other delivery channels and insane amount of franchise. They can merge or create more channels over time. Whatever maximizes the profit.

They are even producing Black Mirror trough Endemol Shine (House of Tomorrow). Netflix just has the distribution rights.

To my understanding, it's widely considered that The Simpsons have not been a veritable satire (in the spirit of the first seasons) for the past 20+ years. With success it quickly became what it started out ridiculing; so Disney endorsing Simpsons is normal.

The Dead Homer Society's take on it is basically exactly that—the show became what it was satirizing. Throw in a little TV-embraces-criticism-and-makes-it-the-new-normal (cf. David Foster Wallace) and everything else got more like The Simpsons, too.

It looks a little ranty at first glance but ends up being pretty damn thorough and convincing. By season 8 or 9 the show was transitioning away from its old self, and past that it's not really delivering the same thing it was in seasons 1-7 at all, so if you were really into that the later seasons may not scratch the same itch (or itchy the same scratchy?).

https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/

I'm not sure if it was that one or not, I tried looking through it and couldn't find it, but I remember there was a good comparison between the joke setup and execution of old style simpsons and the later seasons that really put the difference between the two into perspective. I just remember it summing up all the things I disliked about the new Simpsons in a single joke that I'd never really been able to notice in detail until it was laid out like that.

> TV-embraces-criticism-and-makes-it-the-new-normal

That was the most chilling and realistic part of the black mirror episode from the first season... where the guy goes on this passionate rant against the reality show culture... and the reality show responds by saying how much they love that fire and passion, so they give him a reality show.

The Simpsons was never really that controversial was it? It's fairly family-friendly. Didn't have any bad language, almost zero sexuality, zero nudity, any violence is very cartoon, its satire is pretty gentle, plot-lines are usually wholesome in the end.

It totally was controversial in the beginning. It was considered worse than South Park or Family Guy are today. George H.W. Bush (the father) even made a statement that the American family should be "more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons." ("The Waltons" was a series about a wholesome family in Virginia surviving the Great Depression)

> George H.W. Bush (the father) even made a statement that the American family should be "more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons."

Yeah... I get that the plot is that the family in the show are chaotic.

But that doesn't mean that the show itself is controversial, does it? It's not advocating for being like the Simpsons are.

It's not now but is was 1990. The Simpsons and Married With Children were pretty much unlike anything else on TV at the time. The Cosby Show was pretty popular if that gives you a contrast.

I guess what people like Bush didn't like about it was that Homer was seen as stupid (and traditionally the father figure on shows was wise and could give good advice to his children) and that Bart was a troublemaker.

Father figures have been buffoons and families have been chaotic on TV for decades - the Flintstones back in the 60s for example.

What parents didn't like about it was it dealt with grown up themes, had grown up jokes, and covered grown up problems, but it was a cartoon, one of the first of it's kind on regular tv aimed at adults. It was a show for adults. Just because the show was probably clean enough to air on tv doesn't mean kids should be watching it.

On top of that all the characters are mildly annoying when their catch phrases are repeated ad nauseam by little kids.

The early episodes focused on Bart and glorified his delinquency. That was the primary moral panic surrounding the show.

To echo that it was the 90's, Bart Simpson says "Hell" in one of the earlier episodes - not even interesting these days, but there was a huge uproar over such indecent profanity, in a cartoon to boot! Also keep in mind that back then, cartoons were the purview of kids - (the thinking went) no self-respecting adult would watch cartoons. Thus, Simpsons had to pave the way for cartoons being aimed at mature audiences, and not just the Saturday morning kids slot.

> cartoons were the purview of kids - (the thinking went) no self-respecting adult would watch cartoons ... Simpsons had to pave the way for cartoons being aimed at mature audiences, and not just the Saturday morning kids slot.

This just isn't true - the Flintstones was prime-time back in 1960, shown at 8:30pm, exactly the same slot as the Simpsons. Fred and Wilma were shown in bed together. That was almost thirty years before the Simpsons.

> Bart Simpson says "Hell" in one of the earlier episodes

And Wilma said 'bollocks' in a Flintstones episode!

When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to watch it :S

It was at a time when cartoons that came even remotely close to dealing with serious subject matter was deemed to be an adult cartoon. It was a big deal at the time and a lot of the tropes and stuff in the Simpsons that seem tame and trope like today were originally from the Simpsons.

Also, before it was a full TV show, the characters were used in small scenes on ‘The Tracy Ullman Show’.

It’s main character is an incompetent drunken father who regularly strangles his son for annoying him.

It started out controversial and the success normalized it. Now we all just laugh at the kid being strangled.

I think says volumes about how our social norms have changed. Remember, today’s decision makers grew up on the Simpsons.

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