The roots of Cancel Culture in Deconstructionism (1990s)
Q: Was their anything positive about Deconstruction?
A: Yes. At its best, Deconstruction is “thinking outside the box” specifically formulated to confront the venerable monuments of Western thought ripe for transformation and evolution.
While at its best, Deconstruction challenges and contests the status quo conceptual order; at its worst, it gave social permission to “cancel culture.” Find a longer discussion of this HERE.
“The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life” (2001)
By Carl Matheson [reduced, revised and annotated for clarity]
From an anthology of philosophy papers, “The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer” by Open Court Publishing.
[Note from Bruce: This essay has some great insights about comedy, culture and teh roots of cancel culture. It’s a great example of the cold, toxic academic “deconstructionism” of the 1990s. This was the foundation for “cancel culture” 2008-ongoing. The anthology this comes from does a good job of explaining why and how deconstructionism occurred and hints at how it was going to evolve into even more robust, toxic “cancel culture.”
[If Fernwood2Nite and other references are new to you, they are on YouTube.]
[Most of what I deleted are cogent examples from Simpsons episodes used to support points the author makes.]
Disaffected youth #1: Here comes that cannonball guy. He’s cool.
Disaffected youth #2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Disaffected youth #1: I don’t even know anymore.
(“Homerpalooza,” season seven)
. . . I would like to concentrate on a deeper transformation: today’s comedies, at least most of them, are funny in different ways from those of decades past. In both texture and substance the comedy of The Simpsons and Seinfeld is worlds apart from the comedy of Leave it to Beaver and The Jack Benny Show. They are even vastly different from much more recent comedies, such as Mash and Maude.
First, today’s comedies tend to be highly quotational: many of today’s comedies essentially depend on the device of referring to or quoting other works of popular culture.
Second, they are hyper-ironic: the flavor of humor offered by today’s comedies is colder, based less on a shared sense of humanity than on a sense of world-weary cleverer-than-thou-ness.
In this essay I would like to explore the way in which The Simpsons uses both quotationalism and hyper-irony and relate these devices to contemporary currents.
Quotationalism [over-use of quotations from pop culture or intellectual works]
Television comedy has never completely foregone the pleasure of using pop culture as a straight-man. However, early instances of quotation tended to be opportunistic; they did not comprise the substance of the genre.
In sketch comedy, one would find occasional references to popular culture in Wayne and Shuster and Johnny Carson, but these references were really treated as just one more source of material.
The roots of quotationalism as a main source of material can be found in the early seventies with the two visionary comedies, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, which lampooned soap eras by being an ongoing soap opera, and Fernwood 2Night, which, as a small-budget talk show, took on small-budget talk shows.
Quotationalism then came much more to the attention of the general public between the mid-seventies and early eighties through Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman, and SCTV. Given the mimical abilities of its cast and its need for weekly material, the chief comedic device of SNL was parody, both of genres (the nightly news, television debates), particular television shows (I Love Lucy, Star Trek) and movies (Star Wars).
The type of quotationalism employed by Letterman was more abstract and less based on particular shows. Influenced by the much earlier absurdism of such hosts as Dave Garroway, Letterman immediately took the formulas of television and cinema beyond their logical conclusions (The Equalizer Guy, chimp cam, and spokesperson Larry “Bud” Melman).
However, it was SCTV that gathered together the various strains of quotationalism and synthesized them into a deeper, more complex, and more mysterious whole. Like Mary Hartman, and unlike SNL, it was an ongoing series with recurring characters such as Johnny Larue, Lola Heatherton and Bobby Bittman. However, unlike Mary Hartman, the ongoing series was about the workings of a television station. SCTV was a television show about the process of television. Through the years, the models upon which characters like Heatherton and Bittman were based vanished somewhat into the background, as Heatherton and Bittman started to breathe on their own, and therefore, came to occupy a shadowy space between real (fictional) characters and simulacra.
SCTV’s world came to intersect the real world as some of the archetypes portrayed (e.g. Jerry Lewis) were people in real life. Thus, SCTV eventually produced and depended upon patterns of inter-textuality and cross-referencing that were much more thoro-going and subtle than those of any program preceding it. The Simpsons was born, therefore, just as the use of pop culture quoting was maturing.
. . . The Simpsons was both plot and character driven. Earlier shows, even those containing ongoing characters, were largely sketch driven. Furthermore, unlike Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, which existed to parody soap operas, The Simpsons did not have the raison d’etre of parodying the family based comedies of which it was an instance. . . .
compare this linear and one-dimensional use of quotation for the purposes of parody with the pattern of quotation used in a very short passage from an episode from The Simpsons entitled “A Streetcar Named Marge.” In the episode, Marge is playing Blanche Dubois opposite Ned Flanders’ Stanley in Streetcar!, her community theatre’s musical version of the Tennessee Williams play. In need of day care for little Maggie, she sends Maggie to the Ayn Rand School for Tots, which is run by the director’s sister. Headmistress Sinclair, a strict disciplinarian and believer in infant self-reliance, confiscates all of the tots’ pacifiers which causes an enraged Maggie to lead her classmates in a highly organized reclamation mission, during which the theme from The Great Escape plays in the background. Having reacquired the pacifiers the group sits, arrayed in rows, making little sucking sounds, so that when Homer arrives to pick up Maggie, he is confronted with a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds.
. . . [Let’s] note these quotations are not used for the purpose of parody. Rather, they are allusions, designed to provide unspoken metaphorical elaboration and commentary about what is going on in the scene. The allusion to Ayn Rand underscores the ideology and personal rigidity of Headmistress Sinclair. The theme music from The Great Escape stresses the determination of Maggie and her cohorts. The allusion to The Birds communicates the threat of the hive-mind posed by many small beings working as one. By going outside of the text via these nearly instantaneous references, The Simpsons adds extra dimensionality to the plot with extreme economy.
Third, the most impressive feature of this pattern of allusion is its pace and density. This feature has grown more common as the series matured. Early episodes, for instance the one in which Bart saws the head off the town’s statue of Jebediah Springfield, are surprisingly free of quotation. Later episodes derive much of their manic comic energy from their rapid-fire sequence of allusions. This density of allusion is perhaps what sets The Simpsons most apart from any show preceding it.
. . . detractors of the show miss a great deal of its humor, if they fail to realize its pattern of quotations is an absolutely essential vehicle for developing character and for setting tone. Since detractors are usually not huge fans of popular culture to begin with, they will be reluctant to admit they are missing something significant. Oh well. It is difficult to explain color to a blind man, especially if he won’t listen.
For those who enjoy connecting the quotational dots, they enjoy their task all the more for its exclusivity. There is no joke like an in-joke: the fact many people don’t get The Simpsons might very well make the show both funnier and better to those who do.
Hyper-Ironism and The Moral Agenda:
Without the smart-ass, comedy itself would be impossible. I subscribe to the thesis all comedy is fundamentally cruel. . . . At least, one has to admit comedy has always relied upon the joys to be derived from making fun of others.
Usually cruelty was employed for a positive social purpose. In the sanctimonious M*A*S*H*, Hawkeye and the gang were simply joking to “dull the pain of a world gone mad.” The butts of their jokes, such as Major Frank Burns, symbolized threats to the liberal values the show perpetually attempted to reinforce in the souls of its late twentieth-century viewers. In Leave it To Beaver, the link between humor and the instillation of family values is didactically obvious.
A very few shows, most notably Seinfeld, totally eschew any moral agenda. Seinfeld’s ability to maintain a devoted audience in spite of a cast of shallow and petty characters engaged in equally petty and shallow acts, is miraculous.
. . . Given we have various evidence, some of which leads us towards, others away, from the claim The Simpsons is committed to caring, liberal family values, what should we conclude? . . .
. . . all I need for my purposes here is the relatively uncontroversial claim [deconstruction] views such as these [omitted here] are now in circulation to an unprecedented extent. We are surrounded by a pervasive crisis of authority in the fields of art, science, philosophy, religion and morality. [The shattering of conventional norms, consensus reality, is present now] in a way unheard of in earlier generations.
Let’s get back to The Simpsons. We should ask this: if the crisis I described were as pervasive as I believe it to be, how might it be reflected generally in popular culture, and specifically in comedy? . . .
The idea quotationalism in Simpsons reflects “something in the air” is confirmed by the stunning ever-presence of historical appropriation throughout popular culture. Cars like the new Volkswagen Beetle and the PT Cruiser quote bygone days; factories simply can’t make enough of them. In architecture, New Urbanist housing developments try to re-create the feel of small towns of decades ago. They have proven so popular only the very wealthy can buy homes in them. The musical world is a hodgepodge of quotations of styles, where often the original music being quoted is simply sampled and re-processed. [The element of nostalgia should also be mentioned here, the yearning for reminders of a simpler life and times]. . . .
The Simpsons’ connection with the crisis in authority requires us to look to something else. At this point I return to the original question of this section: does The Simpsons use its humor to promote a moral agenda? My answer to the question is this: The Simpsons does not promote anything, because its humor works by putting forward positions only in order to undercut them.
Furthermore, this process of undercutting runs so deeply, we cannot regard the show as merely cynical; it manages to undercut its cynicism too. This constant process of under-cutting is what I mean by “hyper-irony” [irony on steroids].
Consider “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield,” an episode from the show’s seventh season. . . . At first glance, the episode seems like another case of the show’s reaffirmation of family values: after all, Marge chooses family over status. What could be more hollow than status among a bunch of shallow inhuman snobs? . . .
I wonder, given a crisis of authority, if hyper-irony isn’t the most suitable form of comedy now. . . . One way of looking at all of these transitions is, with the abandoning of [historical sequence in art, history, etc. e came into a time of “everything together and all at once”].
[How can males cope?] Even if there is no ultimate truth (or method for arriving at it). I can still show my superiority over you by demonstrating my understanding of the intellectual rules by which things operate, better than you can.
[Again: I can still show my superiority over you by demonstrating my knowing the pop culture allusions which makes The Simpsons tick better than you can. It’s Trivial Pursuit played on levels of pop culture and the intellect.]
[In the end, no one opinion is ultimately superior; yet, I can at least show myself to be in a superior position [because when watching the Simpsons, I can win at trivial pursuit identify more of the pop culture allusions, than you can].
. . . Comedy can be used to attack anybody at all who thinks he or she has any sort of certain handle on any major cultural question. Comedy of this kind, does not point to or hint at a better, kinder, gentle future or viewpoint. Comedy of this kind intends to “take down” a speaker. It has no interest in replacing the speaker’s views with a better way of looking at things.
The mere pleasure of the attack; and perhaps, the sense of momentary superiority, are its only goals. [We laugh, yet again we are laughing at cruelty. No position of higher moral ground is hinted at. Much stand-up comedy displays this nihilism. This is what makes Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm so difficult for me to watch now. I’m too sensitive to the cruelty and lack of an any alternative to the endless cruelty].
The Simpsons revels in the attack. It treats nearly everything as a target, every stereotypical character, every foible, and every institution. It plays games of one-upmanship with its audience members. It challenges them to identify the avalanche of allusions it throws down to them. Then as “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield” illustrates, it refrains from taking [or promoting any healthier] position of its own.
. . .
I don’t mean to argue the makers of The Simpsons intend the show primarily as a theatre of cruelty. . . Rather, I argue, as a comedy, its goal is to be funny, and we should read it in a way that maximizes its capability to be funny. When we interpret it as a wacky but earnest endorsement of family values, we read it in a way that hamstrings its comedic potential. When we understand it as a show built upon the twin pillars of misanthropic humor and oh-so-clever intellectual one-upmanship, we maximize its comedic potential by paying attention to the features of the show making us laugh. We also provide a vital function for the high degree of pop culture quotes in the show. As a bonus, we tie the show into a dominant trend of thought in the twentieth century [what became cancel culture, the down side of what happens when each young person becomes their own authority, absent any deepest, innermost healthy internal values; and, uneducated in interpersonal decency.]
If the heart-warming family moments don’t contribute to the show’s comedic potential, why are they there at all? . . . The Simpsons’ use of heart-warming family endings should be seen as its attempt to paper over [make less painful the cruel, mediocre, unable-to-transform or evolve world the Simpsons live in, reflecting our own world.]
I hope I have shown pop culture quotes and hyper-irony are prevalent, inter-dependent, and jointly responsible for the way in which the humor in The Simpsons works. The picture I have painted of The Simpsons is a bleak one. Even tho funny at the top level, I have characterized [the mindset behind] its humor as negative, a humor of cruelty and condescension . . .
Finally, an important part of the picture I have so far not mentioned. The Simpsons, consisting of:
- a not-as-bright version of the Freudian id for a father,
- a sociopathic son,
- a prissy daughter, and
- a fairly dull but innocuous mother
…is a family whose members love each other. We love them. Despite the fact the show strips away any semblance of value, despite the fact week after week it offers us little comfort, it still manages to convey the raw power of the . . . love human beings have for other human beings. It makes us play along by loving these flickering bits of paint on celluloid who live in a flickering hollow world. Now that’s comedy entertainment.
© Carl Matheson & Open Court Publishing 2001.
An excerpt from “The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer”
FULL TEXT: https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/other/special/philosophy.html
