Turner - Planet Simpson: how a cartoon masterpiece documented an era and defined a generation

Praise for Planet Simpson

A furiously intelligent volume that almost reinvents the art of comedy criticism. Turner quotes from the show with the diligence of a Jesuit scholar, but what lifts him above the Python-quoting pub bore is his staggering ability to contextualize every slice of hilarious dialogue through the prism of psychoanalysis, sociology, economics and rock n roll.

Time Out

Turner has written the definitive Simpsons study. He shows both a lightness of touch suitable to his subject and the intellectual rigour to grasp its vast purview.

The Gazette

Planet Simpson is one of the more fascinating and entertaining works Ive read. Steven Galloway in

The Globe and Mail

Smart and funny, Turner is clearly one of the converted, and he writes with fitting enthusiasm for his subject while working in seemly references to cultural theory and TV-insider politics. His book is just the thing for fellow fans, and for anyone interested in how pop phenomena come to be.

The Hollywood Reporter

A brilliant critique of western culture from the mid-90s to the present. Turner understands pop culture in a way few others of his generation have been able to articulate thus far.

The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)

This opus has all the elements to make a Simpsons fan groan happily, like Homer tucking into an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Ottawa Citizen

Its tough to imagine a Simpsons watcher who wouldnt be pleased with this book. Nobody else has managed to synthesize so much thoughtful analysis of the show (or maybe any TV program) before.

The Georgia Straight

Theres a lot to like in this book. Turner provides us with useful background, detailed readings of specific episodes and worthwhile analysis both about the show and its relevance for the world beyond the show.

Winnipeg Free Press

[Turners] examination is a broad-minded analysis that connects the television show to some of the most pressing issues in contemporary life, with chapters on topics ranging from the importance of family and God, the dispiriting alienation of the workplace, the role of the individual in society, the life and death of idealism and the political implications of U.S. foreign policy.

Alberta Views

The Calgary-based writer has boldly defied the impossibility of truly conveying why The Simpsons is not just the greatest TV show ever, butin my opinion the greatest thing ever, by writing a book that attempts to do just that.

Toronto Star

A compendium of the trends and ideas that became gospel for a generation.

Ottawa Citizen

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7 SHORT PARAGRAPHS ABOUT PLANET SIMPSON

A FEW TIMES IN MY LIFE Ive met people who are pop cultural blanks. They look just like you and me, except their parents were missionaries or hippies and they spent that formative and most important part of their livesyears when they ought to have been undergoing thousands of hours of unmonitored TV viewingdoing something else instead, like whittling or staring at clouds or exercising. [Insert a brisk shudder here.] I mention this because the common trait these people share is that if they could have added one pop culture event to their formative years, they wish they could have watched The Simpsons. Always. To paraphrase their common snivelling: Who the hell is Troy McClure?

Its hard for me to imagine life without The Simpsonsit would be, if nothing else, a drab place indeed. Imagine a life without

• Apus affair with the Squishee Lady

• Beloved cigarette spokesmascot, Menthol Moose

• Patty and Selma wondering why Maggie hasnt touched her Manwich

• Malibu Stacys lunar rover

• Mr. Burnss loafers (Former gophers)

• Ralph Wiggum accidentally viewing porn (Everybodys hugging.)

• Anything to do with Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel

• Lard Lad

• The Monorail

• Mr. Sparkle

• Marges gambling addiction

• Bart saying that actually knowing the answers on a test was like a whole different kind of cheating.

Chris Turner writes about Simpsons parties in Kingston, Ontario in the early 1990s. I used to go to the same kind of parties in the Bay Area and they were loads of fun. Traffic on the 280 from Palo Alto into San Francisco on Thursday nights was always a bit heavier, and the feeling of reuniting with your pack at ones bar of choice felt to me much like what a cocker spaniel must feel after being removed from a transport cage and being reunited with the family after a ten-hour flight in the luggage hold. In the early 1990s, irony had yet to conquer and devour Western culture. Trailblazers had to find pale comfort amid tiny cliques of the converted who simply knew which way the wind was blowingas well as the location of Springfields perpetual tire fire. But, as with most avant-garde cliques, early Simpsons fans found comfort in beer, powerless gatherings in basement suites and Moes-Tavern-like pubs, and through their collective, sometimes pot-induced, irony-free identification with Lenny and Carls wonderment at just what, exactly, made the donut rack rotate in the Springfield nuclear power plants cafeteria.

The Simpsons have, of course, evolved into a shorthand for several generations in need of collapsing baffling modern-day situations into powerful folkloric parallels. Said Milhouses father to Homer after separating from Milhouses mother: One day, your wife is making you your favorite meal. The next day, youre thawing a hot dog in a gas station sink. Or how about Barts admonishment to Lisa, squeamishly covering her eyes at the gory bits of a Space Mutant flick: If you dont watch the violence, youll never get desensitized to it. Or finally, Marge Simpsons astonishment that news broadcaster Kent Brockman is playing tennis on the Simpson familys new tennis court: I cant believe that Kent Brockman is playing tennis with us on our own tennis court!

In 1990-something I had lunch with a friend who was a former Simpsons writer. Her office was in a building known as the Simpsons Compound on the Fox lot in Los Angeles. The building resembled, if anything, the third-best two-storey motel in a place without motels, like Dar es Salaam or Volgograd. My friend told me that the building was accorded a special let them do their own thing privilege by Fox. Non-Simpsons staff on their bikes and golf carts stayed way clear. Back before reality TV and Google, people still didnt quite get the shows sensibility, and thought it had to come from some alien place where the inhabitants possessed either uncanny clairvoyance or time-travelling abilities.