The Simpsons 4 Essay, Research Paper

Is The Simpons A Bad Influence On Children?

For several years now, I have been watching a great deal of television and seen the affects it has had on people. The Simpsons is a show that I have grown up watching and enjoying. It ranks as the number one television program for viewers under eighteen years of age. However, the ideals that The Simpsons convey are not always wholesome, sometimes not even in good taste, but they do present a realistic way of looking at life. So is it really inevitable that The Simpsons is affecting children?

Most sitcoms or television shows present a family with a healthy environment, money, and a father with a popular job, such as an accountant or lawyer. The Simpsons, however, portray their characters more like everyday citizens in America. The writer chose to have an overweight, balding man named Homer who works in a power plant as the father. Marge, the mother, is a normal housewife with a blue, beehive hairdo, stressing over the little things in life. Their children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, are three obnoxious spiky haired children who do not get all the riches and fancies that most children get. For these reasons, I enjoy the show, because the Simpsons represent the typical family who love each other and drive each other crazy. Unlike the usual, wealthy family living in a $300 000 house. The Simpsons do send off a negative vibe, but their realistic lifestyle allows children to relate with them.

I would definitely have to agree that the show is not in good taste. In fact, it is often viewed as one of the largest threats to Christianity. For example, the Simpson family goes to church on a regular basis, but Bart and Homer loath it, and poke fun at the religion. The Simpsons is not just an enemy towards Christianity, though. Hinduism is constantly joked about with an East Indian, Kwik-E-Mart clerk named Apu. I agree that some of the cracks about Apu and his stereotype are rude, but it is best to look at it at a more realistic point of view. Every time a crack about Apu is made, everyone in the audience laughs, even though they know it is obnoxious, they still laugh. So I feel it is hypocritical for adults to want to ban the show, because they all find it humourous, just as children do.

When I was younger, some of my friends were not allowed to watch the show, which made me very upset because I had nobody to talk to about it. Their parents felt it was a bad influence on them, just as many parents feel the same way now. As the popularity of the show grows, so do parents fears. To their horror, Bart Simpson is a teenage role model, and used to be mine as well, when I was younger.

The Simpsons affects kids, just as anything around them will. Perhaps people fear The Simpsons because they can see a little of The Simpsons in themselves. We all have inner child s trying to get out that behave just like Bart. We all pull a Homer sometimes. The show does not make us do it, it just happens. If this world did not have The Simpsons, children would behave in the same manner, they just might not laugh quite as much.