Dw. Dunphy On… “The Simpsons”
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 by Dw. Dunphy
Okay, who hasn’t thought America’s favorite family has jumped the shark by now? Even with the success of last year’s movie (which I found quite funny) still fresh in the audience’s mind, the actual show has become something not so much unfunny as it is unfriendly.
Allow me to back up here. This assertion has been going on for a decade now, ever since a particularly harsh mean streak started to creep up on good old dullard Homer Simpson. His callous nature and general ignorance to all but his own personal needs cataloged deaths, a desire to get a friend back off the wagon ’cause he needed a drinking buddy, framing his wife for a DUI to save his own ass, and many a faux pas resulting in the viewing public crowning the character “Jerk-Ass Homer.” If there was an upside, it was that the rest of the characters seemed to be coping, uh, in character. The other saving grace was that, often, the show was still funny and still, dare I say it, human. As if to acknowledge that the audience’s statement was heard loud and clear, the term “Jerk-Ass Homer” started working itself into the scripts.
But now, in its millionth season on the air, all the characters are becoming jerk-ass. Homer dreams of suffocating his father, abandoning his kids, and shacking up with a rack of meat in a motel room. Marge also dreams of escape while attempting to live vicariously through her kids. Those kids, Bart and Lisa, are exhibiting less of a sibling rivalry and more of an ingrained hate for each other, and where the show once balanced the absurdities of real, mundane life with the occasional flashes of cartoonishness, now it is, inside and out, a cartoon.
Popularity: 4% [?]



The trend in non-fiction literature as of late has been to title books with a snappy, concise name and then attach an absurd, ridiculously long subtitle, just to be clear on exactly what the author’s intentions were. So then, if this was my book, my subtitle would be: No, It Really Isn’t Like Throwing A Poodle In The Pitbull Cage, The New Album Just Ain’t That Good.
Katie Couric is sexy. I’ll give you all a moment to digest that.
A couple weeks ago, my colleague Jon Cummings posted his opinions on Keith Olbermann’s current Bizarro-world rantings, exhibiting a vehemence seldom seen from the supposed liberal left. Jon rightly claimed that Olbermann’s spasms were frighteningly right-like and as over-the-top as Bill O’Reilly. At the same time, he said that the underlying sentiment of anger at President Bush, his penchant for being so out of touch with the very country he runs, and his patronizing stabs at letting the little folk
Actually, this column is titled “De-evolution, or Long Distance Pissing on the Moon,” but I didn’t think that would be the most genteel headline, so I waffled.
It’s May 15 as I write.
Sound ridiculous? Or does it sound like the obvious conclusion for an industry that continues to lose money and customer patronage, seeking to cut away anything that doesn’t promote profit — album tracks that may appeal to a creative sense but can’t be capitalized upon, extra production costs inherent in those tracks, and design, packaging, and promotion of a product the public only wants 10 percent of. Witness the next music-industry model circa 2010: the business model of 1961. A label executive now sees his competition focused solely on bankrolling hits, not album sides or expensive packaging, and has to mull over whether it’s better business-wise to chop his staff in half or chop his label’s output in half, retaining the profitable side for himself. Of course the second option is better. He follows suit, and the business model we know today ceases to exist.
I always get a little thrill when Danny Elfman decides to step back in front of the microphone or, more bluntly, when Tim Burton decides to let Danny Elfman step back in front of the microphone. His last actual studio recording with a band was 1994’s ill-fated Boingo, an attempt to drag wacky and macabre party rockers Oingo Boingo into the ’90s, yet the dire and very pointed rock sound of the album accomplished two unwanted things: it alienated the original fans who wanted the music to be more fun and less funereal, and it failed to attract new fans thanks to its alignment with the moody, grungy times. After a live farewell concert, documented on a final band release, Elfman and longtime collaborator Steve Bartek went back to the scoring stage.
Depending on who you ask, Janet Jackson may not actually be in need of fixing. Her latest album,
The album also continues a disturbing trend with Miss Jackson where a real spark of excitement, inspiration or fun is replaced by a demented sexuality feeding off of shock. She may attempt to project empowerment, but all she seems to reveal is that she can’t be anything in her creative world other than some contented plaything or, even worse, a little kid that likes to shout out the dirtiest words she knows because it makes the adults in the room quake. It was that perverse acting-out that ruined The Velvet Rope. The fans rejected it and she attempted some poppier fare afterward. Seems that she’s treading into old, shallow waters once again. The digital workout of famed producer Jermaine Dupri can’t save her from the same old schtick.
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