Interestingly, it is not only the Simpsons who are like this in their community and the entire town of Springfield can be seen as one mostly homogenous set of families all conforming to basically the same standards, expectations, and stereotypes regarding a normative family or marriage. The few exceptions to the rule are outcast, either indirectly or directly. For example, Barney and Moe, two characters that are unmarried men who engage in a host of despicable activities are often outcast by their community because they do not adhere to traditional modes of family behavior. Even more importantly, a non-native family, as depicted by the owner and operator of the local Quick-E-Mart gets an often interesting reception from the community because it brings different expectations of family and marriage from India.
The theory of cultural irreductability states that in spite of technological advances and other attempts at assimilation, certain cultures keep their distinctiveness. This is most apparent in the case of Apu and his family from India in the show and their difference is glaringly apparent in the white-bread town of Springfield where everything is so “normal” it is actually a parody of small-town America. It is worth noting that in no single episode (that I can recall, at least) does Apu’s wife appear in town by herself without her husband with her. Even more significant is the fact that when she is sketched into the show, if she is not right by her husband’s side, she is in her home with her children.
One episode (and this was followed up and became an element of the show) Apu’s wife gives birth to ten children in a freak display of fertility. She is thus destined to be nothing but a mother while her husband works and this fact emphasizes the existing difference in the portrayal of Apu and his wife as separate entities throughout the show (Irwin 2002). This should be contrasted with Homer and Marge who have a relationship that is based on clear interdependence, rather than the dependence associated with more “traditional” (i.e. non-Western) cultures.
In short, by presenting viewers with a family that combines nearly every traditional value related to marriage and family in the context of its role within the community and families on the macro-level (particularly in Western interpretations) The Simpsons parodies these expectations. “The Simpsons and its double-coded moments of slippage challenge the process of its own reading by the viewer and make demands of critical analysis to employ a reading methodology that looks not only from theory to text but also from text to theory working from inside the program” (Knox 2006). In other words, in a very postmodern sense, the family has undergone so many changes as new awareness about different relationship styles among homosexuals, cultures, and other factors that by presenting a family who is normal allows for thousands of layers of critical interpretations.
Other essays and articles in the Arts Archives related to this topic include : The Full Extent of Damaging Representations of Women in the Media • Gender and Generation in the Film “The Graduate” (1967) • The Presence of the Classic Epic Hero in the Film Star Wars
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