Critical Perspectives seminar prep for 29/1/15

Task: Choose a cultural text and find one journal article and one book/book chapter that deals with either that text or its themes; find a key quote from each and source it

Cultural text of choice: The Simpsons (1989-)

Book: Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture, edited by Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison (Routledge, 2003, U.S.A.)

Book chapter: Chapter 7: Back to the Drawing Board: The Family in Animated Television Comedy by Michael V. Tueth

Key quote: "Viewers' comfort with animation's presentation of the grotesque ... permits the cartoon to offer an alternative view of family life, presenting both parents and children as at least partially monstrous. The limited range of facial features ... chosen by Groening ... tends to present the characters and setting as ... homogeneous [...] All the citizens of Springfield have the same bug-eyes and overbite as the Simpsons, while all its houses look alike. Animation is capable of conveying both the monstrous and the mundane in family life."

Journal: Political Theory, 12/1999, Volume 27, issue 6 (U.S.A.)
Journal Article: The Simpsons: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family by Paul A. Cantor, University of Virginia

Key quote: "By dealing centrally with the family, The Simpsons takes up real human issues everybody can recognise and thus ends up in many respects less "cartoonish" than other television programs. Its cartoon characters are more human, more fully rounded, than the supposedly real human beings in many situation comedies."