{"id":402024,"date":"2025-09-06T07:06:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T07:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402024\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T07:06:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T07:06:15","slug":"the-guide-207-how-britain-embraced-the-simpsons-americas-true-first-family-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402024\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guide #207: How Britain embraced The Simpsons, America\u2019s true first family | Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mum wouldn\u2019t have Bart Simpson in our house. When, 35 years ago this month, The Simpsons first drifted across the Atlantic and on to UK screens, they brought with them a bad reputation. In the US, Matt Groening\u2019s peerless animation had quickly become a ratings sensation after it debuted in 1989, but it was also a controversy magnet, particularly over its breakout delinquent star. The Simpsons was seen by the more conservative end of the US media as a bad influence on kids (a viewpoint famously echoed by President Ronald Reagan a few years later with his call for American families to be \u201cmore like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons\u201d). Plenty of US schools banned a massive-selling T-shirt<\/a> with Bart declaring himself an \u201cunderachiever and proud of it, man\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether mum had read reports of these T-shirt bans \u2013 it\u2019s just as likely that she simply saw The Simpsons<\/a> as another brash American cartoon import at a time when UK TV was drowning in them (and airing on Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Sky TV, to boot). Either way, the show was viewed with suspicion bordering on contempt. It would take a while for its subversive, satirical charms to be recognised.<\/p>\n

The informal Simpsons ban in our house eventually lapsed, as it would everywhere else. In 1996, the BBC, which had previously thought so little of the residents of 742 Evergreen Terrace that they cut the early Simpsons shorts<\/a> out of BBC Two broadcasts of The Tracey Ullman Show, started syndicating the series and the show has been a permanent fixture on our screens ever since, broadcast for about 50 hours a week<\/a> in the UK (and that\u2019s not including all the time it is viewed on Disney+). Today, it\u2019s a UK television institution, as unshakeable from the schedules as daytime auction shows or downcast detective dramas.<\/p>\n

But it hasn\u2019t stopped there. Over the past 35 years, The Simpsons has inveigled itself into just about every corner of British public life, seen everywhere from the Almeida theatre<\/a> in London to Cerne Abbas<\/a> in Dorset, and as likely to inspire YBA artists<\/a> (who have incorporated the show\u2019s \u201cpoppy\u201d colours into their exhibitions) as football memes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you were feeling bold you may even argue that Britain has taken The Simpsons to its heart even more than the US has. Take Do the Bartman, the hit (and, in retrospect, highly annoying) Simpsons track co-produced by Michael Jackson: it wasn\u2019t released as a single in the US, but was a chart-topping smash in the UK in 1991, a remarkable feat considering the series hadn\u2019t yet appeared on terrestrial TV and the song was left off the Radio 1 playlist.<\/p>\n

And, while the US president denigrated the country\u2019s true first family, our own head of government embraced it, with Tony Blair appearing as part of a curious collection of famous Britons (along with Ian McKellen, JK Rowling and Daphne from Frasier) on a 2003 episode where Homer gets locked in the Tower of London for an act of road rage towards Queen Elizabeth II. Blair is still the only serving head of government to have voiced themselves on The Simpsons, a fact that probably says more about his own flair for self-promotion than anything else, though it does underscore the show\u2019s cultural value to self-serving politicians.<\/p>\n

The royal family have featured in episodes of The Simpsons, but the late queen apparently wasn\u2019t a fan. Photograph: Fox<\/p>\n

To that end, Hansard \u2013 the comprehensive record of parliamentary debate \u2013 contains numerous mentions of The Simpsons on its vellum prints, with references in debates on everything from atomic energy<\/a> to universal credit fraud<\/a>. The first time it was mentioned<\/a> was in a 1995 Commons debate on the formation of the Welsh Assembly, by, I\u2019m proud to say, a fellow Gwilym, the then MP for Cardiff North, Gwilym Jones; I\u2019m less proud to say that he was a Tory who managed to get the channel The Simpsons aired on wrong. The most recent mention was just a few months ago, in a Commons debate on music education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At their best, MPs use Simpsons episodes as skilful analogies to real-life woes in their constituencies \u2013 such as when Leeds South West and Morley MP Mark Sewards compared a failed proposal for an elevated railway in his city to Lyle Lanley\u2019s monorail scam<\/a>. But mainly the show is just used for putdowns of those sat on the benches opposite. (MP Chris Bryant<\/a>: \u201cIt seems to me that the Liberal Democrats really are taking to heart the words of Homer Simpson when he said: \u2018Weaselling out of things is important to learn. It\u2019s what separates us from the animals \u2013 except the weasels.\u2019\u201d)<\/p>\n

If the state is fond of The Simpsons, there are fans too in the Anglican church, where sermons consider how Jesus might have dealt with Bart<\/a>, or the moral value of Homer saying no to his son<\/a>. Rowan Williams was particularly taken with the show during his time as archbishop of Canterbury, praising it as \u201con the side of the angels\u201d and \u201cone of the most subtle pieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility and virtue\u201d. (Sadly, despite positive noises<\/a>, he didn\u2019t manage to make an appearance on the show during his incumbency.)<\/p>\n

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But there\u2019s one institution that is seemingly impervious to The Simpsons\u2019 charms<\/a>: the late queen. While Queen Elizabeth happily appeared alongside British cultural figures such as Paddington and James Bond, she left The Simpsons well alone. More of a David Lynch fan<\/a>, it seems \u2026<\/p>\n

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