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by Catherine M. Harris

Created on: January 23, 2009   Last Updated: January 24, 2009

The Simpsons has been a staple on TV for 20 years and during its run it has been controversial. Its start was on The Tracey Ullman as a cartoon filler, and given that The Tracey Ullman show was for an adult audience, the cartoon was geared to an adult audience. The Simpsons airs in a prime time evening hour, not during the children's morning hours, and does not advertise itself as a children's cartoon.

There is a common misconception about the cartoon film genre that it is a children's form of film entertainment. Cartoon shows and comic books are to a large degree created for children in the present market, however cartooning started out as a satirical art form in the early newspapers. Animation on film dates back to the late 1800s and was a series of cartoon drawings shown on a primitive form of projector. Also popular at the time were flip books, a fun game that people do to this day. The thing about cartooning is that it is an art form that tells a story. Its simple form makes it easy for people with less than stellar drawing ability to create caricatures of people and animals and put in the words they say. Perhaps the most common adult oriented use of cartoons is political satire, found in the editorial sections of newspapers to this day.

The use of cartooning to tell complex and indeed very adult stories has been done longer perhaps than its use for children's entertainment. The book Maus by Art Spiegelman for instance is graphic novel about a Jewish man struggling to survive the Holocaust. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and this novel is by no means intended for children to read.

Early animated film was often risque and some of our beloved cartoon characters were less savoury characters when they first began. Blondie in the Blondie comic strip started in 1930 and she wasn't the lovely housewife she is today - she was a flapper who danced in dance halls. Betty Boop and Fritz the Cat are also examples of comics that were adult oriented (and that became film animation).

Cartoons were run before the main film in the theatres long before television. Our beloved Warner Brothers cartoon characters were also adult entertainment and the ones that are shown from that era on the Saturday morning cartoon time slots have been heavily edited to remove the sexual innuendo. Some you won't even see on television today due to what is now considered to be racist or sexist material, though at the time they were created they were appropriate for adults. World War II saw a series of these enticing men to enlist and trying to boost morale as well as to entrench in the public's mind the evils of the Germans and the Japanese. Obviously these are not appropriate on television now, except in a retrospective or historical context.

With respect to The Simpsons, it is no more likely to undermine the morals of society any more than any other television program or movie produced today. Parents who are worried at the double entedres should realize that many of the jokes are written in such a way that children see one thing, and a parent understands the hidden meaning. If your children are of the age where they are apt to repeat some of the lines or the children's less than model behaviour, then yes they are too young to be watching. However, older children can and do appreciate it, my own included. I have yet to see either of the model their behaviour or language on those of the children on the show and if they did I would point out that it is inappropriate, as I do any other television show.

We can choose to censor or ban subjects in the media that are controversial or of a sensitive nature but in doing so, wouldn't we be denying a huge part of who are as a culture? That we can watch old cartoons from the 1930s and see a glimpse of how people thought and saw the world is valuable and interesting. To deny such artistic expression in order to protect ourselves from the sometimes grittier side of life to me is a form of culture brainwashing. Denying the existence of a way of speaking or cartoons that reflect in a satirical manner how we are would be a terrible loss to history. Forgetting our history is also a very good way to ensure that lessons learned - both good and bad - are likely to be repeated. Society changes. So do The Simpsons. Watch some of the very early episodes and you'll see that the references in them aren't reflective of today in many instances. Art holds a mirror to who we are, and this particular mirror is a clever and entertaining one.

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