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| Yes | 30% | 50 votes | Total: 165 votes | |
| No | 70% | 115 votes |
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Add to FavoritesAre there three fingered yellow people walking around saying funny quips? Um, no. Would a bad father like Homer Simpson run his family into poverty? Yes. Could a young genius like Lisa Simpson be born to poor, uneducated Homer and his much smarter wife Marge? Well, yes.
So how real are the events featured in the Simpson's? First, spoiler alert. The movie starts with the Simpson's going to church, where grandpa has a vision. Many church people feel that God can, on rare occasion, speak through someone. It is entirely possible. Even if you are not religious, good old gramps is senile, isn't he? And yet he knows his son, knows how polluted the lake is, and it's possible he put things together and his mind coughed it out in the manner portrayed in the movie. Or maybe he had a nightmare. The warning is vague enough to come true in a variety of ways.
Then, young Lisa Simpson's is getting signatures to stop pollution. Talk to enough people, and you will find someone who has a daughter like Lisa, who is interested in causes, and does support them fully. Would a town forbid dumping? Yes. Many people are unaware of the dangers until someone kicks up a fuss. Different towns have different laws for this reason. Remember, the mayor is corrupt and gives the people anything they want. And many communities have forbid dumping over ravines, canyons, streams, anywhere where no dumping signs are posted.
Homer then dumps the pig feces silo in the lake. True to form. The man is an idiot, and careless, and exactly the kind who tosses something in a public spot to get rid of it. If you don't believe this, you are one of the lucky few who haven't had to deal with these people.
A creature jumps in the lake and transforms. Many animals are transformed by pollution. Many new mutations are found in nature, from the ever popular two headed calf to the multi eyed creature in the Simpson's. They are usually born that way, though, not created in an instant.
The EPA puts a dome over the entire city. Would a government allow this? What haven't they allowed? History says that yes, this could happen. Would they enclose a dome? Yes, if the danger would spread. Many horror movies show cities being sacrificed to save others, outbreak showed the town about to be destroyed. Areas in real life are sealed off. When mount St. Helens blew, the area was sealed, and people elected to stay behind. Not quite the same, but it shows it could happen.
The Simpson's escape, and the government plans to destroy Springfield. Who knows how many cities have disappeared? The world changes all the time. Many remark as they drive that the city looks so different. How many people would notice if a city disappeared? This is a small town of a few hundred after all, and what could anyone do? A few off ramp signs moved, and people wouldn't know where it was. What could anyone do if a city was hard to find? Nothing. Everyone would presume they must have took a wrong turn. That would be about it. Think of the atrocities you hear about in the war. Yes, almost anything is possible, including condemning hundreds to death. Other countries have done it.
Homer stops the city from being blown by riding a motorcycle around the glass dome, while Bart tosses the bomb through a hole in the center. Okay, this is a little less believable. What kind of motor would it take to support Homer's big butt? How strong was that engine, and where did they get the rocket fuel for it? Okay, many people will not think this is possible, but consider the scene where Homer gets the truck by driving a motorcycle around the cage just like the one they have at a circus and fairgrounds.
Homer refuses to help his family, which is true to his form, he is a selfish bastard. And then an Alaskan shaman helps Homer to have a vision. It doesn't show what he was smoking, but it does show her pouring weird colored liquid down his throat. Check the internet. There are many hallucinations that are not illegal because they are used in religious ceremonies, or just haven't been forbidden. So yeah, Homer might have had a vision. Or he might have hyperventilated and passed out. All possible so far.
Homer and Bart save the day, and then little Maggie saves them. why is a baby shooting? How long has she been a baby? Many women will say the men in their lives never grew up, but come on. The baby could have that rare disease where she doesn't show her age. she could be a undiagnosed midget. Or maybe Homer shot the EPA guy and blamed it on his kid. Sadly, there are some people out here in the land of reality that have been known to do that, especially when drunk.
So far, most of the movie is possible. True, the president is a well known actor. But so was Regan, or an actor, anyway,. Other than that, very much of this movie is possible. And for the parts you think won't happen, wait a few years. You'll see things that will surprise you. Shock you. the things we take for granted today would have horrified and amazed our parents, and bewildered our grandparents. Many things are more possible than we thought.
Learn more about this author, Liomas Thomas.
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No
In response to the current forerunner of the "Yes" camp:
I would like to point out several errors in your reasoning. In no particular order, these are: 1) no government would ever put a bubble over an entire city; 2) pig feces are not mutagenic; 3) the plausibility of Homer's shamanic vision is exactly equal to that of Grampa's vision in church; and 4) most significantly, no matter how little you weigh, no matter how powerful the engine in your motorcycle, you can never drive circles around the inside of a hemisphere.
So let's tackle these in order. My first contention is that no government would ever put a dome over an entire city. First, consider history - it's a simpler argument. We famously build walls to separate people, to hide from them, to shun them. We build road blocks to prevent outbreaks, we restrict travel by stopping flights and taking passports, we even quarantine people in their homes. We have never built a dome. Why? Domes are notoriously hard to construct! Even on a much, much smaller scale, they're incredibly expensive. Consider that the 256 meter diameter Georgia Dome cost $214 million to construct, and then scale that project up to encompass a city the size of the fictional Springfield; even if we consider your estimate of Springfield's population of "a few hundred people" accurate, at the US Census' average density for an urban area of 1000 people per square mile, that dome would have an approximate diameter AT LEAST twice that of the Georgia Dome. However, what we see of Springfield's population is in no way indicative of its total numbers. Note that in The Simpsons episode 3F02, "Bart Sells His Soul," Bart checks a map of Springfield and notes that he is on 3rd Street, while his destination is on 157th. Even if the town was a single block wide, that would account for 2.5 square miles of total area. Again, considering the average population density of an urban area in the United States, that would indicate a total population of about 2500. I've run through too much abstract math already to keep going to demonstrate how big that dome would have to be and how much it would cost, but rest assured; it's a lot. So you'll say, "But the government does really expensive, stupid things all the time!" This is true, but the logistics of constructing such a dome are beyond the realm of possibility, even for a runaway military budget. It would take the entire US Armed Forces Corps of Engineers working around the clock for YEARS to build something like that. And I'm just talking about the dome that could even theoretically exist, not the transparent, structureless pipe dream in the movie.
Ok, deep breath. Rest your eyes. Argument two: pig feces are not mutagenic. No math here. Just think about this for a second: feces are as old as life. Things have been living in poop for as long as they've been living. Animals in a swamp live in fish, frog, turtle, bird, insect, and bacteria feces, and most are perfectly healthy. None are mutated because of it - only because of unnatural, non-poop, human intervention and the natural process of mutation. You see a lot of things like this from the area downwind of Chernobyl in years after '86, but I don't think that the statistics would have changed with the addition or subtraction of any quantity of pig feces.
Three is mostly a matter of personal offense. You say that people have visions through God all the time, but then demean the visions experienced by non-Christians. You've got to be kidding! You think that only the Judeo-Christian belief system is capable of letting people see beyond themselves? I won't beat a tired point, but suffice it to say that people of ALL faiths have had visions beyond understanding since before Jesus, before Abraham, and completely unrelated to the people that wrote down the Genesis story. Sheesh.
Now, finally, I'd like to delve into some physics. I can't attach images here, so I'll have to explain the impossibility of Homer's Around the Dome maneuver without diagrams. Bear with me. The reason Homer can ride that motorcycle around the inside of a SPHERE is centrifugal force: the motorcycle (and Homer), because of Newton's laws, wants to travel in a straight line. However, its path is obstructed by the inside of the sphere. So that forward force is matched by an opposing force in a curve. Read: he has to be riding around the OUTSIDE of the sphere. Here, I'll explain it a better way. Get a cup, fill it with water. Go outside. Rotating only at the shoulder, spin your arm around as fast as you can, making big arcs in any direction. As long as your shoulder stays at the center of your circles - and you go fast enough - you won't spill any water. Neat, huh? Centrifugal force in action. Thanks, Mr. Wizard! Now, raise the cup over your head and draw circles in the air. What happened? You need a towel. The centrifugal force was no longer pushing the water toward the bottom of the cup - just toward the outside of your circles. Meanwhile, gravity was still doing it's thing, hence, you're wet. Same thing with Homer; he drives tight circles around the inside of the dome. He's not driving the circumference, but a narrower cross-section. Centrifugal force would never counteract gravity, no matter how fast he was going, once he got off the first few feet of the bottom of the dome.
Phew. Ok, any questions? I've just chosen a few glaring problems with the reality of The Simpsons movie. Truthfully, I could go on a lot longer. But it doesn't matter; movies aren't supposed to be real, and especially not cartoons. If you want real, get out of the theater and live life. If everything in movies was super-realistic, no one would need imagination and the world would be even worse off. And cartoons are supposed to be less real than anything else! But, all that said, The Simpsons Movie was still awful. I'm a devoted fan of the show - for seasons 2 through 9. The movie was more like season 12 or so; very low, silly, cheesy, etc.
For the bullet point, I'd say that The Simpsons Movie's lack of reality in no way affected my enjoyment of it; only its lack of humor did that.
Learn more about this author, Michael Jiadski.
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