Comments on: Simpsonomics: Did Homer Help Cause the Financial Crisis?

By: BP’s Tears In Rain » Pensando demais

BP’s Tears In Rain » Pensando demais — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:06:27 +0000

[...] aos Simpsons onde é apontada a influencia desse seriado e, até mesmo, uma hipótese de que o Homer ajudou a causar a crise financeira de 2009. E sim, faz sentido (de certa forma, [...]

By: stokes

stokes — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:55:24 +0000

Well you could. But where’s the fun in that?

By: Valatan

Valatan — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:40:51 +0000

Of course, you could just as well argue that the big drop off of the cliff came in the early-to-mid eighties, and that it is the result of Reaganomics and financial deregulation simultaneously driving massive government deficits alongside freely flowing clonsumer credit, with increasingly harsh bankruptcy laws.

By: lee

lee — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:26:46 +0000

I should add: Did anyone else see this episode and have a positive reaction to it? I’m open to explanations as to how the events of that episode can be interpreted to fit in the larger context of Simpsons plot devices.

By: lee

lee — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:21:09 +0000

@Matt, funny you should mention the Simpsons losing their house. An episode from this season actually had the Simpsons getting their house foreclosed on. I thought about including it in the article but wound up not doing so A) because it didn’t exactly fit and B) because it was a laughably weak attempt at making the Simpsons reflect current economic conditions.

Nevertheless, let’s unpack it in the context of the argument while we’re on the subject.

SPOILERS BELOW:

The episode basically runs like this: Homer throws a lavish Mardi Gras party that was funded by a home equity loan (note: this is far from the first time that Homer has borrowed money against the house; in one episode he’s explicitly shown to have 4 mortgages). The Simpsons can’t make the monthly mortgage payments and the bank forecloses on the home.

Flanders, out of sympathy for the Simpsons, buys the home at the auction and rents it back to the Simpsons. The Simpsons are lousy tenants and Flanders evicts them. They spend a few nights in a homeless shelter. Yikes, this shit is getting real. Until…when Flanders tries to rent it out to new tenants, he is reminded of his affinity for the family (would we call this an instance of Stockholm Syndrome?), decides not to rent it out, and welcomes the Simpsons back home.

And that’s literally it. Weak sauce. When America is finally reaping the harsh, long-term consequences of its Simpsons-esque financial impropriety, the show depicts the Simpsons facing some short-term consequences that are solved by an implausible Flanders-ex-machina plot twist at the very end of the episode.

I’m assuming that the fact that their house is in foreclosure and Flanders is their landlord is not brought up in future episodes, so if that’s not the case, let me know and I might reconsider my argument.

Did anyone else see this episode and find it to be a major disappointment? Granted, I’m not sure how else they could have handled the issue of home foreclosure on the show, but the method they wound up using I found to be totally unsatisfactory.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:41:57 +0000

I remember Marge mentioning in a somewhat recent episode that she always keeps a good bit of money tucked away to compensate for Homer’s wacky antics. This of course would never cover everything on the show, but it helps somewhat in explaining why the Simpsons themselves aren’t losing their house.

By: stokes

stokes — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:15:42 +0000

I love the later episode where the subject of elephants comes up, and we get this exchange:
Bart: I wish I had an elephant.
Lisa: You did have an elephant. His name was Stampy. You loved him.
Bart: [wistful] Oh yeah…

By: pFranks

pFranks — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:27:06 +0000

the elephant episode:
Bart wins a radio contest and they offer him cash or A FULL GROWN AFRICAN ELEPHANT. Homer and Marge wants him to take the money, but their 10 year old kid really wants A FULL GROWN AFRICAN ELEPHANT, so they say “yeah, whatever, get the elephant, we don’t see how this can possibly go wrong”. Soon, it becomes evident that keeping A FULL GROWN AFRICAN ELEPHANT as a pet can be quite expensive, so they try to get a profit off him, but their marketing/bussines strategy proves unviable and they end up buried in debt. Someone offers to buy the FULL GROWN AFRICAN ELEPHANT, but they just give it away for free to the first wildlife reserve they see. THE END.

AAnd what makes this story even worse is knowing that just a couple seasons before that, Homer had to get a high interest loan and a second job at the local convenience store to buy and maintain a pony, just because “his daughter stopped loving him”.
Some people just never learn.

By: perich

perich — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:06:57 +0000

Congrats on writing our 800th post, Mark. I’m using the OTI credit card to get you a granite yacht.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:32:46 +0000

I remember an Simpsons episode where they buy an elephant. And they have to get rid of it because they can’t afford to feed it. So there may be one counterexample.

Also, the “everything gets wrapped up in a half hour episode” is a long standing US sitcom tradition, which I think has something to do with syndication.