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A Serious Look at Cartoons

Christians often have a hard time taking pop culture seriously. This unfortunate tendency is even more pronounced when it comes to something as seemingly silly as comics and cartoons. Journalist Mark Pinsky aims to change some of these attitudes with his recently released book, The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World’s Most Animated Family.

Published by Westminster John Knox Press, the same people who brought us the best-selling The Gospel According to Peanuts way back in 1965, Pinsky’s study demonstrates that The Simpsons, which was widely condemned by conservative Christians after its January 1990 debut on the upstart Fox TV network, should be taken seriously and even appreciated for its theological insights.

Many Viewers

The show has long been a critical and popular favorite, and TIME magazine recently declared it the best TV show of the 20th century. It’s the winner of more than a dozen Emmy Awards as well as a coveted Peabody Award. And every Sunday evening, more than 14 million viewers tune in for their weekly fix of “D’ohs.” Millions more tune in for syndicated reruns airing on more than 250 US stations. Sixty million folks in over 70 foreign countries tune in, too. No one in Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, where it is banned, tunes in.

Unlike the show’s legions of long-time fans, Pinsky, who is a religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, is a recent convert. “When our son Asher (then 11) and our daughter Liza (then eight) took an interest in The Simpsons, I began to watch it with them; was I ever surprised.” As he concluded, “The modern cartoon sitcom turned out to be family-friendly and full of faith.”

The Dialogue

One of the nicest things about the book, which was featured in cover stories in both Christianity Today and The Christian Century, is that it records some of the highlights of the show’s hilarious dialogue, dialogue which often flies past the viewer at such a rapid clip that its true insight is overlooked.

In one chapter, Pinsky examines the Simpson family’s prayer life, 99 percent of which happens around the dinner table. While at times the program seems to merely exploit prayer for laughs, it also uses the characters’ requests for divine assistance as a mirror reflecting Americans’ complex attitudes toward faith and life. For example, before one Thanksgiving meal, Homer bows his head and offers the following prayer: “We especially thank you for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is, except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.”

Another evening meal finds Homer giving vent to his mixed feelings about his family: “Dear Lord, thank you for this microwave bounty, even though we don’t deserve it. I mean...our kids are uncontrollable hellions. Pardon my French, but they act like savages! Did you see them at the picnic? Of course you did; you’re everywhere. You’re omnivorous, O Lord! Why did you spite me with this family?”

On occasion, the show’s characters stand in amazement as their prayers are answered, with mixed results. After Homer prays for tickets to a Super Bowl game, the doorbell rings. There stands Ned Flanders, his overly evangelical neighbor, holding the coveted tickets. Homer slams the door and says, “Why do you mock me, O Lord?”

By far, the most controversial prayer ever uttered on the show was Bart’s sassy pre-dinner remark: “Dear God, we paid for this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.” Many believers were offended, including some whose own children repeated the prayer. But as Pinsky points out, Lee Strobel, a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, wasn’t so quick to complain. “Isn’t he just expressing a sentiment that a lot of people secretly harbor?” asked Strobel in a sermon entitled “What Jesus Would Say to Bart Simpson.” “They’d never say it, but don’t many people live their lives with the attitude that they’ve earned what they’ve received and that God really had nothing to do with it? So, in ways, Bart is merely more honest than most.”

Pre-Simpsons

The Simpsons may have opened the door for other controversial adult-themed cartoon series like The Ren and Stimpy Show, Beavis and Butt-head, and South Park, but cartoons and comics have been attracting post-teen audiences since The Yellow Kid, America’s first newspaper comic strip, debuted in 1896.

Comic books invaded America’s newsstands during the 1930s. During the next few decades, they would bring superheroes like Superman and Batman into millions of homes.

In the 50s, controversy erupted over some of the violence and themes found in kids’ comics. “Seduction of the Innocent,” an expose published in 1954, charged comics with corrupting the morals of American youth and helped inspire Congressional hearings and a Comics Code that held publishers to standards of “morality and decency.”

Underground comics like R. Crumb’s “Zap Comix” helped undermine the code in the 1960s. And today, graphic novels like the “Preacher” series (starring the theologically unorthodox Rev. Jesse Custer) and Frank Miller’s “Sin City” series demonstrate that comics have matured, both artistically and thematically.

A New Wave

That may be fine for older readers, but in recent years some culture watchers have raised objections to growing levels of violence in televised cartoons aimed at young audiences. Pokemon debuted in 1998 and rapidly became the most popular syndicated children’s show. This ushered in a wave of Japanese animation programs like Dragon Ball Z and Digimon which routinely feature cartoon violence. Nickelodeon won’t air the shows, but executives at TV networks like WB, Fox, and the Cartoon Network love them because they’re cheap to make and help reach video game savvy young boys, an important audience for US advertisers.

What’s surprising is the lack of criticism these shows have generated—a point raised in a January New York Times article that carried this shocking headline on page one: “A Wave of Violence Engulfs Children’s Cartoon Programs.”

“Unlike past cartoon trends that brought more violence to the television screen, the genre’s growth has drawn very little attention from parents and watchdog groups,” wrote reporter Jim Rutenberg.

Nobody’s suggesting that parents or youth workers come down hard on their cartoon-consuming children like some kind of hard-hitting superheroes. Still, both long-running shows like The Simpsons and newer series like Digimon may indicate that there’s more going on in cartoons than meets the eye.

Instead of letting kids retreat to their high-tech bedroom hideouts for hours of unsupervised cartoon viewing, why not watch with them and see what they’re seeing?

Steve Rabey is a Colorado writer. His most recent book is Milestones: 50 Events that Shaped American Evangelicals in the 20th Century (Broadman & Holman).