Show Sold Separately - Jonathan Gray

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after a text has officially begun, and that continue to give us information, ways of looking at the film or show, and frames for understanding it or engaging with it. Their work is never over, and their effects on what the film or show is—on what it means to its audiences—are continual.

      The Onion News Network’s short clip plays with the notion of continuing paratexts, too, for in its suggestion that the integrity of the trailer might be jeopardized by the movie, the clip reflects on how each new iteration of a text—wherever it may be, and of whatever length (ninety seconds or ninety minutes)—can affect the public understanding of, appreciation of, and identification with that text. Quite simply, a “bad” adaptation will inevitably affect the public standing of a text, just as would a “good” one. But to be able to call an adaptation “good” or “bad” requires an audience member or community to have developed a notion of the ideal and proper text, and in this book I will argue that paratexts play as much of a role as does the film or television program itself in constructing how different audience members will construct this ideal text.

      Where Is Springfield? Placing The Simpsons

      Another illustrative example lies in the army of merchandise and spinoff products that surround The Simpsons. The Simpsons is, of course, one of the world’s most successful television programs worldwide, having produced more than four hundred episodes by the time of writing. But surely few if any know The Simpsons solely as a television program, for it is also a brand, a world, and a set of characters that exist across clothing, toys, videogames, a film, ads, books, comics, DVDs, CDs, and many other media platforms. For the purposes of my argument here, though, I wish to focus on one particular platform: a set of online ads for The Simpsons Game (2007). Since this videogame followed in the wake of The Simpsons Movie (2007), in effect we have a third-level paratext: an ad for the game that followed the movie of the television program. As such, if we were to examine this as media studies has more traditionally examined such products, we would focus on it wholly as a hypercommercialized money-grab, as a synergistic attempt to squeeze as much as possible from a successful media product. Ads for games of a movie of a television show rate low on most traditional scales of artistic value.

      However, upon closer examination of these ads, we can see a viable source of The Simpsons as text. Upon navigating to the webpage for The Simpsons Game, a visitor was met with a series of links to parodic trailers for supposed stand-alone videogames, each of which used The Simpsons to parody established and popular games or game genres (and each a level in the actual game). Thus, for instance, Medal of Homer deftly parodies both the Medal of Honor games specifically (1999–) and war games and war films more generally. With a somber yet sweeping orchestral and choral soundtrack worthy of Saving Private Ryan (1998), the ad opens with a series of zoom-and-pan scratchy black-and-white war “photos” (yet drawn in Simpsons style), playing with the visual style of Ken Burns documentaries, and of Medal of Honor’s cut sequences (fig. I.2). Title cards interlace such photos, reading “In the Last Great Invasion” “Of the Last Great War” “They Gave Each Other the Strength” “To Make History.” This reverent spectacle is interrupted following the third title card, though, as we cut to a shot of Homer and Bart in which Homer is scratching his butt. The irreverence then bubbles up further following the last title card, as a prancing Homer interrupts, “Oooh, I’m France, I’m a little girl. I don’t want to be bombed and attacked.” The ad continues to its conclusion, cutting between shots of, for instance, Homer belching flame, or rolling around as a huge human blob, and shots framed to mimic war movie trailers.

      In short, many of the key ingredients of The Simpsons are in the ad. We see significant irreverence and bodily humor, especially from Homer. We see The Simpsons’ signature brand of attractive animation. We see and hear a smart, brilliantly executed media parody that lampoons the seriousness with which both war games and war films take themselves. And we see the snark for which the show is famous. All of this takes place in a brief, eighty-second clip, again replicating the television show’s style of offering short bursts of media parody. And while the Medal of Homer ad is executed with great skill, a deeply funny piece of work, so too is the Mob Rules ad, which parodies the Grand Theft Auto series’ (1997–) trailers and camerawork to a tee. The Mob Rules ad also parodies GTA’s signature use of violence and male bravado, parodically recontextualizing the line “we’re gonna clean up this town,” for example, as Marge’s appeal to Lisa to help her rid Springfield of the violent videogame. Two other ads parody Everquest (1999) and other role-playing games, and odd Japanese puzzle games, respectively. After watching these ads, one has gained an experience similar to that of watching the television show. As ads, the clips may be seen by some as less authentic, as simply hawking their wares, and as purely secondary to the primary text that is The Simpsons television show. But the clips produce and continue the text of The Simpsons with considerable skill. These third-level paratexts, in other words, are part of the text, becoming sites not only of the production of the text but also of engagement with it.

      

      Nor are they alone in this regard, as The Simpsons’ history, and many of its public meanings, has often relied heavily upon its paratexts. While above I suggest that the paratexts were viable parts of the text, at times the show’s paratexts have done more to create the text as it is known than has the show itself. In particular, we might look at the furor that surrounded the show in its early years, directed primarily at Bart as irreverent youth, but one that centered on—and was in many ways ignited by—the mass popularity of t-shirts labeling Bart an “Underachiever,” while he responds, “And Proud of It, Man.” Many parents, teachers, principals, and pundits around the United States worried about children learning a slacker attitude from the t-shirt’s sentiment, and as a result, many schools banned the t-shirts, and conservative rhetoric and complaints swarmed around the show.12 This rhetoric completely failed to realize the sly message in the t-shirt: as Laurie Schulze notes, “Bart has managed to turn the tables on the system that’s devalued him and say, ‘In your face. I’m not worthless, insignificant, or stupid. If you want to label me an underachiever, I’ll turn that into a badge of courage and say I’m proud of it.’”13 Nevertheless, as paratext, the t-shirt created an image for many Americans of The Simpsons as a show of little to no values, intent on corrupting children’s minds.

      Then, in 1992, at the Republican National Convention, another para-text further sealed this image of the show, when President George H. W. Bush insisted that the United States needed more families like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. Just as Bush’s vice-president, Dan Quayle, had brought Murphy Brown (1988–98) into the culture wars between conservative and liberal America, Bush made The Simpsons a front in that war (as did First Lady Barbara Bush, who also shared her hatred for The Simpsons with the press). While The Simpsons was already infused with Matt Groening’s anti-establishment beliefs, sly satiric edge, and irreverence, the t-shirt controversy and the Bush speech suddenly amplified these qualities. Now, to watch The Simpsons and/or to wear the t-shirt was to posit oneself proudly against Bush’s neo-conservatism, while to dislike the show and/or to ban one’s children from seeing it was to publicly declare one’s allegiance to those ideals. The paratexts made the show considerably more controversial, edgy, and anti-establishment than many of its episodes made it; certainly, in England, where the t-shirt controversy never bubbled up to the same degree, and where Bush’s comments received considerably less attention, the show was often seen as endearingly pro–family values, to the point that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has often proudly and unflinchingly sided with Bart over Bush, claiming that The Simpsons is “on the side of the angels.”14

      We must also turn to The Simpsons’ paratexts if we wish to understand its relationship

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