I think about The Simpsons a lot. Perhaps that’s because I’m always watching The Simpsons, and go to sleep every night dressed in my resplendent Bart Simpson pyjamas under my official branded duvet set while cradling my favourite Matt Groening-approved plushie, but the show is never far from my mind. I find myself citing a quote from the show for practically every occasion: “Oh, this is like that bit in The Simpsons where…”, or “do you remember that episode where Homer…”, or “Yes, I will leave your child’s baptism, but before I go, do you remember the Mr. Plow song?”
The Simpsons’ cultural relevance remains undiminished in the present day. In particular, the show’s powers of prediction continue to be proved eerily accurate, the writers seemingly accessing more prophesying power than five crystal balls taped to a tarot set attached to Nostradamus’s beard. The likelihood of the matter, however, is that the law of averages dictates that any satirical cartoon that runs for more than about five, let alone thirty, seasons is likely to strike prognostic gold a few times.
Whether Swartzwelder and co. were actually delving into the innards of slaughtered lambs to predict that one day Siegfried and Roy really would be mauled by tigers, or that Disney would eventually buy out Fox, is a moot point. What’s more interesting is recognising incidents in which the show was able to make timeless pieces of social critique which, if anything, have gained more social currency as time has worn on. One episode in particular provides a striking example.
‘Lisa the Iconoclast’, the sixteenth episode of The Simpsons’ seventh season, aired back in early 1996 and revolved around Lisa’s discovery that Jebediah Springfield, founder and namesake of her beloved town, was in fact a murderous pirate and identity thief whose litany of crimes rivalled the worst men of his age. At a time when the UK and the USA have both seen their fair share of statues removed from notable public spaces, often accompanied by high-profile media coverage, the story of a town potentially having to come to terms with the legacy of a man whom they had once so heartily revered seems unnervingly prescient.
The legacies of the figures torn down by angry Bristolians or ardent New Yorkers are perhaps a little more controversial than the one portrayed in ‘Lisa the Iconoclast’. Jebediah Springfield is not revealed to be an imperialist now out of vogue with a modern audience, or subject to debate about whether his morality can be judged via 21st Century standards.
No, Jebediah is an unequivocally bad man, and not only is he an unquestionable rotter, he is also a complete fraud. He’s not even Jebediah Springfield at all, as his real name is revealed to be Hans Sprungfeld, a murderous pirate and shady vagabond responsible for, among other things, trying to kill George Washington.
When Lisa discovers that the town’s founder and namesake is in fact a fraudulent wrong’un, her moral reaction is vociferous as she tries to undermine the legacy of a man she knows to be undeserving of the praise and acclaim lavished upon him by the townspeople. Like many of The Simpsons’ best episodes, her attempts to process this discovery cause Lisa to re-evaluate her own rather inflexible moral stance. Not only does the episode focus on Lisa’s evolving views about her relationship with the past, but it also reveals a great deal about Springfield as a microcosm for small town American society.
The role of education in perpetuating the Jebediah myth is one of the episode’s most notable aspects. The Simpsons writers were often critical of an underfunded school system characterised by apathetic teachers, badly-equipped classrooms, and outdated learning materials – and here, Springfield Elementary proved especially hostile to Lisa’s demonstrations of independent thought and historical revisionism.
When Ms. Hoover is marking essays designed purely to add to Jebediah’s bulging hagiography, it is telling that the dim-witted Ralph Wiggum receives an A, presumably for following the same blind faith as his classmates, while Lisa’s revelatory exhibition of free thought, “Jebediah Springfield: Superfraud”, is met with a large red ‘F’. When Lisa attempts to defend her position, Hoover dismisses it as nothing more than “dead white male-bashing from a PC thug.”
The reactions of the townspeople are even more revealing. While Lisa responds with her usual strident rage, convinced of her moral superiority, she fatally miscalculates how integral Jebediah is to the lives of normal Springfielders. Her declaration at Moe’s that Jebediah was “an evil, bloodthirsty pirate who hated this town” is met with stunned silence, leading Moe to bar both Lisa and Homer for sickening “hero-phobia”.
For all her intelligence, Lisa fails to realise that by besmirching Jebediah, she is also besmirching the town, and thus its inhabitants, to which the former pirate gives his name. Perhaps the town’s reaction to Bart decapitating the statue of Jebediah in the Season 1 episode ‘The Telltale Head’ should have hinted at the high regard in which the Springfield icon is actually held.
‘Lisa the Iconoclast’ is not, ultimately, about whether or not we should hold our heroes to account by our own contemporary moral standards, but instead asks the value these heroes imbue society with by creating a common set of ideas and mythologies. The episode is more about the idea of truth vs. myth and the competing uses of these two apparently distinct ideas.
Lisa’s decision not to reveal the truth about Jebediah Springfield reveals the true value of these mythologies. As she explains: “the myth of Jebediah has value too. Regardless of who said it, a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man”. Hans Sprungfeld might not have been a hero, but the icon he created with Jebediah Springfield certainly was.
Perhaps that is why the writers made such a conscious decision to have Springfield as an imposter. By stripping away the very ‘self’ of Hans Sprungfeld and instead making him the idolised, totemic creation of a murderous former pirate, Jebediah immediately becomes a symbol rather than an actual person whose morals and values need to be weighed and tried before judge and jury. The entire conceit of the episode is how we view our past when confronted with an alternate history or a challenging truth, and whether or not we choose to follow the teachings of fiction rather than accept the pitfalls and challenges of genuine historical authenticity.
There’s an excellent scene at the end of an early Rick and Morty episode that captures the same dilemma perfectly. In the epilogue to a caper involving Rick and Morty’s adventures in a semi-feudal fantasy universe, two villagers discover that their supposedly righteous and benevolent jelly bean king was secretly a perverted child molester. Instead of revealing the truth, the pair’s reasoning in burning the shocking evidence resonates strongly: “Our people will get more from the idea he represented”, they conclude, “than from the jelly bean he actually was.”
History, in this sense, is not the truth, rather a tool for keeping order, morality and a collective sense of self. Lisa’s reasoning is just the same as she recognises that Jebediah “brings out the best in everyone”. The residents of Springfield get more from the idea that Jebediah represents than from the murderous pirate he actually was.
‘Lisa the Iconoclast’ is a great Simpsons episode, a mini-drama that probes and questions and doesn’t seek easy answers, focusing instead on Lisa’s own moral dilemma as to whether to reveal the truth to a town taking so much benefit from the idol-worship of a fictitious icon. Discourse on the nature of truth aside, it’s also one of the sweetest Simpsons outings, Homer shining in his role as both Lisa’s protector and student as he risks his role as town crier at the Jebediah Springfield parade to help his daughter uncover the truth, much in the same way that he sold his chance to ride on the Duff Blimp to fund Lisa’s beauty pageant entry in Season 4. It’s unlikely the writers had access to visions of the future back in the 90s, but what seems evident is their capacity for writing episodes of television whose wit, warmth and relevance have remained undiminished nearly thirty years on.
READ MORE: 10 Best Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror Episodes
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