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Imagining America: The Simpsons and the Anti-Suburb Go Global
Unformatted Document Text:  1 Imagining America: The Simpsons and the Anti-Suburb Go Global ‘You’re what’s wrong with America, Simpson. You coast through life, you do as little as possible, and you leech off decent, hardworking people like me. Heh, if you lived in any other country in the world, you’d have starved to death long ago’ – Frank Grimes to Homer Simpson, in ‘Homer’s Enemy,’ The Simpsons The family sitcom, suburban paradise, and the American Dream have traditionally gone together like ball-games and hot dogs. From Father Knows Best to Family Ties, the Cleavers to the Jeffersons, Bewitched to Full House, the Cunninghams to the Huxtables, the sitcom and its families have served stalwart duty in illustrating all that is supposedly wonderful and idyllic about nuclear family life in the American suburb. Family sitcoms have by no means been unremittingly conservative, as they have at times activated debate over gender and class roles, and over sexual mores (Attallah 1984, Newcomb and Hirsch 1984); however, this discussion has nearly always been situated within what has been depicted as the warm, safe, almost womb-like setting of suburbia and American middle-class comfort. Sitcom studies are particularly sparse when compared to their domination of prime time and of the Nielsen ratings (see Staiger 2000), but the wealth of these studies are in reasonable agreement that the family sitcom has been a major tool and voice for selling the American Dream of 2.4 kids, a loving marriage, and a nice big house in an ordered, friendly community largely unaffected by outside problems (Grote 1983, Marc 1989, Taylor 1989, Jhally and Lewis 1992, Jones 1992). The selling that has been talked of, though, has been national, looking at how (a certain) America has been sold to America. Little work has been conducted into the sitcom’s travels outside America, and consequently the issue of how and whether the American Dream is being sold to other countries and their citizens has often been left to supposition or to ‘common sense’ observation.

Authors: Gray, Jonathan.
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1
Imagining America:
The Simpsons and the Anti-Suburb Go Global
‘You’re what’s wrong with America, Simpson. You coast through life, you do as little as possible, and you
leech off decent, hardworking people like me. Heh, if you lived in any other country in the world, you’d
have starved to death long ago’ – Frank Grimes to Homer Simpson, in ‘Homer’s Enemy,’ The Simpsons
The family sitcom, suburban paradise, and the American Dream have traditionally gone together
like ball-games and hot dogs. From Father Knows Best to Family Ties, the Cleavers to the
Jeffersons, Bewitched to Full House, the Cunninghams to the Huxtables, the sitcom and its
families have served stalwart duty in illustrating all that is supposedly wonderful and idyllic about
nuclear family life in the American suburb. Family sitcoms have by no means been unremittingly
conservative, as they have at times activated debate over gender and class roles, and over sexual
mores (Attallah 1984, Newcomb and Hirsch 1984); however, this discussion has nearly always
been situated within what has been depicted as the warm, safe, almost womb-like setting of
suburbia and American middle-class comfort. Sitcom studies are particularly sparse when
compared to their domination of prime time and of the Nielsen ratings (see Staiger 2000), but the
wealth of these studies are in reasonable agreement that the family sitcom has been a major tool
and voice for selling the American Dream of 2.4 kids, a loving marriage, and a nice big house in
an ordered, friendly community largely unaffected by outside problems (Grote 1983, Marc 1989,
Taylor 1989, Jhally and Lewis 1992, Jones 1992). The selling that has been talked of, though, has
been national, looking at how (a certain) America has been sold to America. Little work has been
conducted into the sitcom’s travels outside America, and consequently the issue of how and
whether the American Dream is being sold to other countries and their citizens has often been left
to supposition or to ‘common sense’ observation.


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