Bart vs. Australia

"Bart vs. Australia" is the 16th episode of The Simpsons' sixth season. The episode marks the first time the family has visited another country (before which Bart visited France alone in "The Crepes of Wrath.") Comedic aspects derived from overtly stereotypical views have since become a common theme in episodes where the Simpsons visit other countries.^[1]

1 Plot
2 Cultural references
3 Trivia
4 Reception
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

The episode begins with a "bathroom products race" between Bart and Lisa at the bathroom sink, whereby Bart and Lisa each pour a liquid bathroom product into a draining sink to see which gets to the drain first. Lisa wins and Bart complains that she only won because her shampoo was in the "inner lane" to his toothpaste, and that if the water were draining in the opposite direction, he would've won. Lisa explains that the water never drains the other way except in the southern hemisphere, due to the Coriolis Effect (which in reality is inaccurate, see trivia below), but Bart does not believe her.

Bart proceeds to make phone calls to locations in the southern hemisphere in order to prove Lisa wrong. Then Lisa points out that international calls are expensive, so Bart decides to make a collect call instead. He calls Australia, where a little boy picks up. Pretending to represent the "International Drainage Commission", Bart asks him which way the water drains in his toilet. After being informed it's draining clockwise (proving Lisa right), a frustrated Bart asks him to go out and check on the toilets of all the neighbors. The call took six hours to complete, because the boy lives in a remote part of Australia and Bart forgot to hang the phone up after he left the room. Because it was a collect call, the boy's father is billed AUD$900. ("Nine hundred dollaridoos!") The man wants Bart to pay, but Bart taunts him. Bart subsequently receives dozens of collection letters in the mail, but does nothing about them until Lisa finally notices the envelopes piling up, and encourages Bart to tell their parents.

Eventually, Australia indicts Bart for fraud. The United States State Department wants to send him to prison in order to placate the Australian government, but settles upon having Bart publicly apologize in Australia. The family is sent to Australia, where they start exploring Australian culture.

After Bart makes his apology, parliament wants to give him the additional punishment of a boot to his buttocks, using a giant boot (a parody of the Michael P. Fay caning incident in Singapore). Bart and Homer escape the booting and they try to run back to the embassy. After a prolonged standoff, the two governments propose a compromise to the Simpson family: one kick from the Prime Minister, through the gate of the embassy, with a normal shoe. Marge is opposed to the idea, but Bart agrees to have them do the booting. Just as he is about to receive his punishment, he moons the Australians with the words Don't tread on me written on his butt, then hums The Star Spangled Banner. The Simpson family leaves the outraged country in a helicopter in a scene similar to the Fall of Saigon.

In a subplot, Bart brings his pet bullfrog past Customs into Australia where it reproduces and spreads rapidly throughout the country eventually ruining its ecology (a reference to actual events in Australia, see Cultural references below). As the family is being flown home they remark upon the destruction that can be caused by introducing a foreign species into a new environment and laugh at the Australians' misfortune ... as the camera pans out to reveal a koala hanging from one of the helicopter's struts.

[edit] Cultural references

The plot of the story was based on the saga of Michael P. Fay, an American teenager who was caned in Singapore in 1994 for vandalism.
Homer and Bart are pursued by a cavalcade of characters after fleeing the booting that includes native Australians, and a number of men and women on motorcycles, clearly intended to resemble characters from the Mad Max films and the famous Dykes on Bikes of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
When Bart phones Argentina, his call goes to a car with the license plate ADOLF 1, and the person who answers the phone (and misses) is greeted with "Buenas noches, mein Führer," indicating that it is Adolf Hitler. This is a reference to the many Germans emigrating to South America after World War II, but more particularly, to the movie The Boys from Brazil.
When the little Australian boy's father complains to Bart over the phone, Bart eventually hangs up on him with the final comment, "Hey, I think I hear a dingo eating your baby." This is a reference to the Azaria Chamberlain case in which an Australian baby was said to have been eaten by a dingo, a type of wild dog commonly associated with Australia. The line `a dingo's got my baby' became famous as a result of the film adaptation of the story, A Cry In The Dark (also known as Evil Angels), where it was spoken by Meryl Streep in a distinctive fake Australian accent.
The toad overpopulation is a parody of two actual Australian animal infestations: the cane toad, the rabbit
Foster's Lager, which advertises itself as an Australian beer, features prominently in the episode (with a red kangaroo silhouette replacing the red F on the logo), even though it is not popular in Australia.
The keg-sized can of beer that Homer receives in the bar is a parody of an actual Foster's beer size. However in reality the largest can made is of 750ml capacity (.75 litre), and nowhere near the keg-sized portrayal in the cartoon (which Homer thinks isn't big enough).
The "knifey-spooney" scene is a reference to a famous scene from Crocodile Dundee. When Mick Dundee is threatened by a man with a small pocketknife, he takes out a Bowie knife and says, "That's not a knife. This is a knife."^[2]
In the mob chasing Bart and Homer, there is a biker that clearly resembles a character from Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
The architecture of the Parliament is actually a copy of the Parliament of Austria. The sign over the building says Parliament-haus der Austr^(al) ia, the al is interposed. This is a reference to the reccuring incidents provoked by the similar statename.
In the slide presented by Evan Conover, one part of the Australian obsession experienced after Crocodile Dundee was a footlong Vegemite Subway Sandwich.
In a picture or painting in the episode shows Uluru beside trees, in real life the rock is beside shrubs and desert.

[edit] Trivia

This episode perpetuated a popular myth that the Coriolis effect affects the motion of drains in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.^[3] In reality, the Coriolis effect (caused by the spinning of the globe on its axis) affects global weather patterns. The amount of water in a toilet or sink is much too small to be affected by it.
According to the long-distance bill, one of the countries Bart calls in his search of the Southern Hemisphere is Burkina Faso, which is actually in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the souvenir shop, a clerk refers to "the lorry" as one of the places where the bullfrogs have infested. "Lorry" is a British English term used to describe a truck or semi-trailer, and is not generally used in Australia.
When Bart is receiving the booting in the Australian Parliament, the prime minister and other members of parliament are all wearing wigs and gowns. These accessories are strictly confined to the judiciary and not worn in Parliament on any occasion. In defense of The Simpsons writers, Parliament was sitting in judgement that day so the wigs and gowns are an understandable mistake.
As Bart and Homer enter the Parliament (presumably the House of Representatives) the Speaker of the House announces their arrival. Later we learn that the Speaker is, in fact, the Prime Minister. In the Australian House of Representatives, the Prime Minister does not preside over the house, rather, sits to the right-hand side of the Speaker, along with the Government. At the time of airing, the Speaker of the House was Hon. Stephen Martin and the Prime Minister was Paul Keating, of the Labor Party.
The Australian shop clerk (who resembles Squeaky Voiced Teen) claims that the bullfrogs are "like kangaroos but they´re reptiles, they is!" Frogs are not reptiles, they are amphibians. Further, "they´re reptiles, they is!" is an example of Cockney idiom, not of Australian idiom.
When the father of the Australian boy looks at the phone bill, he refers to Bart's phone call as a "collect call". Australians refer to these particular calls as "reverse-charge calls", but the American term "collect call" was used instead.

[edit] Reception

In keeping with other episodes featuring parodies of specific locations (such as A Streetcar Named Marge), the episode was generally poorly received in Australia, due to cliches and, as the authors freely admitted, outright inaccuracies about Australia.

Vanity Fair named Bart vs. Australia as the second best episode of The Simpsons in 2007.^[4]