The Day the Violence Died
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"The Day the Violence Died" is the eighteenth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season, which originally aired March 17, 1996.[2] It was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Wesley Archer.[2] Kirk Douglas guest starred as Chester J. Lampwick, Alex Rocco as Roger Meyers Jr., Jack Sheldon as the Amendment and Suzanne Somers as herself.[2]
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[edit] Plot
During a parade honouring Itchy and Scratchy, Bart meets an elderly poor bum, Chester J. Lampwick, who claims to have been the creator of Itchy. After he proves it to Bart with his animated short "Manhattan Madness" from 1919, the film itself is destroyed by the projector. Bart decides to take Lampwick to his house, where he becomes a big problem for the family. They want him to leave, but Bart does not want him to live as a bum forever. Lampwick then decides, with the help of Bart and Lionel Hutz, to sue Itchy and Scratchy Studios for $800 billion. Lampwick's case seems shaky until Bart suddenly remembers that he saw an original animation cell by Lampwick for sale by Comic Book Guy. He buys it quickly with Homer's money and the inscription on the cell proves Lampwick to have been the true creator of Itchy. Roger Myers Jr., chairman of Itchy and Scratchy Studios, admits that his father (who is the founder of the Studios) did steal Itchy from Lampwick, but still rebuffs at him by saying that animation is based on plagiarism. Nevertheless the judge rules in favor of Lampwick and orders Meyers to pay Lampwick the $800 billion. While Bart is happy that Lampwick is no longer a bum, he is sad when he realises that by helping Lampwick he has killed Itchy and Scratchy as the studio is bankrupt and is forced to close down.
When Bart and Lisa discover that Itchy and Scratchy has been replaced by a clever parody of Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill", they frantically search for a way to resurrect the cartoon. After Lampwick (who now owns a handful of money, a solid gold house, and a rocket car) refuses to underwrite it, they stumble upon an obscure animation legal precedent that would do the trick, only to discover that two other young enterprising kids, Lester and Eliza (who resemble the early crude caricatures of Bart and Lisa from The Tracey Ullman Show), have beaten them to it by discovering that post office mascot Mr. Zip had been ripped off from the studio and secured a large cash settlement from the government. Additionally, the two had been solving other Springfieldian problems (Apu's public nudity case and Krusty's reuniting with his estranged wife.) Bart and Lisa leave, disturbed that their spotlight has been stolen, and the audience never learns the legal precedent that Bart and Lisa had discovered. The episode ends with Lester skateboarding by the Simpson home, in a sinister way (Similar to the way Bart skates past the Bush household in Two Bad Neighbors).
[edit] Goofs
Bart's line "I knew I had seen this picture (the one made by Chester in 1919) somewhere else" indicates he saw the picture after seeing Chester's movie. But he saw it before seeing the movie.
[edit] Production
Nancy Cartwright recalls in her autobiography My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy that Kirk Douglas's recording session—directed by Josh Weinstein—was fraught with interruptions. Douglas refused to wear the earphones supplied to him in the recording studio, so was unable to hear Weinstein from his booth. Cartwright directed Douglas through the scene in which Lampwick tells Bart he created Itchy & Scratchy. It required three takes as Douglas continuously misread the line "I changed all that" as "I charged all that".[3]
[edit] Implications of the episode
At the beginning of the episode Bart and Lisa are watching an Itchy & Scratchy marathon celebrating 75 years, however it is later revealed that the first Itchy & Scratchy cartoon was made in 1928, ie. only 68 years before 1996 when this episode aired. However, the studio opened in 1921. The first Itchy and Scratchy cartoon "Steamboat Itchy" first appeared in the episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie". The credits read: Written, Directed, and Created by Roger Myers; Music by Roger Myers and George Gershwin, Produced by Roger Myers and Joseph P. Kennedy. The Lester and Eliza drawings are very similar to the original drawings of Bart and Lisa used in the Tracey Ullman Show. The first part of the Schoolhouse Rock parody reappears in "Bart-Mangled Banner".
[edit] Cultural references
Roger Meyers Sr. being cryogenically frozen is a reference to the myth that Walt Disney's head was similarly frozen.[1] (Disney was actually cremated.)
The "Amendment To Be" segment is a parody of the educational show Schoolhouse Rock,[1] and more specifically I'm Just a Bill, and refers to the Flag Desecration Amendment.
The episode draws upon many classical animations of the early-to-mid 20th century such as Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat, as well as animation moguls like Walt Disney. The character Roger Meyers, Sr. is based on the late animator, and many of the situations from this episode have their basis in fact or legend about the mogul.
The relationship between Roger Meyers, Sr., and Chester J. Lampwick mirrors the real-life relationship between Disney and his chief animator in the 1920s, Ub Iwerks, who has been credited by many as having co-created Mickey Mouse. The title of Lampwick's cartoon, "Itchy the Lucky Mouse" is a reference to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character co-created by Disney and Iwerks for Universal Studios. When Disney split from the company, superficial changes were made to Oswald to create Mickey Mouse, similarly to how Meyers redesigned Itchy. In that case however, Iwerks was part of the design team for Mickey, and is credited as such.
The first Itchy & Scratchy cartoon entitled Steamboat Itchy which was created in 1928, is in reference to Steamboat Willie, the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon which was also created in 1928. Roger Meyers, Sr., is again compared to Walt Disney when Joseph P. Kennedy is listed as a producer on Meyers' "Steamboat Itchy" cartoon in this episode. Walt Disney's cartoons were distributed to movie theatres from 1936 to 1952 by RKO, a movie studio founded when three Kennedy-owned companies merged with RCA in 1928. However, Joseph Kennedy sold all of his RKO stock in 1931 due to pressures from the Depression, so Disney and Kennedy never, in fact, worked together in Hollywood.
In this episode, Roger Meyers Jr. points out the well observed fact that many cartoons, especially the early 1960s Hanna-Barbera, are plagiarized live-action television shows and deeply resemble celebrities of the time. Examples include The Flintstones being a copy of The Honeymooners, Top Cat being based on Sgt. Bilko and, in one of the occasional times the show breaks the fourth wall, The Simpsons character Chief Wiggum being an animated counterpart of Edward G. Robinson. Wiggum, in the court at the time, looks at Meyers when he says the latter.
The relationship between Roger Meyers, Sr. and Chester J. Lampwick also mirrors that of the creators of Felix the Cat: Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer. Like Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, Pat Sullivan owned the cartoon studio and took all the credit, and it wasn't revealed until much later that Otto Messmer had been chiefly responsible for most of Felix's early development. The rocket car parked outside Chester J. Lampwicks solid gold house appears very similar to the real life car Blue Flame which held the world landspeed record from 1970-1983, the last US based car to hold the record. The cartoon "Itchy and Scratchy Meets Fritz The Cat" is a reference to the 1972 animated film Fritz the Cat that depicted drug use and sexual situations openly and was the first animated movie to be rated X (in the days before the NC-17 rating). During the Schoolhouse Rock parody, after the amendment is ratified, a character runs past the screen and imitates Curly Howard's trademark whooping noise. The episode title is a parody of the line "The day the music died" from Don McLean's song American Pie. Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp is at the top of the screen by the railroad tracks when the parade first enters Bum Town. The run down ‘Worst Western’ motel Roger Meyers Jr. resides in when Itchy & Scratchy closes is a parody of the ‘Best Western’ hotel chain.
Lester and Eliza are possibly references to Beakman's sidekicks on the TV show Beakman's World. They are also drawn in the early style of Bart and Lisa from The Tracey Ullman Show shorts.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Martyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian (2000). The Day the Violence Died. BBC. Retrieved on 2007-07-30.
- ^ a b c Richmond, Ray; Antonia Coffman (1997). The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to our Favorite Family. Harper Collins Publishers, pg. 199. ISBN 0-00-638898-1.
- ^ Cartwright, Nancy (2000). "Spartacus!", My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 222 – 228. ISBN 0747547483.
[edit] External links
