Lab+8

Cultural jamming is a clever way of combining controversial topics with mainstream ideas from our culture and presenting it through a specific medium – whether it is through images such as graffiti or enticing videos featured on websites such as The Onion. Over the years, The Simpsons has devised a cunning method of recognizing today’s controversial issues and incorporating them into the show, consequently, portraying an interesting message that oftentimes gets the audience thinking. As I finished reading the article, “Simpsons’ opening a suddenly dark turn”, I began to understand that the author Eddie Kim finds this sort of cultural jamming harmful to The Simpsons’ image as a comedy television show. However, it is also necessary to get some crucial messages across. The dramatic opening left viewers stunned, confused and some were even upset that their favourite television show is beginning to take on serious issues. Because the opening was so unexpected, it worked. The audience would have never expected so many topics thrown at them at once. In turn, they begin to really think about those topics and what they mean exactly. The creators of The Simpsons were not necessarily looking to make their audience laugh. I think using popular television shows such as The Simpsons or Family Guy is a superb way of reaching out to the world to address serious subject matters. Unfortunately, many times it is the only way of connecting with the world and raising such topics since many in fact do not read or watch the news, and if they do, they do not realize how grave some matters are. Instead they wish to remain ignorant and naïve, comfortably numb.