The Simpsons Dying a Slow, Woke Death

I’ve just found out the person who voices Bart, isn’t a 10-year-old boy. The person who voices Groundskeeper Willie, isn’t an angry Scotsman, and the person who voices Mr. Burns isn’t a real-life evil billionaire. I find this highly offensive and I demand they get appropriate voice actors to replace these charlatans! Obviously, I jest. But this is the absurd level society has reached. Welcome to the Death of The Simpsons (Woke Death).

As a kid, I loved The Simpsons, the American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening about a dysfunctional, Middle-American family. Sure, I’m Australian, but the issues covered in the earlier Simpsons’ episodes were universal, and it was funny.

I pretty much regularly watched The Simpsons up until around the time of the 2007 Simpsons Movie, and then I moved to China where I pretty much didn’t watch The Simpsons again, apart from the odd episode now and again. I kind of grew out of it, I suppose, and just wasn’t that interested in The Simpsons anymore.

Many fans will argue over when The Simpsons so-called Golden Age ended, but it’s usually around Season 9 in 1997, with the episode “The Principal and the Pauper” commonly cited as a turning point in the show’s quality. I’m not here to discuss that, but the number of viewers has been in decline for many years now. In this presentation, though, I’m not here to discuss why this happened. I’m here to discuss what’s happened in the last few years.

In 2017, the character of Apu, one of my favourite characters, who was voiced by Hank Azaria, was cancelled, essentially. A 2017 documentary called The Problem with Apu, written by comedian Hari Kondabolu, criticised the character as a South Asian stereotype showing bias along racial/ethnic lines, and in the same vein as “blackface”, critics referred to Azaria’s portrayal of Apu as “brownvoice”. I am not joking.

In 2018, the boys at South Park lampooned the documentary by creating an episode called “The Problem with a Poo”, where Mr. Hankey is expelled and sent to a land where people don’t care about bigotry and hate – Springfield!

In 2019, Disney took over 21st Century Fox, meaning The Simpsons, among other franchises and studios, became property of The Walt Disney Company. Yes, here were go.

In 2020, the powers that be decided that black characters could no longer be voiced by white voice actors because of the “stereotypes and bias it perpetuated”. Characters like Carl, who was originally voiced by Azaria, was re-cast with an African American voice actor, Alex Désert, who now also voices police sergeant Lou.

Homer strangling Bart has been a long-running gag with more than 140 strangulations being depicted throughout the first 31 seasons (not just Homer and Bart, but mostly). But apparently the times have changed, and now it’s suddenly become unacceptable to depict scenes of a cartoon father strangling his cartoon children, “Homer has stopped strangling Bart in The Simpsons and it’s about time”, says the Guardian. Although other reports are saying that “The Simpsons Co-Creator Says Homer Will Keep On Strangling Bart: Nothing’s Getting Tamed”. So I really don’t know what’s going on.

For 30 years, Dr. Hibbert was voiced by Harry Shearer, but in 2021, the producers decided that the voice actor’s real ancestry had to match Dr. Hibbert’s fictional ancestry, you know, to appease Black Lives Matter or whatever, so they changed the voice actor to Kevin Michael Richardson. The same thing happened to all the other non-white (what am I saying?), non-yellow characters. It’s strange, you can’t be discriminated against and denied a job based on the colour of your skin, but, you now apparently can’t be given an audition or a job to voice a fictional cartoon character that has a skin colour that doesn’t match the colour of your real skin. Harry Shearer found the whole thing rather ridiculous and said, “I have a very simple belief about acting… The job of the actor is to play someone who they’re not.” Hear, hear. It’s funny, these new voice actors had to mimic the voices of the old characters in order to not get the fans upset. So basically, we have a black guy mimicking a white guy playing a black doctor. It’s just absurd when you think about it.

Anyway, that sort of sums up where The Simpsons is at. It was once a loved TV show, but now is in its death throes. I can’t see how this can go on for much longer. Unfortunately, these people who are constantly crying “racism”, are probably the most racist people of all, in that all they constantly seem to do is categorise people into racial and ethnic groups. I think that probably they are very unhappy people. They’re certainly not interested in unity and togetherness, quite the opposite. They’re more interested in hatred and division. Rest in peace The Simpsons. You were once great, but Disney or whoever has slowly destroyed you.

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn