These days, The Simpsons is considered a staple of modern pop culture, beloved by both children and adults. But there was once a time when the cartoon family were considered hugely controversial — keep in mind, this was long before they started hanging out with Minnie Mouse and Winnie the Pooh.
Not long after The Simpsons first began in 1989, the show was blasted by First Lady Barbara Bush and President George H.W. Bush, who famously proclaimed in a speech that Americans should be “a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.” And if the Bushes hated the early seasons of the show, they must have really hated it when they became literal villains in Season Seven.
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Then there was the widespread hysteria over Bart Simpson-branded T-shirts, which were banned in multiple schools and pulled from the shelves of JCPenney stores, despite the fact that they were the biggest Simpsons retailer in the country. And to be fair, some of the shirts featured profane, unforgivable words such as “Hell” and “Underachiever.”
In addition to the merchandise debate, a number of parents in the early ‘90s flat out prohibited their kids from watching the show altogether. As Inverse points out, this controversy was reflected in the Season Two episode “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge,” in which Bart and Lisa are banned from watching their favorite cartoon, while their mother launches a moralistic crusade against its producers.
But according to creator Matt Groening, these controversies only helped The Simpsons. During a recent appearance at the Annecy Animation Festival in France, where Groening received the Honorary Cristal Award, some of the show’s creatives discussed The Simpsons’ legacy with Variety. Current showrunner Matt Selman argued that the series has been able to reach new audiences in the streaming era. “Being on Disney+ has been somewhat rejuvenating for us,” Selman revealed. “Not that we realized we needed rejuvenation, but we appreciate it.”
He went on to explain that “now instead of the kids watching it on local TV in the afternoon, they can just watch it all, all the time, all day, all forever. We really have that super connection to young people.”
Of course, that connection wasn’t always welcome. But Groening now theorizes that the early Simpsons controversies were actually helpful to the show. “One of the best things that ever happened in the course of the show was that some people forbade the show,” Groening noted. “It became this exotic, forbidden thing. Bart Simpson Underachiever T-shirts were once controversial and banned in schools. So when we did a Lisa Simpson Overachiever T-shirt, but we got in trouble for that because it said ‘Damn I’m Good.’”
Since The Simpsons has been on the air for nearly three decades, clearly Groening is onto something. Which is a good lesson for young creatives out there: Try your best to enrage parents and/or JCPenney.
