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Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation. Chris Turner. New York: Da Capo Press, 2004.
To popular culture critic Chris Turner, The Simpsons is not merely an exceptionally successful television show. As he argues in Planet Simpson, this unusual program "has become the new repository of the West's common metaphors" (54). Furthermore, it has become the rallying point for a generation looking for a unifying symbol. "If there was a single cultural signpost announcing the emergence of a generation/era/ movement/whatever; a monument to a widespread yearning for progress, truth, honesty, integrity, joy; a final goddamn rejoinder to every vacuous corporate press release and cloying commercial script and prevaricating political sound bite-it was The Simpsons" (6). This is a lovely promise, to paraphrase Mr. Burns, but perhaps far beyond the promise of a mere cartoon.
Turner offers a reasonable case that The Simpsons has come to play the role that Homer (the Greek poet) or Shakespeare played in earlier centuries. Homer Simpson's annoyed grunt...