Zahra Gordon

When I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to watch The Simpsons because my parents thought the jokes were too adult. So of course, this was a show I would sneak to watch sometimes. Now that I’m an adult, I’m free to watch The Simpsons if I like. I guess its just not as exciting without the adrenaline of pushing the “last” button on the remote every time an adult passes the room. Oh how times have changed. 

The other night I just happened to be watching the show with a few friends and there was the famous family on a mission in Brazil to find a missing orphan Lisa Simpson had befriended. While watching I realized that the missing adrenaline rush was not the only reason I stopped watching. 

I understand that mainstream-television’s job is not to inspire critical thinking among the masses, but why should I laugh at the glaring stereotypes, generalizations and gross simplifications of Brazilian society and culture presented in this episode? There was nothing funny to me about the fact that crime was treated as if integral to Brazilian culture and livelihood or the fact that the society was hyper-sexualized. I highly doubt that any Brazilian children’s programming has strippers seductively straddling ABC blocks as they were in this episode. Then there was the book that fell from Homer’s suitcase, How to Loot Brazil, as if Americans need any pointers on imperialism or as if  imperialism was a light-hearted topic. Did I mention that almost everyone (not everyone, just almost) the family met was “yellow”? Brazil has the highest population of Africans outside of the continent FYI.

I know that for most The Simpsons appears to be a relatively innocent cartoon but these relatively innocent assumptions/portrayals influence the way people (who do not know anything different) think about the rest of the world. So the general population laughs when Homer is kidnapped or when the family takes a Conga line rather than a taxi to get to their hotel or at the rats in the favelas painted in bright colors to distract tourists as Lisa says, but they have no idea about the history of slavery and racism that created the favelas; no idea about  increases in crime directly related to massive layoffs by companies like General Electric; no idea about rampant racialized police brutality.

Yet, I do understand that it isn’t mainstream-television’s job to inspire critical thinking among the masses. I might be better off thinking like Bart: he thought that they spoke Spanish in Brazil, not Portuguese.