"When in 1989 Matt Groening introduced on America’s televisions the cartoon The Simpsons, he probably had not dreamt that it would become the longest played cartoon show and longest played sitcom of all times in the history of the United States. The Simpsons, shortly after its rocket take-off, pushed aside the “perfect” family of Bill Cosby and assumed the position amongst the 30 most popular TV shows ever. Since its debut, the show has broadcasted over 400 episodes and reached its nineteenth season. The season’s 18 finale was the show’s 400th episode, and year 2007 marked the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons franchise.
The show could call itself controversial right after it left its cradle.
The villain Bart rebelling against his dysfunctional family walked away often unpunished which increased his popularity among young sympathizers. The guardians of moral values did not like it though. It had not taken that long until conservative schools prohibited the show with everything that could propagate it.
At the time, then-current President George H. W. Bush proclaimed: "We're going to strengthen the American family to make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons." The prohibited fruit just gained its attraction. Americans fell in love with the show and have been watching it with the almost same attention till nowadays. Its idioms and neologisms has spread throughout the world to find its place in the language of many English speaking countries. Mark Liberman said that The Simpsons has “taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions”. The Simpsons have lived to see The Simpsons Movie, a feature-length film, which was released in July 2007, and has grossed more than 600 million dollars worldwide.
One of the goals of the show was to criticize twisted family values; another – broader – was to set the mirror to the babbittry of “middle American fogey”. Soon the goal evolved to a criticism of vices and hypocrisy of the whole American society through the political and socio-economic spectrum.
A typical feature of the show is that everything which is “excessive”, everything which is relished by exaggeration and extremism is placed back to the ‘center’ with the use of humor and sarcasm. Social phenomena which are taken by vast American population rather seriously: feminism, patriotism, justice, solidarity, equality, presidential election, racism and xenophobia, family values, adoring of Hollywood idols and so on, are ridiculed and dethroned from their dogmatic pedestals. The show alleviates the pathos with which “official, politically correct America” treats the “values”. The Simpsons has really shaken up American idealization and conformity, and since its start it has been serving as a bitter reminder that a refreshing elevated nap can inconspicuously turn to rest on the laurels, one-sidedness, as Carl Gustav Jung calls it. Of course it is not something completely new in the times of modern cinematography. We have had a chance to observe similar process on the most popular show of all times: M.A.S.H. as well as from other influential works."

C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

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