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Through the Screen, into the School: Education, subversion, ourselves in The Simpsons

There is little question that popular television shows influence the shaping of social norms, identities, and the ways we navigate daily life. High profile shows are also a common magnet for critical attention. No primetime television show has provoked as wide a range of reactions as Fox's The Simpsons. From shock radio to public broadcasting pundits pour condemnations, accolades, and adulations for this unique cartoon sitcom. From the masses to the literary elite, the world's most famous animated family touch one and all, from the raw funny bone to the higher intellect. In a parallel vein, there is no lack of strong and varied opinion regarding education in the USA, and few venues do a more effective job at representing its core controversies than this weekly cartoon. Here I angle a mirror at the primetime television screen and suggest some ways this animated series reflects inner, outer, and systemic relationships with education. The beauty of The Simpsons in this regard is that the translucent motility of an ostensibly average nuclear family in the anywhere USA town of Springfield buffers the gaze just enough to allow us room to laugh, however uneasily.