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Ahistorical prescience in The Simpsons

by Critical Commons Manager

The Simpsons episode "King of the Hill" from 1998 opens with a prescient parody of the ahistoricism of the Obama era, in which Communism and Nazism are cheerfully conflated into a unified bad-object for post-Cold War popular culture consumers. During the election season of 2012, right-wing comparisons of the Obama administration with both Communism and Fascism elevate the contemporary American political discourse to an empyrean of incoherence. This narratively inconsequential conflation in The Simpsons (the Commie-Nazi fighter features a swastika with a hammer-and-sickle in the middle) might not even register as parody for the generation that could be born under a Romney administration.

Simpsons McBain under attack by Commie-Nazis

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A mise en abyme moment in The Simpsons pits action hero McBain against the ahistorical forces of the Commie-Nazis

from The Simpsons S09E23 (1998)
Creator: Matt Groening
Distributor: Fox
Posted by Critical Commons Manager
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