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Satire In The Simpsons

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“Now that everyone I love is gone all I have left is everything the river carries me on” — Bart Simpson, Mr. Burns. The Simpsons is an adult cartoon show based on an unorthodox nuclear family with a satirical point of view. The show parodies parts of popular culture in a humorous format to provide societal commentary. In Anne Washburn’s book, Mr. Burns episodes of The Simpsons series, specifically “Cape Feare”, are used as a way for a group of survivors to remember their past lives. This act of remembrance helps them maintain their sanity. In Washburn's’ play, The Simpsons resembles its real attributes as a pop culture artifact by bringing diverse groups of people together in a shared societal experience through the use of nostalgia in recreating …show more content…
Burns brings together the people in a story through a cartoon show that makes everyone work together for a common goal of making humanity remember its past. In the third act of Mr. Burns, the climactic end come to the troupe turning the story of “Cape Feare” into their own narrative and a dark tale of the past. The show features a musical in which they replicate all scenes with a twist of Sideshow Bob being replaced with Mr. Burns. This ending concludes a dramatized line from Bart talking about humanity's past and everything in its past coming to extinction. In the end, they break free from their comfort and realize open heartedly that there is no need to remember the past in which they’ve already lived. They do not have to stay awake in the fears of their apocalyptic life; they let go of the past by creating a whole new parody to the Simpsons Cape Feare …show more content…
The Simpsons usage of allusion, “The intent driving many allusions is for the audience to bring to mind certain things and to let other connections flow freely” said by William Irwin and J.R. Lombardo, which states that The Simpsons try to use the effect of illusion to reconnect things that we have in society. Thus, in terms of Mr. Burns, they use their connection of bringing the past, such as the commercials and the Simpsons episode, into their current state to create the effect of their

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