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Wow just watched a s2 ep of Married with Children and a s1 ep of the Simpsons, what a time capsule. I grew up watching both these shows, but only now does it strike me that Married's sense humor is conservative aligned and Simpson's is liberal aligned.
I don't even mean this in a political sense, just as in a pure cultural sense. They're both so close in a lot of ways that their differences contrast better and it's a great pop culture case study in a way. Even more interesting that they were both early edgy fox shows.
Both are cartoonish in how far they push things, but Married's humor is strikingly aggressive full of put downs to the tune of "it's funny 'cause it's true". Meanwhile the Simpsons, while plenty rude when it wants to be, plays more on irony than meanness.
Similarly, both say the world is terrible and offer commiseration, but Married has a very everyone for themselves attitude (coupled w/ people being terrible by default) while Simpsons focuses more on systems (coupled w/ people being generally neutral or even wanting to be good).
I really love the Simpsons so much and certainly find it the more enduring show, but a piece of me still loves how completely nihilistic Married is in spite of it's laugh track. It's a family sitcom where everyone is chaotic evil and it revels in it's trashiness.
I'm not sure if I'm noticing this because I grew up or because the 2010's happened (though I suspect it's the former) but these two shows really encapsulate the humor sensibilities of these cultural alignments, at least from my perspective of experiencing them.
I've been thinking about the qualities of conservative humor more after growing up alongside a lot of it and then being away from it in College and LA this past decade. Going home to Florida and conservative relatives is always a shock, but it makes it easier to notice things.
I wonder if I'm conflating political culture an class culture somewhat here too... sometimes it can be a little hard to separate given my points of reference. The people in my Florida life trend lower middle class, while the people in my LA life trend upper middle class.
But maybe my class references aren't as different as I think. What really gives me confidence in identifying the humor style in Married as conservative rather than lower middle class is that it shares sensibilities with conservative talk radio. That's kind of the clincher.
