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Hey, remember months ago when I finished rewatching The Simpsons and I said I'd write a thread about how bad Lisa's characterization is in the new episodes?
No? Oh well, here it is anyway:
No? Oh well, here it is anyway:
Right off the bat, the writers knew exactly how to write Lisa, and this can be seen from her first major moment in the show. In Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Homer is out of the house late on Christmas Eve, trying desperately to find money to buy presents for the kids.
Patty, one of Homer's sisters-in-law makes a disparaging comment about him while he's gone. Lisa respons as follows:
Patty, annoyed at this response, tells Lisa to go back to watching cartoons, which she immediately does. This tells us two things about Lisa:
1) Lisa is insightful, intelligent, very aware of how the world around her works, and cares deeply about it.
1) Lisa is insightful, intelligent, very aware of how the world around her works, and cares deeply about it.
2) In spite of this, Lisa is still very much an eight year-old, and isn't immune to most of the ways kids her age are manipulated.
Throw in a love of jazz and some crushing loneliness, and they've already established the Lisa we all know from the episodes we remember.
Throw in a love of jazz and some crushing loneliness, and they've already established the Lisa we all know from the episodes we remember.
However, if the characters in this show never changed, it wouldn't be the series that coined the term Flanderization.
For those who don't know, Flanderization refers to when one aspect of a character gets exaggerated and becomes their whole personality.
For those who don't know, Flanderization refers to when one aspect of a character gets exaggerated and becomes their whole personality.
The obvious example of this is of course, Ned Flanders, who very quickly goes to from "Homer's well-off neighbor who's a good person and a Christian" to a religious zealot.
But Flanders isn't the only character this happens to. In fact, it happens to pretty much every character in the show. Homer goes from a not very smart caring father with anger issues to an unrealistically dumb man controlled by emotion whims.
Bart goes from a fairly complex character who feels the need to act out for attention and struggles heavily with school to a hellish prankster who constantly hurts his best friend.
Marge goes from an overworked and underappreciated mother to a naive doormat.
Although this ruined the ability for the show to have more emotional and complex plots, there's a definite logic to them. They took the aspects that got the most laughs and kept playing them up.
Although this ruined the ability for the show to have more emotional and complex plots, there's a definite logic to them. They took the aspects that got the most laughs and kept playing them up.
But a question then arrises: how does Lisa change to fit the show's new normal? Lisa has never gotten a lot of laughs. You tend to empathize with Lisa. You feel bad when she's upset. You feel hope when she does. Very rarely is she the butt of the joke.
So how do you Flanderize Lisa? Well, that's the problem. You can't. But that leaves the two problems.
First, Lisa's character works because the world around her feels like the real world, but when the world becomes more and more cartoony, it's harder to take it seriously.
First, Lisa's character works because the world around her feels like the real world, but when the world becomes more and more cartoony, it's harder to take it seriously.
Second, Lisa has a deep understanding of societal injustice. The Simpsons was originally an anti-sitcom. Pointing out issues with the status quo was a major part of it. Granted, they were far from perfect, but it still fit the premise.
As the show went on though, it got immensely popular and BECAME the new status quo. As a result, the show lost interest in fighting against it, instead choosing to embrace it. This left a character like Lisa with nothing to fight against.
So, Lisa had to change, but she couldn't change into an exaggerated version of herself. That wouldn't work anymore. Instead, she had to become a completely different person with superficial similarities.
"Lisa is smart." "Lisa likes jazz." "Lisa is an activist." "Lisa is lonely." That's about all we get out of new Lisa. In this format, she needs to be able to be the butt of the joke, so she often doesn't know what she's talking about for her activism.
She's smart, so good grades need to be more important to her than her morals. In one new episode, she fakes being part Native Ametican to get a better grade. In another, she covers up the fact that she thinks she killed Martin Prince because she's worried it'll effect her future.
Perhaps most apparenly, we can look at how the show treats Lisa. In early episodes, Lisa is often alone and depressed, but we're shown she has a bright future ahead of her. She's a talented musician and a brilliant mind. She could literally do anything she wanted.
Lisa episodes often give us glimpses of this. When we get to see her future, she's the top student at Harvard and President of the United States. While neither of these are exactly canon, it shows what kind of things she could do.
But in modern episodes, we actually have an established, canon future that's been shown a few times. In it, Lisa is miserably married to Milhouse, living her worst fear of becoming her mother. Other futures we see for her now are all similar.
Perhaps the most memorable Lisa episode is Lisa's Substitute, one of the most bittersweet in the series. In it, Lisa connects with a substitute teacher, who eventually has to leave. It's the first time Lisa feels respected, and it crushes her to lose that.
But the episode ends on a positive note: one that says "you are Lisa Simpson." Lisa may feel alone and powerless now, but she has a bright future ahead of her. Because of the person that she is.
And to contrast that we have a modern episode, where Marge calls back to this episode by giving Lisa the same message to cheer her up. It has no effect on her now. It's meaningless. She's just a lonely kid now.
A character like her has no place in a cartoony world, and that's where she's stuck. In order for her to regain who she was, the show would have to oppose he status quo again, but given what the show is now, prospects of that are as bleak as Lisa's future.
