Title: The Gospel According to the Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World's Most Animated Family

Author: Mark I. Pinsky

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

Publication Date: 2001

ISBN: 1-85174-482-7

Price: USD12.95

Reviewer: Richard Davis, Simpsons fan.

Reviewed: January 2003

	www.thesimpsons.com
	Religion on the Simpsons
	'Don't Have a Sacred Cow, Man!: The Simpsons' love-hate relationship with religion' by Ryan Beiler (Sojouners, Sept/Oct 2001)

Essential Episodes of The Simpsons:

	Bart Gets an F
	Bart Sells His Soul
	Bart's Girlfriend Faith Off
	Homer the Heretic
	Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment
	Hurricane Neddy
	In Marge We Trust
	Like Father, Like Clown
	Lisa the Skeptic
	Simpson Bible Stories
	Treehouse of Horror
	... and many others

This is a brilliant idea for a book, a full-length treatment of the religious in the best television programme ever, The Simpsons. Sadly, time spent reading the book would be better spent watching reruns of the programme itself. However, the book is selling well and now even has a companion study guide.

In the Introduction Pinsky writes of a change that occurred in The Simpsons, from a show loathed and condemned by evangelical and political leaders to one embraced by them. Unfortunately he does not date this change or provide any episodic evidence. Following in this vein Pinsky has adopted a scorecard mentality on behalf of his evangelical audience. Lisa Simpson, for instance, is described as "someone with a strong (but not evangelical) faith in God". This calculus provides the framework for most of the book.

Overall the book reflects a journalistic style rather than a reflective one. Much of the best analysis is in the quotes from others and there are long sections where Pinsky reports what happens in the episodes, rather than musing on their meaning, or how they increase our understanding of either religion, culture or the show. There are many episode descriptions, but they are not always named, which makes viewing them difficult, so one must rely on cross referencing with other sources, such as websites or Simpsons reference books. It would have been helpful to have a list of essential episodes or at least those referred to in the book (I have tried to pull together such a list above).

The book also has an apologetic tone, trying to convince evangelicals that watching The Simpsons is not a short cut to hell. I get the impression that his target audience are those who think all music should be songs of praise, all TV should be preaching, and worship the only activity for Sunday. The tone is written for those who believe that the culture of the world is corrupt. Pinsky attempts to provide reasons to watch the show, as if the humour is not enough. The show hardly needs extra evangelical viewers. It's so popular that in one survey its characters were more widely known than (the then) Vice-President Gore.

At places it was embarrassing to read this book. Pinsky misses the point and joke of many gags and scenes in the episodes he reviews. In one of the most overtly religious episodes 'Homer the Heretic' Homer gives up going to church. As part of his justification for staying home Sunday morning he asks his more faithful and dutiful wife, "Isn't God everywhere?" Pinsky interprets this is this way: "What he is asking is, How does God want to be worshipped? It is a question people of most cultures have been asking for thousands of years." Nonsense. Homer doesn't wonder about worshipping God, he wants to watch the ball game. Sleeping in and watching television in the warmth of his living room instead of sitting in an unheated church and "hearing about how I'm going to hell" makes a lot of sense to Homer. This is the cultural phenomenon, people haven't stopped believing in God, they just see the Church as a boring, irrelevant and out of touch with their lifestyle. One could imagine Homer saying, "Marge, if God had meant us to go to Church there wouldn't be the Ball game on TV on Sunday." In the same episode, when God departs from Homer he says, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to appear on a tortilla in Mexico." Pinsky asks, "Is this a dig at believers who report seeing religious visions in unlikely places?" He answers, "Clearly not, because God says he will actually be present in the tortilla." D'oh! Pinsky has confused God with the cartoon character of God. In the end, after nearly burning his house down, Homer returns to Church and promptly falls asleep.

The episode 'A Streetcar Named Marge' is about the Springfield Community Center's production of the classic play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Marge Simpson plays Blanche DuBois while her evangelical neighbour Ned Flanders plays opposite her as Stanley Kowalski. This character, played by Marlon Brando in the 1951 film is described on the filmsite website as being a "sexually-powerful, animalistic, primal brute," quite the opposite of Flanders himself. That first movie production of the play was very controversial, upsetting precisely the same type of people that Ned is. He is on the Citizen's Committee for Moral Hygiene; the original film upset the Legion of Decency. Pinsky says that Ned was selected for the part of Kowalski due to his muscular physique not recognising the irony of a moralist playing such an objectionable bore and rapist.

It is ironic that Flanders would almost certainly ban his children from watching the show they star in. This is the problem with the book. It fails to see the most obvious things about the show, while having little appreciation for its depth of humour. The Simpsons appeals to a wide audience since it is funny on so many levels. Fans are not insulted by Simpsons guide books that have "What you may have missed" sections under each episode, no one could get every cultural reference or visual gag. But writers of books such as this should do their homework.

The best chapter is that on Jews, focusing on the 'Like Father, Like Clown' episode. Based on the film the Jazz Singer (1927), which was based in turn on Samson Raphaelson's 1921 short story 'The Day of Atonement', the episode recasts the father/son relationship as between Krusty the Clown and his father Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky. The chapter is well researched and combines a sensitive appreciation of the episode with extra material not readily accessible to the ordinary viewer. Unlike other chapters it offered something to invite revisiting the episode. Not surprisingly Mark Pinsky is a Jew himself.

Pinsky, however, disappoints more than satisfies. He fails his readers by missing the significance of The Simpsons being a sitcom. The genre of the Simpsons has important implications for the interpretation of the Simpson family as a moral realm. It is symptomatic of sit-coms that each episode starts and finishes in the same place, in this case domestic bliss for the Simpson family and peace and harmony for their town of Springfield. It is this structure that guarantees that the family and the situation in which the comedy occurs is preserved intact week-to-week. Pinsky sees this stability as an endorsement of traditional family values. If that were the case then 'Married with Children' would be an equally good example of family values.

The book contains some interesting information and trivia about the Simpsons that I hadn't encountered before. Some examples: God has five fingers, while all human characters have only four. Less interesting is Pinsky's description of the First Church of Springfield. It "appears to seat 100 to 150 worshippers - typical in size among American churches according to a 2001 study by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research and Hartford Seminary-with a center aisle dividing the rows of wooden pews."

Tony Campolo provided the Foreword of the book. His literary contribution to the work is awful. His marketing contribution is probably more significant. Darling of evangelicals, he was clearly selected for the purpose of marketing the book. Campolo gives his own spin on The Simpsons, instead of saying much about the book itself.

I used to prefer watching The Simpsons instead of the 6 o'clock news because it gave a more accurate picture of contemporary culture. Even if The Simpsons had no religious content or was even anti-religious I would encourage Christians to watch it. This is because the church has a mission within western culture that must be grounded in realism about the culture itself. The Simpsons critiques and shows culture as it really is, including religion, while being part of the culture. It's wonderful stuff.

Given the popularity of The Simpsons among the general public, such a book could have had wider appeal. An opportunity was lost to relate the religious in the Simpsons to real life and was an opportunity to show the continuing relevance of religion in today's world. I can't agree with Tony Campolo that this book "is just fun to read!" The show is however, fun to watch, whatever one makes of the religious element in it.