For more than a dozen years, Fox Television has infiltrated a family by the name of Simpson. We've watched Homer and Marge and their 2.3 children -- Bart, Lisa and baby Maggie -- dream big and lose bigger, make up and make out, and blow off steam and responsibilities. (That last is particularly dangerous when it happens at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, where Homer works as a technical supervisor, or a supervising technician -- or is it the safety inspector?)
We've cheered at noble gestures, such as when Marge rescued her family from a herd of stampeding rhinoceroses, or when Homer moonlighted as a department store Santa so he could buy his children presents. And we've hung our heads during the low points, like when Homer vomited in the bushes after he made Marge feed him nachos so he could use his hands to play a video game. ("Come on," he insists when she balks, "you're always saying we should do things as a couple.") We see ourselves mirrored in them, even if the mirror is borrowed from the fun house.
The gender roles at first appear hackneyed: Homer is the ur-guy for whom what is lacking in brains is made up for in belly; and Marge is the mom we never had, or wish we never had, or maybe the mom we fear we're turning into. She cooks, she cleans, she nags; she takes her humiliated, reeking, semipenitent husband to her bosom with a tube-lipped smooch and a gravelly, "Aw, Homie!" But the ironic distance from which we see this couple adds substance. When Homer's behavior spotlights the chasm between the ideal father and the dumb cluck who tries to fill that role, Ozzie and Harriet-type ideals are called into question. Similarly, through her frequent rebellions Marge turns the image of the long-suffering wife on its head.
