The Simpsons is a traditional loving patriarchal television family with an idiot father, smart-alecky children and the wise and patient mother who keeps things together. They live in a small town called Springfield within a tightly knit community of generally endearing neighbours, who, somehow all get along.
The Simpson family and friends act as a cross section of American culture. They are never fully developed characters, but icons of belief. Because it is a cartoon series, characters in The Simpsons can be one dimensional, they can represent a code "a set of values and meaning share by users, the producers and readers of the text" (Thwaites et al. 1994 p.75). As the patriarch of the family, Homer is the social code of middle class. He is used to show all the contradictions and cultural myths of the American consumer lifestyle. He works for the largest employer in town; he has a wife and three kids, a house in the suburbs and a station wagon in the driveway. In his free time Homer frequents Moe's Tavern and the bowling alley. Homer is also a denotation of masculine normality.
Each episode contains continual reference to history, literature, science, politics and philosophy. Its multilayered writing allows for popular culture to appear next to esoteric. Guest appearances by bands from NSync to Sonic Youth share screen time with literary and historical references such as Sideshow Bob, jailed for trying to kill Bart, wore the same prisoner number as Jean Val jean in Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables". Dyer (1993 p.278) believes entertainment fails to address issues such as class, patriarchal and sex struggles. The Simpsons is perhaps an exception to this rule.
Possibly the main theme of The Simpsons is class, and class relations in the workplace. Homer works in a mundane job at the town's nuclear power plant, and has little job satisfaction. The nuclear power plant is run by capitalist Charles Montgomery Burns (hereafter Mr Burns), who is a vindictive and tyrannical boss.
Groening agreed and this was the beginning of what was soon to become The Simpons. ... From the Apu the foreign Kwik-E-Mart owner to the Simpons neighbors, the super Christians, the Flanders. ... With the Simpons there are no egos with cast and they are allowed to go out and try new things away from The Simpsons. ...
