Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of December 17th.
_______________________________________________________________________________
It is the 351st day of the year, leaving 14 days in 2021.
The series was created by Matt Groening as an interlude during The Tracey Ulman Show, a skit-comedy series hosted by the British actress. The animated sketches usually came before and after commercial breaks, and proved exceedingly popular. A couple of years later, The Simpsons began as a half-hour series.
Then, as now, it was based on a simple sitcom formula, with the exception that it was anmated. It featured a basic white American suburban family, played for laughs, with Homer, a dopey husband; Marge, the resourceful wife; Bart, the bratty 10-year-old son; and Lisa, a talented 8-year-old daughter. Later, a child was born, and Maggie remains the perennial infant, forever speechless but communicative by sucking on a pacifier.
The family was based on Groening's own -- only the surname and the boy's name was changed. It was set in an anonymous Springfield, partly because as many at 29 states have a town with that name.
But it was a hit. As of today, it has the same number of episodes as Babe Ruth had home runs -- 714. And both proved to redefine the landscape. Ruth led to the explosion of power hitting and home runs. Before The Simpsons, cartoons aimed at adults were rare; even rarer was an animated series in network prime-time. Today, entire stations are geared to such programming.
No comments:
Post a Comment