the simpsons

Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 22, No. 3, August 2005, pp. 207 Á/222 ‘‘Are We There Yet?’’: Searching for Springfield and The Simpsons’ Rhetoric of Omnitopia Andrew Wood & Anne Marie Todd The Simpsons’ visual and textual depiction of Springfield as a typical American city provides an insightful critique of the modern project. We demonstrate how America’s longest running sitcom depicts urban life as a mutable environment whose disparate locales convey their inhabitants to a ubiquitous, ever-present continuum that we term ‘‘omnitopia.’’ In depicting Springfield as omnitopia, the show offers a cartoon version of public life marked by dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, mutability, mobility, and commodification. The study of these components provides a means to interpret and critique the increasing decline of locales in the urban environment. Keywords: Locale; Modernity; Omnitopia; Popular Culture; Simpsons; Urbanity It’s a bit of a mystery, yes, but if you look at the clues, you can figure it out. (Lisa Simpson, episode DABF10, on the location of Springfield)1 Clouds part, revealing a dystopian landscape complete with nuclear power plant, prison, and a tire yard. Beyond the foreground is an urban grid of ugly buildings and featureless slabs; further in the background are a farmer’s crops and undulating hills. The image fades as we zoom toward a vaguely art deco-looking elementary school. Inside, a scowling boy writes on a chalkboard. Bart Simpson is the second character appearing in this scene. The first is the city: Springfield, the hometown of America’s favorite cartoon family. Initially, one might focus on Bart, the roving force who animates the scenes that follow. After all, we know Bart well, recognizing his unchanging blue shorts and perpetually spiky haircut. However, unlike the stable guidelines that define Bart and the other members of the show’s yellow-skinned, fourAndrew Wood is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Anne Marie Todd is Assistant Professor of ´ Communication Studies at San Jose State University. Correspondence to: HGH 210, One Washington Square, ´ ´ San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0112, USA. Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu; annemarie.todd@ sjsu.edu. This paper was presented to the Media Studies Interest Group at the Western States Communication Association 2004 Conference, Albuquerque, NM. ISSN 0739-3180 (print)/ISSN 1479-5809 (online) # 2005 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/07393180500200878 208 A. Wood & A. M. Todd fingered, overbite-endowed cast, the character of Springfield alters itself according to the dictates of plot, becoming almost unrecognizable in its many guises and yet offering* paradoxically* a consistent comment on the practice of modernity. In this essay, we focus our attention upon this character, placing the backdrop in the foreground. We propose investigating The Simpsons as a text embedded in U.S. and global popular culture whose humorous episodes offer serious critiques of contemporary urban life. As America’s longest running sitcom, The Simpsons has already provided a text for several analyses of the show’s Foucauldian foundations (Hull, 2000), philosophical implications (Irwin, Conard, & Skoble, 2001), religious significance (Pinsky, 2001), and environmental rhetoric (Todd, 2002), as well as its implications for identity formation (Ott, 2003), socio-political comment (Keslowitz, 2003), and socio-political critique (Alberti, 2004). What is missing from the critical literature on The Simpsons is an explication of Springfield itself. With its witty marquees and storefront puns, its playful and evolving design, and its ability to reference the peculiar practices of contemporary urban life, Springfield draws from the power of animated satire to reveal what literal forms of discourse obscure: that urban life has become both placeless and ubiquitous, nowhere and everywhere. In pursuing this analysis, we do not evaluate how audiences respond to The Simpsons or its cast and settings, although such an analysis offers an intriguing research direction.2 We also bypass the more obvious explanation of Springfield as ‘‘postmodern’’ (defined by The Simpsons’ Moe the bartender as ‘‘weird for the sake of weird’’) given that such an explanation offers a tautological reply to the question: How does The Simpsons engage the modern project? Instead, we hold that The Simpsons’ Springfield offers a surprisingly consistent statement about modern urbanity across the more than 350 Simpsons episodes aired through 16 seasons and counting (to 2005, not including the very first episodes that ran as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show from 1987 to 1989). The rules of Springfield* how it may be depicted* may be bent, but, as with all great comedy, they are never truly broken. Springfield merits attention because its paradoxical play with rules offers a template to understand the state of place in America, even when its actual ‘‘state’’ may not be discerned* especially when its state may not be discerned. We argue that The Simpsons’ Springfield portrays the urban environment as one whose locales* places imbued with time and character* are assaulted by a corporate setting whose apparently unfixed borders and mutating practices challenge the possibility of meaningful critique. Moreover, Springfield depicts a practice of modernity that is not adequately explained by concepts such as utopia or heterotopia. To make sense of Springfield’s paradoxical practices, therefore, we employ the notion of omnitopia. First proposed in Wood’s (2003a) investigation of airport ‘‘terminal spaces,’’ omnitopia reflects an experience of place as a mutable environment whose disparate locales convey their inhabitants to a ubiquitous, ever-present continuum.3 The concept of omnitopia extends from Foucault’s (1986) introduction of heterotopia, which itself emerges from Thomas More’s utopia. Each of these three concepts reflects differing conceptions of the role of place in social ordering. / / / / / / / The Simpsons and Omnitopia 209 Constructed as a play on the Greek concepts ‘‘good place’’ and ‘‘no place,’’ utopia responds to the failures of a given social order by invoking an alternative vision of public life, one that is distant in time, space, or both. As a critique of public life, utopia positions its reader sufficiently away from the practices of everyday life to reveal their absurdities* even while utopias themselves frequently rest upon impossible foundations. In contrast, heterotopias reflect the power of social order to maintain even the most oppressive practices through their invocation of ‘‘other places’’ like amusement parks, carnivals, and even motels. They are social safety valves that release the pressures one must endure to participate in public life. Despite their outwardly playful and potentially radical presentations, heterotopias are conservative. Indeed, the concept of heterotopia has been employed to reveal how modern environments employ overlapping and contradictory narratives to affirm the status quo (Hetherington, 1997; Soja, 1995, 1996, 1997; Wood, 2002, 2003b, 2004). While we recognize how utopia provides a means to critique the failures of public life and that heterotopia sheds light upon the paradoxical structures of the built environment, we find that both concepts fail to account for a growing sense that we have begun to dispense with meaningfully ‘‘other’’ places altogether. Omnitopia reflects the practices of a totalizing, ubiquitous environment. We thus turn to omnitopia as a means of making sense of the power of places like Springfield to evoke a kind of environmental synecdoche for the whole of modernity* just as a computer or airport terminal provides ingress into the theoretically seamless world of online and airline travel. Visiting Springfield, one gains a frame through which one may visit the whole of modernity. Etymologically, the word ‘‘omnitopia’’ emerges from a combination of the Latin omnis (all or universally) and the Greek topos (place) to evoke the perception that any given locale serves to manifest a perpetual continuum of ever-present sameness. This sameness cannot be likened to mere homogeneity; the builders of omnitopia have learned from heterotopia enough to construct the illusion of difference. Rather, omnitopia reflects the experience of flow through increasingly meaningless differences that affirms the consistency of an emerging global corporate entity (illustrated by Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2003). The concept of omnitopia took root upon viewing The Simpsons’ title sequence that, upon reflection, seemed to position Springfield as being everywhere, rather than being nowhere in a utopian sense. The meaning of Springfield emerges less from its distance from real life and more from its ubiquity, the potential for all places to find themselves within The Simpsons’ universe. To figure out the rhetorical boundaries of Springfield, however, we cannot turn to a map or even the edge of the television screen.4 This essay offers a look at Springfield-as-omnitopia that positions the fictional town as a reflection of modernity marked by six practices: dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, mutability, mobility, and commodification.5 / / 210 A. Wood & A. M. Todd Dislocation of Place Springfield represents dislocation of place. The town is often portrayed without geographical context, unconnected to its neighboring towns and even separated from its natural surroundings. One of the ways this dislocation occurs is through purposeful obscuring of the town’s relationship with the larger geography. The Simpsons’ dislocation of place is intentional, often an inside joke for longtime viewers. This joke is used in numerous episodes where viewers are teased by a map or address that seems about to reveal the state where Springfield is located, only for that information to be comically obstructed by a character’s head, overlapping dialogue, or a train whistle. For example, in an episode entitled ‘‘Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?’’ when Homer’s brother Herb goes broke (due to Homer’s incompetence as a car designer), Herb sets out for Springfield. He wants to borrow money to invent a product that will make him rich again. The only problem is getting to Springfield: Herb: I want a ticket to Springfield. Ticket Agent: Springfield, Illinois? Herb: No. Ticket Agent: Springfield, Massachusetts? Herb: No, Springfield . . . [A train-whistle blows, making the answer impossible to discern] Dedicated viewers have even maintained lists of where Springfield could not be, as if through a process of elimination the sacred quest might be accomplished, the location revealed. A vacation episode set in Florida removed the Sunshine State from consideration. Perhaps Springfield is on the East Coast? Unlikely, given that the show’s radio station call letters start with K, identifying Springfield as west of the Mississippi. The show’s creators and writers offer tantalizing clues that ultimately mock efforts to learn the location of Springfield. For example, in ‘‘Sunday, Cruddy Sunday,’’ a neighbor comes to visit just as Marge begins to recite her mailing address: ‘‘742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, O- Hiya, Maude!’’ For those wondering whether the show’s creators take a perverse pleasure in this game, we provide one more example. In ‘‘Lisa Gets an ‘A’,’’ Superintendent Chalmers remarks on the pitiful state of Springfield Elementary: Good lord, what a dump. It’s not surprising this school was once classified the most dilapidated in all of Missouri . . . [Lisa and Principal Skinner look at each other quizzically] . . . That’s why it was shut down and moved here, brick by brick. Here, we encounter Dislocated Place, unfixed from a permanent location and, more importantly, defined by its lack of location. This dislocation extends the vision of urban life beyond the utopian frame. Even a ‘‘no place’’ resides within a particular locale, whether on a distant island or in a city hundreds of years in the future. Springfield denotes an omnitopian practice in which specific geographical features are vague by design. Certainly, Springfield has individual features: a beach, a gorge, a desert, and a mountain. But these features become purposefully disconnected from any ‘‘real’’ topography, lest the show become idiosyncratic, too easily found (or lost) within the peculiar narratives of The Simpsons and Omnitopia 211 local experience. From Springfield’s vantage point, we view contemporary urban life as increasingly omnitopian. Dislocation recalls the experience of entering a FedEx Kinko’s or Starbucks, traveling between gates at an airport or passing through the doors of a conference hotel. It reflects the corporate vision of Wal-Mart and Holiday Inn. It reflects the experience of anyplace becoming everyplace. Conflation of Place A second practice at work in omnitopia is conflation. We define this term as the merging of notably disparate settings into a singular whole. While related to dislocation, this second concept is different. Dislocation unfixes locations from physical geography while conflation merges discrete geographies into the same locale. By means of comparison, dislocation is best experienced in an airport where threeletter designations represent approximations of the cities through which we travel, while the capital of conflation probably resides between Las Vegas’ faux visions of Paris and New York. Conflation can be understood as the ‘‘collapse of spatial barriers’’ (Harvey, 1990, p. 294) in such a way that previously distinct sites become integrated into a larger, amorphous setting: As spatial barriers diminish so we become much more sensitized to what the world’s spaces contain. Flexible accumulation typically exploits a wide range of seemingly contingent geographical circumstances, and reconstitutes them as structured internal elements of its own encompassing logic. (Harvey, 1990, p. 294) The Simpsons’ social commentary exemplifies this flexible accumulation strategy when contemporary political and pop-cultural locations and persons are folded into the show’s plots and jokes, although their juxtaposition sometimes seems impossible. The town has few geographical constraints as it embraces multiple cultural contexts and seemingly infinite social landmarks. Within Springfield, one may visit a Russian District, a Chinatown, a Lower East Side, a version of ‘‘Area 51’’ (site of alleged UFO encounters), a Grand Chasm, a ‘‘Springfield’’ sign that bears a striking resemblance to the ‘‘Hollywood’’ sign, and a tribute to oceanside vacation villages in the form of Little Pwagmattasquarmsettport. One may also visit an international array of restaurants including ‘‘Bob’s Big Buddha,’’ ‘‘Chez Guevara,’’ The Frying Dutchman,’’ and ‘‘You Thai Now.’’ On their website ‘‘Guide to Springfield USA,’’ Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan have attempted to make sense of these sites, organizing them on a twodimensional map. However, they admit, the task is impossible, ‘‘due to the many inconsistencies among episodes’’ (2003, para. 2). The collective plots of the show contain too many overlapping geographies to be contained on one conceptual plane. Frequently, The Simpsons offers a perspective on the practices through which the world’s cultures and places are becoming conflated. In ‘‘Lisa the Tree Hugger,’’ Lisa stages a tree-sit to prevent the tallest redwood in town from being cut down by a caricatured Texas oil tycoon. While perched on her roost, Lisa’s ‘‘window to the world’’ includes ‘‘Shelbyville, St. Louis, the Mississippi River, the Rockies, Hollywood, the Canadian and Mexican borders, the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii, Mount Fuji, the 212 A. Wood & A. M. Todd Himalayas, Paris, the Atlantic Ocean, and New York City’’ (Groening in McCann, 2002, p. 71). Lisa’s view from the tree parodies a March 29, 1976 cover illustration for the New Yorker by Saul Steinberg. Springfield is the television audience’s window to the world, one that generates omnitopian geography through the impossible conflation of disparate landmarks. This geographical conflation ensures that ‘‘the qualities of place stand thereby to be emphasized in the midst of the increasing abstractions of space’’ (Harvey, 1990, p. 294). Our view of Springfield through Lisa’s eyes reveals famous places whose spatial barriers are collapsed, showing the proximity of our experiences. Springfield incorporates familiar attractions of different cities or regions in a poignant and paradoxical vista of the global village. As a model of conflated urbanity, Springfield contains much of the world in the same ersatz manner as a shopping mall food court gathers its menus from several continents. In both cases, one ought not peer too closely in search of authentically local experience. Naturally, Springfield cannot literally hold the entire world within its city limits. Thus, its denizens occasionally venture to distant locales where invariably they meet with mischief, illustrated by Homer’s kidnapping by Brazilian thugs, the family’s torture on a Japanese game show, and Bart’s threatened ‘‘booting’’ by the Australian Prime Minister (a scene reminiscent of the 1994 incident in which American youth Michael Fay was caned in Singapore). These visits to genuinely foreign lands usually affirm the desirability of a hometown one need never leave.6 The Simpsons thereby illustrates a peculiar provincialism in a way that recalls Kraidy’s (1999) deployment of the concept of ‘‘glocalization’’ to evoke the hybridization of global and local practices. A global village within a small town, Springfield-asomnitopia offers all things to its viewers and residents through its conflation of locales, pop culture references, and potential narratives within its sprawling spatial discourse. Fragmentation of Place As a manifestation of omnitopia, Springfield also demonstrates fragmentation, a declining cohesion of its social core. Springfield fragments when faced with various crises that threaten its existence. Springfield confronts the opportunities and costs of growth, such as those facing communities across the United States and around the world. However, both progress and expansion cause upheaval among the citizens of Springfield as the urban core becomes increasingly incoherent, its center more indeterminate. We explore social fragmentation and physical destruction as themes in Springfield’s rhetoric of omnitopia. Social fragmentation occurs in the division of communities through political, ethnic, cultural, and economic dimensions. One episode, ‘‘A Tale of Two Springfields,’’ illustrates economic dimension. The moment of fragmentation begins when Homer tries to dial Animal Control after his encounter with an aggressive badger, and he learns that Springfield has been divided into two area codes. Before long, he notes that the new zoning has separated Springfield’s wealthy elite from the town’s working-class ‘‘Joe Twelve-Packs.’’ Angered by this insult, Homer advocates for the The Simpsons and Omnitopia 213 creation of New Springfield, a separate town for those with the new code. Before long, the two towns find themselves at odds with one another. Marge: We can’t go on fighting with Old Springfield. These people are our neighbors. We see them every day. Homer: You’re right. We’ve got to block them from our sight with a giant wall. Marge: Like the one in Berlin? Homer: Good idea. We should call the guys they used. This episode exaggerates the social fragmentation that accompanies city expansion to accommodate growing populations, and illustrates how urban sprawl divides communities and even neighbors through gentrification and the birth of wealthy suburban enclaves. Zoning has historically segregated cities along economic lines (Kunstler, 1993). The Berlin Wall provides a vivid, if absurdly tragic, example of the disastrous consequences of partitioning. Springfield’s experience reveals the challenges of globalization as expansion and development dissolve old barriers and erect new ones. Adding to its social struggles, Springfield finds itself faced with the threat of physical fragmentation on a regular basis. In ‘‘Bart’s Comet,’’ an elderly pair recall the town’s frequent encounters with disaster. Abe: Sounds like the doomsday whistle! Ain’t been blown for nigh onto three years. Jasper: Tsk, tsk, tsk . . . trouble abrewing. Actually, Abe and Jasper are exceptions that prove the rule. As a perpetually disasterprone city, Springfield exhibits an alarming lack of historical awareness. The town’s irreverence regarding history is echoed in ‘‘Hurricane Neddy’’ when bad weather portends Ned Flanders’ breakdown, which mirrors the breakdown of Springfield’s physical cohesion: Homer: Oh, Lisa! There’s no record of a hurricane ever hitting Springfield. Lisa: Yes, but the records only go back to 1978 when the Hall of Records was mysteriously blown away. The destruction of physical records represents the literal loss of Springfield’s history but also explains the larger fragmentation of the town’s central core.7 Social fragmentation and physical destruction threaten the community and infrastructure of the town. The resolution of weekly plots surrounding these events present a fragmented Springfield that, if one were to follow strictly the extended plot developed over the course of many episodes, would exhibit impossibilities that call into question Springfield’s very existence. But it is precisely the incongruous and amorphous qualities of Springfield that give the town its significance as a player in the Simpsons’ escapades. More importantly, Springfield as a character in The Simpsons reveals more of the character of omnitopia as a metaphor for the modern project. Like Springfield, omnitopia is not monolithic. Like the various surfaces of a theme restaurant like T.G.I. Fridays,8 with its playful references to multiple histories, omnitopia employs fragmented narrative facades to obscure the singular standpoint, to hide a foundation upon which one struggles to resist its totalizing power. 214 A. Wood & A. M. Todd Mutability of Place Illustrating the omnitopian mutability of place, Springfield depicts an urban environment that easily alters itself, building and destroying sites at will. Here, of course, we are reminded of the pliability that defines most animated entertainment. Since their inception, animated cartoons have knowingly or accidentally played beyond the narrative rules of frame, altering their landscapes to account for the exigencies of the moment. The Simpsons expands upon this strategy, however, through its high degree of self-referential mutability. Audiences have been trained to spot purposeful alterations to the introduction, and characters frequently comment upon changes to the city, crossing the frame between Springfield and viewers in (and of) the ‘‘real world.’’ Consider the ‘‘couch gag.’’ Each episode of The Simpsons features a different couch gag in which the family (and occasionally various other characters) sits, or more appropriately lands, on the living room couch in front of the television. The gag reveals the show’s pliability by cleverly altering the title sequence’s denouement, often by playing with the underlying reality of the show. Examples include placing the couch on a subway station platform; having Philip. J. Fry (a character from the Fox animated series Futurama) enter the scene in place of Bart Simpson; and showing the characters enter their living room only to discover that previous versions of their characters* the ones drawn for the Tracey Ullman shorts* are occupying their couch. The show has a constant location (Springfield, or in this case the living room) that is subject to various mutations. Springfield’s mutability of place emerges through its range of physical additions and, occasionally, subtractions. In episode ‘‘Viva Ned Flanders,’’ Homer vows to show Ned Flanders how to add some excitement to his life: / / Homer: We’re going to break the bank at the Monty Burns Casino! Ned: Homer, they blew that up yesterday. Homer: Oh, yeah, right. Then we’re going to Las Vegas! Which is actually back in that direction. This mutability of the city, however, is also a form of commentary on the growing ‘‘editability’’ of the urban landscape.9 Incidentally, this particular episode is one of several that imply Springfield’s proximity to Las Vegas. These have lead to speculation that Springfield is a parody of Los Angeles. In any case, the disaster-prone city epitomizes the necessity of destruction for construction and the morphing of nature to fit human needs and aesthetics. Springfield frequently undergoes renovation. In the process, it mutates in a manner that might best be considered ‘‘hyperspatial.’’ The Simpsons presents Springfield as a site in which any two points may be connected nearly instantaneously. For example, in ‘‘My Sister, My Sitter,’’ Springfield renovates its decaying waterfront into a tourist attraction with high-end amusements and pricy eateries: the Springfield Squidport. Even Moe the bartender opens an upscale version of his bar in the town’s new hotspot. However, the entrance to Moe’s ‘‘new’’ bar is actually a terminal * a long tunnel, actually* that leads one confused tourist away from the Squidport back to / / The Simpsons and Omnitopia 215 Moe’s actual bar in downtown Springfield. The tourist looks with shock at the dank interior, realizing that he has not entered a ‘‘theme’’ bar, but an actual pit: ‘‘Hey, this isn’t faux dive. This is a dive,’’ the tourist says. The convergence of the upscale Squidport and a dilapidated dive bar provides an insightful critique of the growing practice of troubled cities that attempt to renovate the facades of aging and economically depressed areas while simultaneously diverting tourists from untouched sections of genuine gloom. Technically, the link between the facade and the reality involves distance within an apparently three-dimensional environment. However, one gains no sense that the tourist has traveled the physical distance from the Squidport to the bar. Instead, the city itself convulses to conform to the construction of a tunnel that narrows the gap to a mere comically hyperspatial interlude. These plot-essential convulsions, the alterations of the family’s living room, the addition and subtraction of sites within the city, even the ways in which the city renovates its spatial relationships, reflect a theme of mutation throughout The Simpsons that speaks to broader urban processes. Beyond Springfield, places appear to be a little less fixed when one contemplates the reality of ‘‘real life.’’ In How Buildings Learn, Stuart Brand (1995) describes how ‘‘buildings’’ seemingly refer to inert structures yet change over time; thus, urban life perpetuates a process of becoming and unbecoming. Buildings are expanded, they evolve, and they appear to engage in conversation with one another or they outlive their usefulness quickly. In this manner, the built environment of omnitopia reflects Raban’s discussion of the ‘‘soft city’’ that maps us even as we map it: [The city] invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in. . . . Cities . . . are plastic by nature. We mould them in our images: they, in their turn, shape us by the resistance they offer when we try to impose our own personal form on them. (Raban, 1974, pp. 9 Á/10) As mutable polis, Springfield speaks to the paradoxical concept of ‘‘urban renewal’’ as neighborhoods, towns, and cities continue to be transformed, often for the sake of the never-quite-completed interstate highway system. These transformations, ostensibly for the improvement of everyday life, nonetheless reflect the power of designers, architects, and writers to shape our lives. Even the manner in which one might resist the shapes imposed upon us, by becoming a designer, architect, or writer of alternative environments, merely reflects an omnitopian narrative that equates mutable place with power. Of course, such power emerges quite obviously when one contemplates how cities lose their illusion of permanence, giving way to the strategy of mobility. Mobility of Place One can hardly imagine Springfield or any other modern city without considering the complex role of mobility in its maintenance of social order. The most obvious example on the show was when the town was moved five miles down the road to escape its excess of garbage landfill. From an omnitopian perspective, mobility 216 A. Wood & A. M. Todd demonstrates the intersection of physical and social mobility by enhancing the movement of working-class people while regulating the movement of the poor. Within omnitopia, one experiences a perpetual flow of movement through walkways and passages, via highways and trams, designed to enact constant communication from place to place. (Here, we are playing with the Oxford English Dictionary definition of communication as a means of access between two or more persons or places. The shift from persons to places underscores how environments, both built and natural, do indeed ‘‘speak.’’) Eschewing the pedestrian-oriented village, the segmented layout of the omnitopian polis renders the walking person almost always suspect. Omnitopian mobility affirms the working-class fantasy of upward mobility, illustrated by ‘‘Marge vs. The Monorail,’’ in which Lyle Lanley, a character reminiscent of Robert Preston’s Midwestern huckster in The Music Man, attempts to share his vision of social mobility with the rubes of Springfield, who have found themselves the beneficiaries of unexpected wealth. Their flashy visitor assures them that a monorail is the best sign of a town on the grow: ‘‘I’ve sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and, by gum, it put them on the map!’’ Lanley illustrates this point with an outline map of the U.S. (tellingly, without state boundaries) on which only those three cities are marked. Clearly, Lanley’s map reveals a peculiar value system, evidenced by a scene in which Marge and Bart debate the wisdom of investing the town’s newfound money in a monorail: Marge: But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken. Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken. When comparing the relative merits of two mobile solutions, the traditional main street becomes eclipsed by the supposedly advanced technologies of the monorail. Later in that episode, Lanley visits a classroom to extol the virtues of the monorail to the presumably impressionable children. Despite her initial suspicion even Lisa is easily beguiled: Lisa: I’d like you to explain why we should build a mass transit system in a small town with a centralized population . . . Lanley: Oh, I could give you an answer. But the only ones who would understand it would be you and me, and that includes your teacher. Lisa: [Delighted giggle] Lanley: Next question! You there: eating the paste. Given that The Simpsons consistently mocks the potential of masses of people to demonstrate common sense, one can hardly be surprised that the monorail proves to be a boondoggle and Lanley eventually is revealed as a fraud. But the fantasy of improvement through mobility endures for Springfield residents. Even the town’s most politically conscious resident cannot help but recite worn ´ cliches about the liberating potential of mass transportation when celebrating her first ride on a city bus. In ‘‘Lost Our Lisa,’’ Lisa exclaims, ‘‘Ahh, the old Number 22. Clean, reliable public transportation. The chariot of the people. The ride of choice for the poor and very poor alike.’’ In Springfield, as in the ‘‘real world,’’ we find that access to The Simpsons and Omnitopia 217 transportation (and choice of mode) can either connect or displace us from the social grid. Mike Davis (1999) offers a stark vision of the city that emerges from contemporary modes of mobility, arguing that recent attempts to revitalize fading downtowns rest upon a desire to construct militarized spaces designed to regulate non-white, non-wealthy populations: The new Downtown is designed to ensure a seamless continuum of middle-class work, consumption, and recreation, insulated from the city’s ‘‘unsavory’’ streets. Ramparts and battlements, reflective glass and elevated pedways, are tropes in an architectural language warning off the underclass Other. Although architectural critics are usually blind to this militarized syntax, urban pariah groups */whether young black men, poor Latino immigrants, or elderly homeless white females */ read the signs immediately. (Davis, 1999, p. 159) It is no wonder that three recent Simpsons video games have involved driving and skateboarding. Whether demonstrating the working- and middle-class mobility of the automobile or the rebellious mobility of the skateboard, the practices of mobility define much of public life, both in and beyond Springfield. One can barely imagine omnitopia without some consideration of its practices of mobility; likewise, one can hardly imagine Springfield or the world beyond without contemplating the urban infrastructures and economic value system that support and maintain such practices. Commodification of Place Omnitopia reflects a commercial orientation toward public life, one that atomizes human exchanges and evaluates natural resources according to a monetary cost Á benefit analysis. As a metaphor for Main Street USA, Springfield represents the struggle of place to confront a mode of public life in which corporate interests shape all civic sites and relationships. The dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, mutability, and mobility of Springfield contribute to the commodification of the city’s geography in the pursuit of economic power and status. Indeed, several episodes depict a willingness of the townspeople to sacrifice their town’s long-term environmental bounty for short-term economic gain. In ‘‘Lisa the Skeptic,’’ a new mall is being constructed on a meadow where several fossils had been found. Concerned for the site’s historic and environmental integrity, Lisa successfully secures the right to excavate the site and finds a skeleton purported to be that of an angel. The skeleton goes missing and reappears on the top of a hill inscribed with the words ‘‘The End Will Come at Sundown.’’ As the whole town gathers to witness, the skeleton floats into the air and a voice announces ‘‘the end* of high prices.’’ / / Lisa: Wait a second, you planted a phony skeleton for me to find. This was all a big hoax. Sid: Not a hoax: a publicity stunt. Lisa: You exploited people’s deepest beliefs just to hawk your cheesy wares. Well, we are outraged, aren’t we? 218 A. Wood & A. M. Todd Police Chief Wiggum: Oh yes, we’re outraged. Very much so. But look at all the stores. A Pottery Barn! The episode’s deep questions of faith are quickly forgotten in the pursuit of the eternal sale. The sacredness of place is destroyed as land becomes the ultimate commodified resource: a shopping mall. In ‘‘Radioactive Man,’’ Mayor Quimby further establishes how Springfield’s leaders will exploit the land for a quick buck. In this episode a film crew states its plans to film a motion picture in Springfield. The Mayor promises the town’s complete cooperation: Assistant: All right, we have $30 million to spend. Quimby: We’ll blow up our dams, destroy forests, anything! If there’s a species of animal that’s causing problems, nosing around your camera, we’ll have it wiped out! Director: Look! We just want to make movies, not kill things. Wiggum: [winks] Right, we understand, heh. Both Mayor Quimby and Police Chief Wiggum are excited at the prospect of exploding the dams that control the town’s water, an action that would inevitably cause flooding and destruction of natural habitats. Quimby offers to fell vast forests and cause the extinction of entire species in the name of movie making. His anti-environmental rhetoric offers an absurd defense of the impact of shooting on location. He ironically exaggerates the mantra of loggers and subdivision planners defending their construction projects. Mayor Quimby portrays such underhanded dealings as standard, even expected. The environment is sacrificed for $30 million. The Simpsons offers an anti-capitalist message, exposing the tension between socially responsible business practices and the tendency to cut corners. In ‘‘The Old Man and the Lisa,’’ when Lisa partners with Mr. Burns to develop a recycling program (which he turns into a slurry factory), business ethics are lampooned: Lisa: If I did agree to help you, you could only earn money by doing good, socially responsible things. Nothing evil. Burns: Nothing evil. That’s exactly the kind of radical thinking I need! Burns sees responsible business practices as radical, extolling an ethical laziness and irresponsibility that characterize the show’s version of capitalism. The commodification of place throughout The Simpsons illustrates the effects of capitalism on the cultural geography of Springfield. Icons of progress such as the recycling plant are unmasked as slurry factories that empty the fields, forests, and oceans of nutrients, transforming the earth’s resources into an omnitopian sludge that melds the different colors of biodiversity and rich textures of ecological tapestries. As Anytown, USA, Springfield illustrates how contemporary cities perceive a zero-sum relationship between environmental sustainability and unfettered economic growth. Through their colorful and exaggerated personalities, Springfield’s residents perform the absurd effects of capitalism on a sense of local or individual place. The Simpsons and Omnitopia 219 Discussion Since its inception, television has provided a means for viewers to encounter the complex practices of public life within both the mechanical frame of the television ‘‘box’’ and the rhetorical frame of its narratives. One may recall Jack Webb’s doleful intonation, ‘‘This is the city,’’ when introducing an episode of Dragnet. Conversely, one might sing a verse or two of anti-urban angst: ‘‘Green Acres is the place for me.’’ From either perspective, the medium of television comments on the practices of urbanity. Whether fanciful or realistic, the televised city typically has remained stable. Characters evolve within the scene, but the scene itself seldom mutates in a meaningful (or successful) way. Thus, the beaches of Fox Television’s The OC continue to glisten with tanned bodies, while the streets of ABC’s NYPD Blue remain perpetually gritty. In short, most television settings offer locales that resemble little more than unchanging backdrops. The Simpsons radically departs from television’s tradition of relatively fixed environments. The Simpsons depicts urban life as a ‘‘virtual space,’’ such as one might find in an online environment: Its rules and consequences depart radically from everyday experience (or so one might first imagine). One might initially explain this phenomenon as being a consequence of the animated nature of the show. To be sure, animated places are freed from the constraints of physics. That’s part of their power, part of the pleasure of viewing them. When Bugs Bunny famously announces: ‘‘You can get away with nearly anything* in an animated cartoon,’’ he celebrates the mutability of his medium while recalling the relatively fixed nature of ours. In real life, we assume persons and places to be confined to immutable laws of physics and decorum: one may not be in two places at the same time, one must know one’s place. However, The Simpsons does more than merely play with the rules of ‘‘real life’’ for comedic effect. We have argued that the show insightfully depicts the increasingly paradoxical nature of public life wherein urban environments seem to be transformed into themed Vegas-sets, Disneyfied into a ‘‘Toontown.’’ Treating The Simpsons’ notion of public life as omnitopian accounts for its rhetoric of ubiquity. Our goal, however, has not only been to offer an account of Springfield, but to demonstrate how this popular culture text reveals practices of modernity beyond the show’s comedic frame. Beyond Springfield, we find that the practices of dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, mutability, mobility, and commodification help us understand the experience of ubiquitous place, the sense that all locales in our everyday lives are becoming terminals to an alienating and corporate world. Dislocation dislodges places from geography, eschewing the potential for particular stances and histories, constructing a free-floating location without locale. Conflation overcomes the jarring disjunctures of modern life, crafting an apparently seamless narrative where conflict might otherwise arise. Fragmentation, in a peculiar act of parallel effort, ensures continual divisions among groups that might otherwise find community in their common location. Mutability enables urbanity to continually alter itself according to the needs of the narrative, even as the mutable polis provides playful props for our / 220 A. Wood & A. M. Todd amusement. Mobility ensures perpetual movement and, simultaneously, reduces the time and place for reflection. Commodification, at last, fills the vacuum of public life with a semblance of a value system, providing an ever-growing array of purchase sites and opportunities that draw attention away from the potential to live life any other way. We provide this analysis of The Simpsons’ Springfield as a lens on the world inhabited by its viewers. As we turn off the set, we recognize snippets of our own place-based reality; we begin to locate our selves, our homes, and our cities in the caricatures of Springfield’s hot spots. While Matt Groening and his writers would hardly employ the terminology and categories of omnitopia, this framework offers a useful lens through which to view their pop culture creation.10 We are dislocated from geographic place as we increasingly communicate via cell phones and computer networks that enable individuals to connect with each other anytime, anywhere. At the same time, familiar locales are conflated: We see a Starbucks on every corner, and we shop in the WalMart on our way through an unfamiliar town. In Springfield’s fragmentation, whether by area code or nuclear meltdown, we see our own fragmented experiences of gentrification and the demolition of old buildings and erection of new ones. The constant urban renewal efforts of world cities and small towns alike reveal the mutability of place while ubiquitous automobile advertisements proclaim the aesthetics of mobility. Springfield’s omnitopian practices reveal how geographic existence is commodified by the unyielding pursuit of progress. Through the irreverence of Springfield’s citizens and town officials, The Simpsons offers a glimpse into the future of our own civic places. We propose that the six practices found in Springfield* employed simply as analytical lenses or in more sophisticated ratios* offer insightful ways to reveal other manifestations of omnitopia elsewhere. In urging omnitopia as a lens for future research, we emphasize that the term presents not a grammar but a framework for viewing urbanity. Indeed, one might consider reading other television shows, from the proliferation of cities hosting CSI: Crime Scene Investigation spin-offs to reruns of Sex in the City with New York as its fifth character, to discern other manifestations of omnitopia. After all, omnitopia grows within the interconnections of airport gates, the fluid pathways of interstate highways, the ubiquitous ‘‘windows’’ of computer terminals, and the growing sense that the places of the world reflect a singular and corporate structure. Revealing these components of omnitopia in even the most surreal television environments, we are better able to recognize and critique the subtly embedded structures of the world we call real. / / Notes [1] [2] All episode excerpts, including some bracketed material, are taken from The Simpsons Archive (see http://www.snpp.com/). A number of theorists have used Burke’s notions of identification and consubstantiality in television and films (e.g., Brummett, 1985; Copeland & Slater, 1985; Rockler, 2002). To be sure, fans’ ability to identify with the show’s characters and in-jokes is intriguing. Moreover, The Simpsons and Omnitopia 221 [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] The Simpsons ’ consubstantiality with other television shows might provide another fruitful area of discussion. However, our argument is that the show’s producers aim not to persuade their audiences to act or live a certain way, but to reflect aspects of contemporary life through a variety of animated features. Throughout this essay we refer to omnitopia in the singular, never as one of several omnitopias. While it is true that scholars of the term invariably discover the edges and overlaps between multiple attempts to create seamless, ubiquitous environments, we hold that the perception of omnitopia is always singular (Wood, 2003a). Accordingly, when seeking to unpack such an experience, we speak of it as monolithic. The multi-media extension of the show has expanded the boundaries of Springfield with products such as PlayStation games like Road Rage and Hit and Run and supplemental guides to the episodes, including Are We There Yet? , a guide to Springfield. These themes emerged inductively through multiple viewings of each episode. One might be reminded of the film Pleasantville , in which: ‘‘The end of Main Street is just the beginning again.’’ Not to mention the core of its nuclear power plant: an episode entitled ‘‘Blood Feud’’ introduced the town’s emergency alert response to the potential of core meltdown. Mayor ‘‘Diamond’’ Joe Quimby declares, ‘‘In the off-chance of a nuclear disaster, this sign will tell you, the good citizens of Springfield, what to do!’’ During the demonstration, the sign cycles through announcements that range from ‘‘Relax. Everything is fine,’’ to ‘‘Minor leak. Roll up window,’’ to ‘‘Meltdown. Flee city,’’ to ‘‘Core explosion. Repent sins.’’ See the ‘‘Jack Rabbit Slim’s’’ sequence from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 Pulp Fiction for a cinematic exemplar. See Alex Proyas’ 1998 Dark City for a cinematic exemplar. Groening has affirmed his philosophy that the show’s humorous facade rests upon a socially critical foundation illustrated by his personal credo, ‘‘entertain and subvert’’ (Bhattacharya, 2000, p. 1). References Alberti, J. (Ed.). (2004). Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the possibility of oppositional culture . Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Bhattacharya, S. (2000, August 27). Homer’s odyssey: A story of small town subversion and global domination. Sunday Telegraph (Sydney, Australia), p. 1. Brand, S. (1995). How buildings learn: What happens after they’re built . New York: Penguin. Brummett, B. (1985). Electric literature as equipment for living: Haunted house films. Critical Studies in Mass Communication , 2 , 247 Á/261. 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