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Are The Simpsons corrupters of family values?

U.S. Congressman Joseph Pitts in 1999 blamed Homer Simpson for contributing to the decline of fatherhood in America, emphasizing that Homer is perceived as a terrible model for parents. What is your view?

The Simpsons are neither good for parents nor children

I absolutely agree with Mr Pitts. In my opinion The Simpsons have a very bad impact on our impressionable society. Some people fancy that children for instance should use Bart’s disrespectful thoughts as a model, whereas I believe that no child should do so. The show may have an entertaining effect on parents because they understand every joke, for example about the political system and they could learn from it, but children beginning at the age of eight will not. The cartoons also show how senseless and bad The Simpsons are. Children believe that it is normal to watch television the whole day or not to obey their parents and not to do homework. In addition, it is not good for family values. Bart does not respect anything. More and more children become like him. Just look at the newspaper! Nearly every day you read something about drunken or aggressive teenagers. This causes a bad relationship between parents and children. Parents may focus their attention on Homer’s idiocy and indifference towards his son. And what effect does that have? Parents will no longer care about what their children do, they will no longer care when they come back home in late hours! There is a terrible development in families today. Like Homer Simpson some parents will not set any prohibitions for their children. They watch TV all day long, instead of meeting friends or enjoying the nature while doing sports. All in all I agree with Mr Pitts. The Simpsons are neither good for parents nor for children. They present the wrong family values! 
(S.S. 11a, Dec 2009)

"Ban The Simpsons" is not the solution

The Simpsons are being watched by thousands if not millions of people every day. The TV stations present the series as a show made for the whole family and in fact it is watched by parents and children. Critics notice that with concern. The Simpsons, so the general opinion, is not an appropriate format for families. The models of characters shown in it are too bad. Too big is the risk that it will have a negative effect on children and even their parents. U.S. congressman Pitts even fears that the effect will one day lead to the total corruption of family values and the downfall of families. But is that true?

Even if you are not very critical you have to admit the cartoon family is not at all like you want a real family to be.The father drinks and hangs in front of the TV all day, the son is the best proof for an education which did not work out at all. His sister Lisa is smart, but that just makes her hardly being able to stand up against the mess around her, and the mother who always tries to keep the family together will not ever succeed. One episode of the series even makes the bad family sitiuation its topic. A family therapist tries to help them and nearly goes mad. So it is out of the question that The Simpsons are a kind of horror family. They are indeed. But does that have to be the end of family values in the real world?

On the one hand there are cases which prove that it does. Children who frequently watch the show start identifying with Bart and make him their idol, which means they try to be just as lazy, dull and untidy as he is. Parents and Simpson critics are desperate: What else must happen before the series is finally banned? But on the other hand The Simpsons can be very educative. Children who are old and clever enough can reflect the things happening in the series, separate them from real life and learn from it. When they see Bart being an idiot they can laugh about him and at the same time not want to be anything like him. The same applies to Homer. Maybe there are fathers around the world who see him as a role model, who think his attitude is cool and actually want to be like him. You can picture a man telling his wife: "Homer did the same!" But what kind of man adopts the behaviour of a cartoon character? Not the cleverest one, I think. So in cases in which The Simpsons have a bad effect on adults it mainly has to do with a lack of intelligence. An adult who cannot reflect at all is not the most representative. An adult who can reflect and tell the diffrence between fiction and reality will maybe find the series funny but also see the irony in it. For like most other cartoons, The Simpsons is ironic. The characters are funny, but in fact the cartoonist rather wants us to laugh at them than with them in the end.

All in all I only see one problem. Young children watching the show might not be able to see the irony in it. Whoever says that they might be corrupted by the show is right. Children are indeed susceptible. But that is not the cartoonist's fault. It is the duty of the parents to keep their children away from the TV or to explain the irony. It is their duty to educate them. So the conculsion should not be "Ban The Simpsons"! It is rather "Make little children not watch it". So the family values Mr Pitts is afraid to lose are in fact in danger when children watch the show and take it as a role model. But the corrupters of the values in that case are the parents.  (L.H. 11a, Dec 2009)

Maybe critics do not understand the satire

Some people are criticizing the famous TV show The Simpsons as destroying the family ideals in America. Their arguments are that especially Bart and Homer Simpson show behaviours and attitudes, for example Bart´s motto "Eat my shorts" and "Underachiever and proud of it" or his disrespect against his parents and committing crimes and Homer drinking too much and his lack of interest in family life, which do not fit with their submission of a TV show for kids.
Instead The Simpsons, they criticize, has a bad influence on their children. Joseph Pitts, who blamed Homer Simpson being a bad role model, is one of them. But on the other hand The Simpsons represent a normal American family. Of course, the characters are stereotypes and show extreme and unrealistic behaviour, but I think otherwise this would not be a comedy series.
It shows people in situations of their daily life and we or the viewers laugh about it because sometimes it is just true.
People who criticize The Simpsons cannot see that the producers criticize Americans who behave exactly like the Simpsons´ characters by making fun of them.
Why should this comedy show be banned from TV, like some worried parents are trying to achieve, when their children can be influenced by people who behave like the Simpsons in real life every day?
From my point of view I cannot agree with someone like Joseph Pitts because The Simpsons are not the cause of the decline of American family values, they just show problems of society in a satirical way that some people do not understand.  (C.H. 11a, Dec 2009)

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