Deconstructing The Simpsons

Scene synopsis from the episode:

In the first scene of the episode, Lisa, the oldest daughter of the Simpsons is having a slumber party with a group of friends. The pre-teen girls are giggling, gossiping, playing with clothes and make-up, and fantasizing about their future husbands. They play a game by dripping wax from a candle into a bowl of water. The rules are explained as “whatever shape the wax takes, that’s what your husbands job will be.” The first girl gets a drop that looks like a mop, so everyone says her husband will be a (low class) janitor. Lisa turns the little wax mop upside down and responds that it looks like an Olympic torch. She says, “Your husband could be an Olympic athlete who will go on to have a great acting career.” The girl drips the wax again and whines, “It’s a dustpan.” Lisa responds, “The wax never lies.”

 SIGNS

•  
  • SIGNIFIER: Girls playing a fantasy game with wax where the shape of a drop of wax in water designates a future husband’s occupation
  • SIGNIFIED: A willing female complicity to male domination
  • REFERENT: Men are defined by what they do, and women are defined passively by their subordination to men.
•  
  • SIGNIFIER: Lisa’s interpretation of the wax being an icon of an Olympic torch instead of a mop.
  • SIGNIFIED: Lisa’s cheerful, optimistic personality
  • REFERENT: Lisa is content and hopeful toward a life of submissive behavior to men.  
•  
  • SIGNIFIER: The reaction of the girls to class determination-the mop is low class and the Olympic torch is high class
  • SIGNIFIED: Working class stature and employment is shameful and undesirable. Also, that a woman’s stature and employment is based on her husband’s.
  • REFERENT: It’s undesirable to have a husband in a working class position and automatically puts a woman in the working class stature as well if she is married to such a man.

 What does it all mean?

This cartoon of a childs’ game provides the form to construct these characters so that they see themselves in the future as women willingly subordinate to a male spouse in conventional roles as wives and mothers. This meaning is overlooked because it appears natural to people, especially on a popular mainstream television show, even though its meaning is explictly historical and ideological.