Throughout its three and a half-decade run, “The Simpsons” has seemingly managed to parody pretty much every aspect of popular culture. From major developments in political history to iconic movie scenes, the show’s ability to recreate historic moments was always part of its charm, and “The Simpsons” acted as a way to showcase the animators’ talents (at least in the golden age).
The “Raiders of the Lost Ark” parody from the opening of season 3 episode, “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love,” stands as one of the best examples. The hand-drawn recreation of Indy’s escape from the Temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors, reimagined as Bart escaping his home while being chased by an enraged Homer, was a genuinely impressive demonstration of the animators’ abilities, and aside from being funny, proved that the show was being made by true craftsman.
As the show has gone on, the movie parodies have remained a consistent element, with “The Simpsons” most recently parodying an underrated Martin Scorsese movie in the season 36 episode “Desperately Seeking Lisa.” At times, the long-running series has even parodied the entire plot of a film, as was the case with the “Shinning” segment of “Treehouse of Horror V,” which basically revealed the entire plot of “The Shining” to a generation of kids too young to have seen Stanley Kubrick’s movie.
But there is still a parody that creator Matt Groening has wanted to do for decades that is yet to be realized, and it might be the show’s most ambitious parody yet.
Matt Groening has wanted to make Simptasia for decades
“The Simpsons” became the longest running scripted primetime series a long time ago, and has been airing ever since. Now in its 36th season, the show refuses to die despite the prevailing wisdom being that it lost its magic long ago. Things weren’t helped in that regard by Disney’s acquisition of Fox, which was completed back in 2019 and seemed to be the perfect symbolic development for the way in which “The Simpsons” had lost pretty much all of the subversive power that helped make it such a hit back in the ’90s. Still, the Disney buyout might be just what Matt Groening needs to finally realize his long-gestating idea for what could turn out to be the most significant parody in the show’s history.
Disney had a simple message for “The Simpsons” after the merger, which essentially amounted to “keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll stay out of it.” That’s exactly what fans, and no doubt the writers who’d enjoyed decades of non-intervention from Fox were hoping for. But Groening might actually welcome some cooperation from his new overlords as the creator has been planning a “Fantasia” parody for literally decades.
During the DVD commentary track for season 4 episode “A Streetcar Named Marge,” writer and former showrunner Mike Reiss recalled how a table read for the sequence in which Maggie escapes her daycare caused the read to grind to a halt. The sequence itself was a parody of “The Great Escape,” but the extensive stage directions in the script meant the table read became somewhat of a bore to sit through. Fellow former showrunner Al Jean explained, “That’s one reason we don’t have long stage directions because they usually shut the table read down cold. We’ll now put things in parentheses that we don’t want read because it just kinda slows the laughs.”
This, it seems, is why Groening’s “Fantasia” parody has never come to fruition, with Reiss adding, “I know Matt, for 12,13 years you’ve wanted to do ‘Simptasia,’ you’ve wanted to do ‘Fantasia’ with ‘The Simpsons’ and it’s like, nobody wants to write this 30-page script of stage directions.”
Do we really need a Simpsons Fantasia parody?
Disney’s legendary animated musical “Fantasia” went from a box office bomb upon its 1940 debut to a cultural touchstone. The most ambitious animated feature attempted by Walt Disney at the time, “Fantasia” brought the absolute best out of the company’s team of animators, and features some of the finest animation yet seen on-screen, with legendary animators like Bill Tytla contributing timeless sequences to the film. A “Simpsons” version would hopefully do the same thing for the show’s own animators, though I can’t help but feel the time for such a parody has long since passed.
Over the years, “The Simpsons” has actually parodied certain sections of the film. The episode “Itchy & Scratchy Land,” for instance, reveals that creator of the animated show-within-a-show, Roger Meyers Sr., oversaw the creation of “Scratchtasia” which featured a section based on the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment from “Fantasia.” Elsewhere, in “Treehouse of Horror IV,” Homer claims to be smarter than Ned Flanders’ version of Satan, before Flanders transforms into Chernabog from “Night on Bald Mountain.” There are several other moments like this when “The Simpsons” has acknowledged Disney’s seminal animated feature, but the “Simptasia” idea has never been produced.
Now, with the animation so clean and lacking that hand-drawn touch that made the golden age episodes so charming, a “Fantasia” parody propelled by digital animation methods made to mimic the style of hand-drawn masters just seems like another way to remind us all that “The Simpsons” isn’t what it once was. While Disney’s acquisition of Fox surely brought the idea of “Simptasia” closer, then, it doesn’t necessarily feel like something the show needs to do at this stage.
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