Ay,Caramba! as Bart would say. The Fox network has threatened to pull the plug off The Simpsons if the voice actors dont agree to a 45 per cent pay cut. The actors,including Dan Castellaneta (who gave the unique voice stylings to Homer),Julie Kavner (Marge) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart),reportedly agreed to a 30 per cent slash in return for a teeny pie in the shows humongous profits. Meanwhile,there are hectic meetings on to save the most famous address of American television 742 North Evergreen Terrace,Springfield. They are the old familiars of television. In animations ageless world,the Simpsons have remained the same for over 23 years the yellow Homer with its beady eyes,exceptional ordinariness and the twirl of two hair strands,Marge with her blue Nefertiti beehive and their bratty,precocious brood but they have been the cheeky commentators of the world that changed around them. In that comforting mix of familiarity and change,the simplest of drawings have met some of the darnedest of lines; that old trope of American sitcoms,the cosiness of domestic life,has been mixed up with the delightful idiosyncrasies of the characters. And animation grew up. The series has always had a bustle of cultural referencing and took potshots at everything from outsourcing (in Kiss Kiss,Bang Bangalore) to nuclear energy,from Martin Scorsese to The Economist (part of the adult books collection of Homer) and even Foxs own Rupert Murdoch. This Midwestern family has been spoofed (theres a version called The Singhsons),criticised for its waning popularity and brilliance,but it has been,perhaps outside Japan,one of the most influential and successful animation series. Recession may have hit Springfield,but as Bart wrote on the chalkboard once: The good humour man can only be pushed so far.
