Much debate has been waged over when exactly The Simpsons “jumped the shark.” A cursory Google search renders one overwhelmed with thousands of Reddit threads, blog posts and think pieces written by East Coast Media Elites. Despite this, over the years, consensus has formed around The Principal and the Pauper (season 9, episode 2): this is episode that marked the American institution’s sharp plunge into irrelevance and despair. Loathed for its unceremonial undressing of one of its most cherished characters, the comically authoritarian-yet-impotent Principal Skinner, The Principal and the Pauper firmly marks the series departure from “the satirical” and entry into “the absurd.”
Absurdly bad.
While Groening & Co. managed to sporadically sprinkle some gems throughout the next few seasons (and sustain a strong but short-lived resurgence in popularity around the release of the long-overdue The Simpsons Movie in 2007), The Simpsons officially fell off a cliff in season 12 with New Kids on the Blecch. An episode that centers around a music A&R assembling Bart, Millhouse, Ralph and Nelson as America’s next premier boy band, New Kids marks another series transformation: from caustic counter cultural commentators to a mirror that reflects popular culture, full stop.
While The Simpsons regularly featured pop culture icons in seasons past (who can forget Homer At Bat, featuring Ken Griffey Jr., Jose Canseco and Darryl Strawberry, among others?), the tone and tenor changed with New Kids. Whereas Homer’s feature as an Every Joe side-show who can sustain a cannonball blast to the gut at Hullabalooza (an episode that featured about a dozen popular 90s rock acts) highlighted the perils of clout chasing and poked fun at those who would literally die to become famous, New Kids lacked any charm or wit, instead enrolling NSYNC to usher in a weird message that “you too can become famous with a little luck — and it’s awesome!”
In a sense, The Simpsons played harbinger to the Instagram Age. It’s now easier than ever to gain fame and notoriety!
It makes too much sense, then, that I woke up last week to headlines that “Balenciaga Takes Springfield.” Nary two weeks after conquering Gen Z with a Fortnite capsule collection that broke the internet (and with revolutionary visual effects, billboards, too), Balenciaga went after their parents, Gen X, in a collaboration with The Simpsons that is equal parts charming as it is corny. Creative director Demna Gvasalia is so adept at generating such a perfect level of cringe that lives at the intersection of these two generations: where Gen X pleaded subcultural acts to refrain from “selling out,” that concept is completely lost upon Gen Z. There is no selling out, only selling. Subcultural acts are the culture. As a result, The Simpsons can now enjoy a period of relevance they have not seen since before South Park burst on the scene (coincidentally, in 1997, the same year Groening castrated Skinner!).
Decades after ushering in such an insane era of popular culture, it makes sense that The Simpsons would have its requital. We live in a post-modern world where subcultures now make up the majority of pop culture: culture is a flat circle, and without a arbiter of taste or a recognized archive of historical influence, both The Simpsons and Balenciaga are empty vessels into which one can put any message. Luxury, or accessible? Satire, or newsworthy? Cool, or corny? Nostalgic, or forward-thinking? That’s up to each of us to decide.