We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,545,015.26 | Books Available: 800,421 | Members Online: 255

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation

Planet Simpson How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation
Author: Chris Turner

A smart, accessible and funny cultural analysis of The Simpsons, its inside stories and the world it reflects. — From Bart Simpson to Monty Burns, the Internet boom to the slow drowning of Tuvalu, Planet Simpson explores how one of the most popular shows in television history has changed the way we look at our bewildering times. Awa... more »rd-winning journalist Chris Turner delves into the most esoteric of Simpsons fansites and on-line subcultures, the show’s inside jokes, its sharpest parodies and its ongoing love-hate relationship with celebrity to reveal a rarity of literary accomplishment and pop-cultural import — something never before achieved by a cartoon.

Complementing its satirical brilliance, The Simpsons boasts a beloved cast of characters, examined here in playful and scrupulous detail: Homer, selfish, tyrannical and not too bright, but always contentedly beholden to his family; Bart, pre-teen nihilist and punk icon; Lisa, junior feminist crusader; and Marge, archetypical middle-American mother, perpetually dragging her family kicking and screaming to higher moral ground. And while the voice actors behind the regular cast have eschewed celebrity, Turner considers why a stunning host of guests — Hollywood icons and has-beens, politicians, professional athletes, poets and pop stars — have submitted themselves to the parodic whims of the Simpsons’ writers.

Intelligent and rambunctious, absorbing and comic, Planet Simpson mines this modern cultural institution for its imaginative, hilarious, but always dead-on, reflections on our world.

Excerpt from Planet Simpson

Three Fun Facts About “D’oh!”

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “d’oh” as “Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish.”

2. The origins of “D’oh!” A Tracey Ullman–era Simpsons script called for Homer to respond to an unfortunate turn of events thus: “[annoyed grunt].” Dan Castellaneta, the voice-actor who plays Homer, improvised the exclamation, “D’oh!” It stuck.

3. The godfather of “D’oh!” Dan Castellaneta freely admits that he lifted Homer’s famous yelp from James Finlayson, a Scottish actor who played a bald, cross-eyed villain in a number of Laurel & Hardy films in the 1930s. Finlayson’s annoyed grunt was a more drawn-out groan — Doooohhh! Castellaneta sped it up to create Homer’s trademark.

ISBN-13: 9780307357045
ISBN-10: 030735704X
Publication Date: 10/28/2008
Pages: 576
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Vintage Canada
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation

Loading...