The Simpsons has an odd relationship with Australia. The Season Six episode “Bart vs. Australia” didn’t precisely painting the nation in probably the most flattering gentle — from the video games of “Knifey Spoony” to the depiction of their prime minister as a nude, Foster’s-swilling layabout named Andy.
Longtime Simpsons author Mike Reiss even claimed that the present was “condemned within the Australian Parliament after the episode.” No phrase on whether or not or not the federal government ever tried to extradite Matt Groening for a public booting.
Now The Simpsons are as soon as once more on the forefront of an Australian political controversy — not due to a controversial episode, however as a result of Simpsons memes have been “weaponized” to push again in opposition to a controversial plan to construct extra nuclear energy vegetation.
Australia’s opposition chief Peter Dutton not too long ago introduced that the Coalition Celebration, if elected, would assemble seven new nuclear energy vegetation on particular websites all through the nation. The logistics of this plan have been questioned, as has its legality. Reportedly the Coalition “has not consulted the communities or the location homeowners about their proposal,” which looks like one thing you would possibly do earlier than publicly asserting a plan to construct seven nuclear reactors?
In response to this announcement, the Labor Celebration and union organizations are combating again utilizing Simpsons memes. The Australian Council of Commerce Unions has been handing out stickers that includes Blinky, the three-eyed fish who was mutated on account of his proximity to the Springfield nuclear plant.
The Australian Council of Commerce Unions
Labor assistant minister Andrew Leigh shared a modified picture of Blinky’s Aussie namesake, the koala character Blinky Invoice, with three eyes, posing in entrance of Homer Simpson’s office.
Defenders of the nuclear plan are blasting this “scare marketing campaign,” claiming that critics are “counting on The Simpsons to win their case.”
Weirdly, this isn’t the primary time that The Simpsons has been dragged into this sort of debate. Simply two years in the past, the chief of the Nationwide Celebration of Australia claimed in an interview that the nation was reluctant to simply accept nuclear energy particularly as a result of folks’s fears have been knowledgeable by The Simpsons.
And even earlier than that, method again when the present first debuted, advocates for nuclear energy have been fairly pissed. Reportedly the nuclear energy business had a “meltdown” over The Simpsons, and a few teams penned offended letters bemoaning how the present featured “bungling idiots” working on the nuclear plant. This truly led to Simpsons writers and producers happening a tour of a real-life nuclear plant in California, which impressed them to “tone down” the jokes about nuclear energy. “We actually backed off that as a supply of comedy,” producer Sam Simon defined. “No extra three-eyed fish.”
By the way, a few of the exhibits that did poke enjoyable at nuclear power have been briefly banned in 2011 following the Fukushima catastrophe, which, if TV has taught us something, might have been averted by merely pushing a random button.
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