By general consensus, whether on Reddit or in more qualified critical assessments, the Golden Age of Fox’s “The Simpsons” began no later than its third season, and did not extend past its tenth—or even, in the view of some doctrinaires, eighth—season. (Beyond the eighth, as New York magazine suggested, in 2006, significant staffing changes and a general creative fatigue led to a slackening of the animated sitcom’s “high-wire mix of hilarity and humanity”). Those classic mid-nineties years of “The Simpsons,” which is, unbelievably, still on air, and in its thirty-first season, served more than anything, for me, as a kind of ideological guide to life. The show’s plots, which followed Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie on a variety of more or less realistic capers in the American everytown of Springfield, were written with a sharp eye, but their takeaway was hardly ever unsympathetic. “The Simpsons” had a million cracks and gags, not to mention exceedingly quick and incisive—and sometimes even slightly mean—assessments of American popular culture, but its tender tenor was just as important. Ralph Wiggum might have been the densest kid in Springfield Elementary, but our hearts still hurt for him when he didn’t receive a single valentine on Valentine’s Day. Watching the show, I aspired to be just half as hilarious and as cutting and as sensitive as it was.
As the years went by, I largely stopped watching “The Simpsons,” partly because its cultural acuity and centrality had passed, and I began using other cultural primers to point my way. Whenever I happened upon a new episode, it was not unenjoyable, but it also made me feel a little sad, as if I was looking to the show to fulfill a purpose it was no longer able to. Recently, however, this wistful feeling has lifted a bit, thanks to a new, pleasurable way I’ve found to reëngage with “The Simpsons.” A few months ago, I began to come across Instagram accounts that post single frames from the show. First, I followed @scenic_simpsons, which, according to its bio line, is “dedicated to showcasing the most beautiful scenes, colours, sets and abstract compositions from The Simpsons. Seasons 1 - 10.” Then it was @psychedelic.simpsons (“A journey through the most trippy parts of The Simpsons”—this one, too, concentrating on “only the good seasons”); @surrealsimspons (“Dreams, hallucinations, imaginations and the surreal in the Simpsons”); @existential.simpsons, which includes a variety of anguished moments from the show; and @simpsonslibrary, which collects any “Simpsons” frame that includes printed and written matter (“Obsessive Bride”; “Modern Fart Denier”; “Zagat’s Guide to World Religions”). There seemed to be a “Simpsons” Instagram account for almost any niche predilection: @homer_feels, which collects the many moods of the family patriarch; @sartorial_simspons, which focusses on Springfield fashions; @simpsons_tech, which gives the history of technical inventions that have appeared on the show, like the FM radio and the karaoke machine; and @springfieldcuisine, which shares images of food that has featured on “The Simpsons.”
As I’ve continued to peruse these accounts in the last few months, I’ve realized that their delights come in more than one flavor. What strikes me most immediately and naturally, perhaps, is their easy ability to remind me of a good bit from a favorite episode. In this sense, an Instagram frame can almost serve as a contracted version of a full-scale rewatch: a capture on the @springfieldcuisine account of a sickly, grayish-looking Homer, sadly clutching an even grayer hoagie over a trash can as Marge glares at him, immediately takes me back to “Selma’s Choice,” a classic episode from the show’s fourth season, in which Homer falls ill from food poisoning after holding onto an extra-long, increasingly rancid sandwich that he begins to personify after taking it home from a company picnic. (The post’s caption is a signature Homer quote: “Oh, how can I stay mad at you?”) Another enjoyable aspect of these “Simpsons” Instagram posts is their singling out of a potentially overlooked moment, in all its glorious detail. One @sartorial_simpsons image, taken from the ninth season’s “The Trouble With Trillions,” captures a relatively negligible sliver of a scene in which Smithers, the billionaire Mr. Burns’s craven right-hand man, is interrupted in his chambers while ironing socks in a fuchsia robe, his collection of Malibu Stacy dolls arrayed behind him in a variety of fashionable outfits (a bikini whose color matches that of the robe; a mint-hued ball gown; a coördinated shearling hat and coat). Here, we can spend time with an image—tarry with it in a way that we might not have been able to otherwise.
What allows for such a level of attention is the highly particular quality of these accounts: their division according to subcategories, from clothes to food, books, and magazines. If we’re interested in what Smithers wears, we know where we are most likely to find a picture of that outfit. But, more broadly still, there is something about observing a single image at a time, as opposed to watching a full episode, or bingeing on several, that makes for a new kind of perspective on the show. This type of looking accords these images, plucked as they are from the context of their larger narratives, a pure aesthetic value. When I happen upon almost any image from one of the “Simpsons” accounts, I am struck by how absolutely visually gorgeous it is. This is, perhaps, especially true when it comes to @scenic_simpsons, with its visions of a violet car, its headlights on, cruising in a darkened parking lot full of silent vehicles; or an abstract thicket of trees, their tops as dense and foreboding as storm clouds; or a digital clock on a bedside table, its face glowing 7:59, next to an orange phone. Though they come to us via our hubbub-filled Instagram feeds, these stand-alone pictures are as quietly stunning as any made by our greatest American artists of alienation and loneliness, from Edward Hopper to Arthur Dove.
