Hello and welcome back to picsandportraits.
I didn’t plan for Retrofuturism and Animation to become a series but here we are.
What can I say?
There’s a lot about our present that isn’t great and its comforting to get lost in the
future of the past.
So far, we’ve looked at Tex Avery’s Toons of Tomorrow, how anime predicted the future
and Walt Disney’s futuristic visions.
This time we are going to be looking at The Simpsons and how they saw tomorrow.
A few disclaimers first: This is not going to be a listicle of all the times The Simpsons
predicted real world events.
That’s a saturated market and not really what I am interested in.
I’m more into how they imagined the future and developed their world and relationships.
We’re also going to be focussing on episodes that take place in the future and will not
include flash forward scenes in otherwise “current” episodes.
Feel free to mention some in the comments though.
Also, we are not including Barthood and Mr. Lisa’s Opus as they do not present a future
that is drastically different from they time they were produced.
Now, these futures are generally non-canonical, though there are some common themes or events:
Milhouse and Lisa dating, as an example, or Maggie singing.
So yeah, on that note, let’s dive into what is probably the most beloved of all Simpsons
futures, Lisa’s Wedding from season six.
This takes place in 2010, 15 years after production, and was the first real attempt to predict
the future of these characters.
The framing device is a fortune teller at a Renaissance fair who foresees Lisa meeting
a wealthy Englishman while away at university.
We see familiar staples: video calling, VR and automation; there’s actually an android librarian.
It also forecasts online schooling and corporate-sponsored education.
Troy McClure has a great line, the redhead in the Chicago school system.
Which I love. It says so much with so little.
In terms of other advancements, or changes: soy-based food is easily accessible, Big Ben
has been converted to digital time, and cars, while still wheeled, have taken sleeker, more
futuristic designs.
We also see a holographic tree, and the cable for cable television is huge to accommodate
1500 channels and all the major networks has merged into one, owned by ABC.
This episode was directed by Jim Reardon and written by Greg Daniels and it's fascinating
seeing the choices they made as to what became of certain characters: Bart works construction
while Homer has his same job, only now reports to Milhouse.
Otto runs a cab company that Quimby works for, following a political scandal.
Mr. Burns is cryogenically frozen and Martin Prince haunts the halls of Springfield Elementary
after a science fair explosion.
Lisa’s exceptionalism is on full display here as well, she is the pride of the town,
and this would carry over to our next future, season eleven’s Bart to the Future.
Now this has not aged well in its portrayal of indigenous people.
It’s framed around a mystic showing Bart thirty years into his future, roughly 2030.
Here, he is a deadbeat who plays in a gulf and western band with Ralph while Lisa is
president of the United States.
Elephant in the room, Lisa assumes the office after Trump.
It’s established the country is broke yet we don’t see much evidence of this.
Things are running as normal.
We get more holograms, virtual food and laser shields.
There are also hovering vehicles, buses, but conventional, wheeled buses still exist, for
poor people, which is a detail I love, very realistic, and television that is beamed directly
into your head via a gun.
In terms of characters, Flanders is blind after laser eye surgery, which was gaining
popularity at the time, Rod and Todd are closeted.
Nelson has grown into a slimy promoter.
Through him we learn that “smell you later” has replaced goodbye.
While not identical or directly linked, Lisa’s Wedding and Bart to the Future share commonalities,
of course being produced around the same time, relatively speaking.
They are both also inspired by ‘60s and ‘70s futurism, a lot of glass domes, frivolous
fins or spoilers on cars, satellite dishes, which makes sense given that’s when the
those creating these grew up.
They are both somewhat consistent with the characters designs, and how they predicted
age.
I love this Krusty and yeah.
I’m sure most casual fans of the show are familiar with both of these visions.
Going a little further ahead in time, after many dropped off, we have Future-Drama, from
season 16, 2005.
The name is obviously a play off a Futurama and features a cameo by Bender, not the last
time we will see him in this universe.
The story is framed around Bart and Lisa stumbling into Frink’s lab during a fight, who in
turn shows them their future, specifically their high school prom, so 2013.
This is a much darker take on the family’s future.
Homer and Marge are separated, due to Homer blowing all their money on an underwater house.
He also owns an early hover car.
We see the effects of climate change, with Maggie visiting the beaches of Alaska, as
well as genetically modified food, there is puke that moves.
Gross.
Also, there are robocops, social robots and smell you later is carried over as a farewell.
Looking at characters and relationships, Future-Drama introduces us to Jenda, Bart’s girlfriend,
who wants him to be more proactive.
Lisa is graduating two years early, and has been awarded a scholarship to Yale, now owned
by McDonalds.
This was given to her by Mr. Burns, who reneges on the offer after Bart saves him from a robbery,
giving it to him instead.
While this improves his relationship with Jenda, it effectively dooms Lisa to a future
with Milhouse, who is a roided mess of insecurity.
Learning this, Bart gives the scholarship back to Lisa, Homer and Marge reunite, and
in the end Bart learns he will find love a minute before he dies.
Now that’s a lot and there is more.
While both are single, Homer and Bart hit the town and run into Ms. Hoover and Mrs.
Krabappel, which foreshadows something coming up.
There’s a great line about the situation being weird, Krabappel asks if Bart wants
it to get weirder.
Fun stuff.
Future-Drama was followed by 2011’s Holidays of Future Passed.
Now this not only is one of my favourite later Simpsons episodes, it’s one of my favourites
episodes period.
Like Bart to the Future, it looks 30 years ahead, only to a much bleaker tomorrow.
No real framing, we just jump ahead through the family’s annual Christmas card photo.
This is so good and infers so much about the characters, particularly Lisa, who is revealed
to be queer and at one point poly, which I think it on brand.
Eventually she ends up with Milhouse, pregnant and moves out, while Maggie rises to fame
as a rock star, and Bart stays at home until he is kicked out.
In this 2041, Springfield Elementary has been converted into lofts.
This is where Bart, now a deadbeat father of two, lives, following his separation from
Jenda.
We also get medical robots, text implants and lots of holograms, books and television.
The internet is VR that you plug yourself into.
Lisa’s daughter Zia is obsessed with it.
There is immersive social media, Facebook and You- or Newtube and teleportation is the
preferred method of long distance travel though air travel still exists for the poor.
Very Mad Max-like.
But the family dynamics are what make this episode special.
I see it as a rumination on regret and not being happy with the future you’ve been
given, or that you’ve made, with Bart and Lisa bonding over missed opportunities and
the struggles of parenthood.
Neither can reach their children though Homer is able to bond with his grandkids, like Gene
Hackman in The Royal Tennenbaums, but can’t bond with his own son or his father, grandpa,
who is cryogenically frozen.
It’s resolved with Bart telling his kids they are the only thing worth anything in
his life and Lisa learning her daughter looks up to her.
It’s very sweet and very heartwarming as it is a Christmas episode, not that it didn’t
cause controversy by suggesting Dearborn, Michigan was under Sharia Law.
It was also considered a possible series finale, should contract negotiations fail.
Obviously they didn’t.
Instead the show continued and we got the direct sequel, Days of Future Future, in 2014.
This is one of the worst of Simpsons futures.
In it, Homer dies, is able to be cloned but dies again.
This is repeated for 30 years until he can no longer be cloned.
His consciousness is then uploaded to a USB, which is a dream of mine.
I want to live forever but not with this body.
This episode is bad.
Homer ends up in a robot, Milhouse becomes a zombie and Bart has sex with Ms. Hoover,
leading to the line “wow, now I see why they call you Miss Hoover.”
Innovations include many of the same seen in Holidays, with the addition of a robot
crematorium and a memory eraser, similar to Eternal Sunshine and yeah.
There is not really much more to say about this.
It's the shits and it only goes downhill from here with our last and certainly least future,
the next season’s Simpsorama.
This aired a month or so after The Simpsons-Family Guy crossover, and brought together Matt Groening’s
two most popular properties, The Simpsons and Futurama, which we talked about in episode
one.
I will no don’t eventually dedicate an entire episode to it, maybe sooner than later, but
this was Groening’s prediction of the 31st century.
I always welcome more Futurama but this is just bad.
There is a novelty to seeing these universes come together but I can think of dozens of
stories that would’ve been better than the one they picked.
Basically, Springfield complies a time capsule to be opened in 1000 years.
Milhouse puts in a rabbit’s foot while Bart contributes a sandwich he has blown his nose
on before it is lowered into radioactive waste.
That night Bender shows up.
He and Homer hit it off, they become friends.
Bender is made a member of the Pin Pals but a visit to Frink reveals his mission is to
actually kill Homer.
This is because his DNA is linked to monster rabbits that are wreaking havoc in the 31st
century.
Yes, from the time capsule.
A portal allows travel between universes, or times, and most of the episode consists
of characters simply interacting, that’s the novelty.
There are no real innovations to speak of, but there are a few self-referential gags,
the fact that Homer and Bender look identical and that by 2014, the Bender imagined in 1999
was already obsolete.
Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen Springfield in the 31st century and how the
distant relatives of characters and the city adapted to the future, as outlandish as that
could have been.
Also, while we do get cameos from Binky and Bongo, I would’ve preferred the rabbits
all just resemble Binky.
I’m not so jaded that I can’t somewhat enjoy this but it could’ve and should’ve
been so much better.
Now The Simpsons has already outlived a couple of these tomorrows, its been on for so long,
but what do you think its future holds?
Let me know in the comments down below.
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Share this video and give us a thumbs up, that helps out a lot too, and look forward
to more animated futures from the past as ours gets bleaker and bleaker.
There is hope yet, people, so hang on.
As always thank you so much for your interest in this channel and thanks for watching.
Stay safe out there.