Delicious but Deadly: 2.1 Bart Gets an F

Martin’s Book Report
"You're killing me, fish. Never have I seen a greater or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who. To catch a fish, to kill a bull, to make love to a woman, to live." Martin is quoting Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea, a title that would later provide The Simpsons with two episode titles: Season 8’s “The Old Man and the Lisa” and Season 10’s “The Old Man and the ‘C’ Student.”

Martin accepts Ms. Krabappel’s praise on his report and says, “Oh please, call me ‘Papa.’”
“Papa” was Hemingway’s most famous nickname. The name captured the more masculine aspects of the author’s public persona, such as his passions for hunting and bull fighting and, perhaps, fishing.(1) Especially when fishing included a gun:

Hemingway with his son, 1933 or 1934

Martin is later seen continuing his nautical-themed reading with Moby Dick: “Back to the forecastle of the Pequod.”

Bart’s Book Report

Bart provides the following review of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, drawn solely from the book’s cover: “It’s about these pirates, pirates with patches over their eyes, and shiny gold teeth and green birds on their shoulders. Did I mention this book was written by a guy named Robert Louis Stevenson? And published by the good people at McGraw-Hill. So, in conclusion, on the Simpson scale of one to ten – ten being the highest, one being the lowest and five being average – I give this book a nine.”

Ms. Krabappel is not impressed by Bart’s summary.

Map from Treasure Island

But Bart has unknowingly highlighted a key element of the novel’s legacy: today’s popular image of the pirate, with all the trappings Bart listed, can largely be traced back to Treasure Island. For example, David Feldman’s Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? notes that, although Daniel Defoe originated the trope of the parrot sidekick in Robinson Crusoe, it was Treasure Island that cemented its status as a defining characteristic of the pirate. (Feldman concludes that, to the extent that pirates did bring parrots aboard their ships, they were most likely motivated by potential profits from selling the birds in the Old World.)(2) Treasure Island also helped popularize the treasure map marked with an “X,” the one-legged pirate, and the Black Spot, which was recently featured in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as well as "The Curse of the Black Spot," a rather middling episode of the otherwise stellar Season Six of Doctor Who.(3)

Ms. Krabappel then asks Bart to provide the name of the pirate. Bart mentally runs through an impressive list of famous pirates, including the real-life Blackbeard (who was born Edward Teach in England and operated around the American colonies); Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea; Peter Pan’s Captain Hook; Long John Silver – the correct answer!; and Peg Leg Pete, a classic Disney character who predated Mickey Mouse, before settling on Bluebeard, the least likely of his choices – Bluebeard is actually an old folktale character who killed a series of wives.

(4, 5, 6, 7)

Disney's Peg Leg Pete

Arcade game: Escape from Granny’s House

But is he being destroyed ... or doing the destroying?

Other games visible in the background include an Itchy vs. Scratchy game, a game called “Eat My Shorts” (hmm…), and one that appears to be called “Robert Goulet Destroyer.” Robert Goulet, of course, was a Canadian-American singer and actor who appeared as himself in the Season Five episode “$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling).”

Itchy and Scratchy: “Let Them Eat Scratchy”

This sketch is obviously a reference to the supposed Marie Antoinette quote, “Let them eat cake.” It’s unlikely that Marie Antoinette actually uttered this phrase; it appeared in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s autobiography Confessions, written around 1765-1770, when Marie (born in 1755) was still a young girl.(8)

Phlebitis

Based on Bart’s phony symptoms, the school nurse diagnoses him with amoria phlebitis. Phlebitis is an inflammation of a vein; notable sufferers include Simpsons favorites Dan Quayle (“It's potato, not potatoe,” 2.4), Pablo Neruda (“I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda,” 7.4) and Richard Nixon (innumerable, including an appearance on the Jury of the Damned, 5.5).(9)

Lisa: “Prayer: the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Lisa is adapting Samuel Johnson’s famous quote, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Johnson's biographer, James Boswell, noted that with the word "patriotism" Johnson "did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest."(10) Lisa likely had the same concern about insincerity in mind when she observed Bart's self-serving pleas to God; she later confronts her brother by telling him, “I heard you last night, Bart. You prayed for this. Now your prayers have been answered. I’m not a theologian. I don’t know who or what God is exactly. All I know is, He’s a force more powerful than Mom and Dad put together, and you owe Him big.”

Winter Wonderland

Springfield in the snow bears a striking resemblance to Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas:

as well as a famous Currier and Ives print called "The Road, Winter":

First Continental Congress

Ben Franklin: “Fellas, I’ve invented something fun: the sled!” Of course, though Franklin is credited with many other inventions, there is evidence of sleds and sledges being used by many civilizations before his time.

The text on the sled (“Don’t sled on me”) refers to the famous Gadsden flag, which featured the image of a snake and the phrase “Don’t tread on me.” Although Franklin did not design the Gadsden flag, he did create the earlier “Join, or Die” political cartoon, which also showed a rattlesnake. Franklin saw the rattlesnake as an appropriate symbol for the new nation, finding in the rattles a representation of the colonies, distinct yet united; in the lidless eyes “an emblem of vigilance;” and in the snake's reaction to a threat – never striking first, but never surrendering – “an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.”(11)

Franklin’s “Join, or Die” cartoon, as seen on the arm of The Late Late Show’s Craig Ferguson

And finally, of course, a pee joke: “Hey, look, everybody, John Hancock’s writing his name in the snow!”

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_hancock_2_e.html

Delicious but Deadly

Sunday, October 9, 2011

2.1 Bart Gets an F

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