South Korea Featured in Recent Episode of “The Simpsons”
The country where “The Simpsons” cartoon is animated was finally featured in the long running series:
Popular animated sitcom family The Simpsons have been all around the world. They went to Japan where Bart and Homer became fluent in Japanese in prison and they nearly died on a game show, Australia where Bart escaped the country’s supposedly brutal justice system, and Brazil in an episode that had the local tourist board threatening a lawsuit over its depiction as a crime-ridden slum. Now in their 30th season, the Simpsons have finally made it to Korea, the country where they are animated.
Korea Times
In the episode aired March 17 U.S. time, Bart goes to Seoul to participate in an esports tournament. The whole family comes along after Lisa, a practicing Buddhist, expresses interest in visiting Jogye Temple for its salt mandalas. On arrival, they drive past the “Simpsons Animation Studio and Casino” and stay at the “Courtyard by DMZ.”
At Jogye Temple, parents Homer and Marge both achieve “zen” by making salt mandala portraits out of salt and destroying them. Monks, including one voiced by Korean-American actor Ken Jeong, admire Homer’s sudden enlightenment and compare him to a portly Buddhist statue at the temple.
The episode ends with the esports match at Sangam World Cup Stadium broken up by riot police and robots as the theme to “M*A*S*H” plays.
Like past Simpsons vacation episodes, the story is entertaining if not examined closely. But The Korea Times got David A. Mason, a professor at Sejong University, and history researcher Matt VanVolkenburg to watch the episode.
You can read more at the link, if you want to read an overthinking by experts about The Simpsons episode.
Mmmmmmmmm, donuts!
Well-played, RM!!
“While young Koreans would not remember it today, the show left a bad taste in the mouths of Koreans of that generation because, when it bothered to depict the country at all ― the movie was actually about Vietnam, after all ― it portrayed it as poor and war-torn.”
The setting of M*A*S*H was during the Korean War. Doesn’t everyone know the country was poor and war-torn during a war?
p.s. Yes, I do know M*A*S*H was an anti-war, specifically anti-Vietnam war, show. I watched the entire series when it aired and some of the dialog in the show helped me formulate my own anti-war views.
I got my PRO-war views from M*A*S*H. I learned not to let a war drag on for 11 years. Kill them all and go home.
Q: What’s the difference between an orphanage and a terrorist training camp?
A: No idea. I just fly the drone.
Hypothetical/Rhetorical:
When the US President has to decide over killing a million non-US people with a couple of well-placed nukes in Country X or killing 2 Million non-US people and 15,000 US troops by invading and trying to run a COIN operation where most US deaths are due to supposed “friendlies”, why do they choose wrong so often?
Chickenhead. Remember the line from Apocalypse Now? “You don’t lead them as much!”
“Remember the line from Apocalypse Now? “You don’t lead them as much!””
You might be getting your Apocalypse Nows mixed up with your Full Metal Jackets.