The Simpsons by the Data

If Homer was the smarter, calmer, saner parent most of the time and Marge was the dumber, short-tempered, crazy parent most of the time, The Simpsons would get slammed for attacking women. Same if Bart was the smart, obedient, respectful child and Lisa that less smart, rebellious child.<p>Similar if Lenny and Carl&#x27;s roles were reversed. The Simpsons would be slammed for making the black guy the dumber one.<p>It&#x27;s simply safer to make it so white (well, yellow in The Simpsons universe...) males are the ones who are dumb, impulsive, try out hare-brained schemes, and so on, and since it is out of those things that most of the comedy arises, those characters are going to get the most words.

It blows my mind that even The Simpsons has become a target of gender bias accusations.<p>The Simpsons is probably one of the tamest, least hostile television shows I can imagine at this point. Comparing The Simpsons to the rest of TV, without bringing the broader premium cable, internet and subscriber systems into the mix, The Simpsons displays fairly mild jabs at so many tropes, and usually does so in ways that are at least a little more interesting than the rest of TV.<p>Beyond all of this, Matt Groening is fairly progressive in his humor. And even though, he&#x27;s long since had much direct influence on the content of the show, his initial creativity still brought forward more unique themes in the 90&#x27;s than what was previously common at that time. So many topics found a voice in The Simpsons&#x27; animation than ever before, and previously simply had no voice at all.<p>At this point, I&#x27;m pretty fatigued at this endless death march of character assassination wherever character may be found.<p>People who constantly look for a fight in anything at this point instantly lose my respect.

Regarding gender imbalance, it&#x27;s also true that the women on the Simpsons usually represent the voice of reason, leaving it to the men to bring the idiocy. Presumably giving women more air time on the show would require them to create dumber women characters.<p>So it&#x27;s possible that the imbalance in &quot;words spoken&quot; can be partly laid down to a conscious decision that &quot;it&#x27;s just funnier that way.&quot;

Though there was more male dialogue than female on the show, the men were constantly portrayed as stupid, weak, aggressive, drunk, selfish, not responsible...

This study assumes that Simpsons characters are manufactured purely for the use of the show. It ignores the possibility that the characters are created for the cast, not the audience.<p>Every TV show is a creation of a team. That team has certain members. You have to use these people. Absent special circumstances, such as one actor wanting to play at being a director or do a solo piece (Alan Alda, MASH) the work has to be balanced across the cast. Sometimes this is even dictated by contract. Recent seasons of TheBigBangTheory seem to follow contract math regarding screen time. Many episodes seem to alternate between male and female groupings. Friends did this, but TBBT seems more mathematical. One could probably reverse-engineer everyone&#x27;s contracts from screen time alone.<p>So perhaps TheSimpsons&#x27; gender bias is based on the writers creating characters for the voice actors they have available, a cast setup long ago. Maybe they even are writing characters specifically for voices created by that cast. That would also create a gender bias.

I was just shy of 4 when &quot;Bart Get&#x27;s an F&quot; aired and I&#x27;m a little jealous of all the folks who were the right age to experience that Simpsons era as the episodes aired. It&#x27;s still fun to go back and watch them, but I remember seeing adults in stitches with laughter as they told Simpsons jokes.

I&#x27;d argue bart was more the main character in the first few seasons. Even though dialogue count doesnt support it. There were a number of key episodes about him. Though others existed around the other simpsons too. Like homer becoming the safety inspector, lisa meeting bleeding gums murphy.

Culturally we don&#x27;t laugh at women in the way we laugh at male buffoons. It&#x27;s exactly the same reason there are far fewer female comedians.

Lisa was an inspiring character. We all laughed at Homer and Bart but we wanted to be Lisa, with her diligence and smarts and musical ability. I think that counts for more than how many words she said.

Never thought about this, good that it&#x27;s completely provable:<p>&quot;If we look at the supporting cast, the 14 most prominent characters are all male before we get to the first woman, Mrs. Krabappel, and only 5 of the top 50 supporting cast members are women.<p>Women account for 25% of the dialogue on The Simpsons, including Marge and Lisa, two of the show’s main characters. If we remove the Simpson nuclear family, things look even more lopsided: women account for less than 10% of the supporting cast’s dialogue.<p>A look at the show’s list of writers reveals that 9 of the top 10 writers are male.&quot;

&gt;a pattern of patriarchy<p>Americans and their political correctness, &#x27;nuff said.

The Simpsons are just stupid.