ABSTRACT
To some degree or other, all texts transcend their textual homes, also becoming part of common culture and of everyday life. Thus, television texts do not exist solely in their moments of transmission. Ang (1985: 83) noted of Dallas in the 1980s that it ‘became as much if not more so a practice as a text,’ and The Simpsons finds itself in a similar situation today. Consequently, it is not enough for us to study parody as a wholly textual being, for it is equally sociological. While in previous chapters, I have looked at how The Simpsons moves through other texts and genres, intertextuality and critical intertextuality work not only through texts but also through memory, interpretive communities, and talk, and so to track this intertextuality, we must also move into the realm of audiences. Thus, in this chapter and the next, I will examine how a group of 35 Simpsons viewers talked of their interaction with the show and with its parody, and I will study how Simpsons viewers make sense of and activate the program both individually and as groups. The 35 viewers I interviewed by no means represent the entire Simpsons audience, and therefore this chapter makes no claim to representativeness, but it provides a window into how some audience members deal with the program’s parody and humor, and with some of its contradictions brought on by its status as popular, mainstream parody.
