eory: "A butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York" . The point is that to fully understand all the cultural messages of The Simpsons we must understand it's intertextual references. The first level of intertextual reference is the way in which the programme often lifts sequences from movies and animates them into the show. One of the most famous of these is the send-up of the Hitchcock's classic Psycho. In the episode Itchy & Scratchy & Marge , Homer is in the garage. The same musical sound effect as that of the famous 'shower scene' is used as Maggie hits him over the head with a mallet. Homer grabs the tablecloth (shower curtain) as he falls. Red paint (blood) pours down the drain, there is a close-up of his eye. At the end of the scene we see him lying the floor just as Janet Leigh lay on in the bathtub. This is a clear, obvious and effective intertextual reference. There have been plenty of less relevant ones, such as when a moose is eating Homer's rubbish (Northern Exposure). An interesting aspect is that intertextual interpreters of The Simpsons must come under the same scrutiny as iconographic interpreters of traditional art (such as Roger Fry). They often read too much into an episode and see references that are not there. In a TV interview for BBC1 James L. Brooks, a producer of The Simpsons said that if the movie is not a big film then the reference is probably false. Yet we see in every Internet listing for every episode of The Simpsons huge numbers of unconfirmed references. These include in the "Dancin' Homer" episode a reference to "nearly any other movie about baseball" . Another way the show uses intertextual references is in the Simpson family's actual viewing. Often certain types of shows are shown, generally as being poor quality programming. These commonly include self-help programmes and info-mercials. (Homer is usually seen to fall for the dreadful item on sale a...
