of this is the key to its style. The use of televisual and filmic grammar has allowed The Simpsons to do so much that has given it a real TV style, to the point where it may not really be considered a cartoon. The show shares some convention with much sitcom. Just as in Friends you will see an establishing shot of the outside of a location before you see an internal shot, if we move around the regular locations of Springfield we will often see the same sort of establishing shot (e.g. outside the Simpson house, or outside Moe's Tavern). However, the fact that it is a cartoon also allows it to move around without budgetary problems. Episodes have been set in India, England and even in space. The use of the shot has allowed for juxtaposition comedy (such as when Marge wants to get a job and Homer tells her that they really don't need the money - in the next shot we see the house begin to subside into the ground). It has allowed for the development of editing style that allows simultaneous actions in two separate locations to be followed such as in Bart's telephone pranks. The use of shots and editing like animation allows for a non-linear style. This is seen in the various 'recap' and flashback episodes, but is also parodied well. In classical film a scene would cut to a clock face which would then dissolve to the same shot at a later time and then fade down and up into a new scene. This trick has become a clich and it is a tribute to the audience's understanding of it that The Simpsons can parody it. In one case the shot moves up to a clock and fades into a new shot of the clock, and down to the scene some time later. But time has only moved on by one minute, and this parody is used to emphasise that much time has not actually gone by at all. Camera angles in the programme are generally at eye level. This is perhaps because soap operas use a similar technique to try to represent reality. By doing this, when more complex shots are used the...
