More than Just a Cartoon: Meta-Television Culture and the Age of Irony

Abstract

The cultural climate of the 1990s has rendered irony the dominant mode of both media consumption and production. This chapter highlights The Simpsons’ pivotal role as a TV show contributing to the cultivation of what I dub “meta-television culture” in reference to John Fiske’s key work in television studies, 1987’s Television Culture. More specifically, I argue that, by working elements of spectator culture into the parodic framework of an animated sitcom, The Simpsons has both tapped into and reinforced a cultural sensibility of meta-media humor, which characterized the zeitgeist of young adults in the 1980s and 1990s.