Lisa the Iconoclast
Encyclopedia
"Lisa the Iconoclast" is the sixteenth episode of The Simpsons
' seventh season
. It originally aired on Fox
in the United States on February 18, 1996. In the episode, Springfield
's bicentennial approaches, and Lisa
writes an essay on town founder Jebediah Springfield. While doing research, she finds a confession revealing that Springfield was a murderous pirate named Hans Sprungfeld who never cared about the people of Springfield. Lisa and Homer
decide to get the message out, but instead anger the town council.
The episode was written by Jonathan Collier
and directed by Mike B. Anderson
. It was Anderson's first directing role. The story was inspired by the real events of when President Zachary Taylor
was exhumed. Donald Sutherland
guest starred as the voice of Hollis Hurlbut, a part that was written specifically for him. The episode includes several references to Colonial America, including Gilbert Stuart
's unfinished 1796 painting of George Washington
. The episode features two neologisms: embiggen and cromulent which were intended to sound like real words but play on the fact that they are completely fabricated. Embiggen, coined by Dan Greaney
, has seen use in several scientific publications, while cromulent, coined by David X. Cohen
, appeared in the Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon.
celebrates its bicentennial, Lisa
's class at Springfield Elementary School are assigned essays. Lisa goes to the historical society
to research about Jebediah Springfield, the founder of Springfield. While trying to play Jebediah Springfield's fife
, she makes the shocking discovery that the town's founder was actually a villainous pirate
and enemy of George Washington
who kept his dark past hidden. He had written his confession on the back side of a portrait of Washington and hidden it in his fife. Meanwhile, upon Lisa's suggestion, Homer
is elected the town crier
after he demonstrated that he was a better town crier than Ned Flanders
.
Lisa conducts further research about Jebediah Springfield, and finds out that he was actually a pirate named Hans Sprungfeld who, having lost his tongue, had replaced it with a prosthetic silver
tongue. The town, including Marge, does not agree with Lisa's revelations, resulting in an "F" on a report about Springfield while Ms. Hoover deems her to be a "PC
Thug." She also receives a ban from the Historical Society for three months. Lisa tries to convince the town her claims are true, but the only person who believes her is Homer. However, she convinces the municipal government to disinter Mr. Springfield's body to search for evidence of a legendary silver tongue. Despite Lisa's suspicions, when they open the coffin, the skeleton possesses no silver tongue. Lisa is forced into admitting she was wrong and Mayor Quimby
strips Homer of the role of town crier and reassigns it to Flanders.
That night, Lisa has a dream wherein the ghosts of Jebediah Springfield and George Washington appear. After seeing the incomplete portrait of George Washington in her classroom, Lisa soon figures out that the piece of paper upon which the confession is written is the bottom half of the portrait. She confronts town historian, Hollis Hurlbut, with this piece of evidence. Hurlbut confesses that he stole the tongue while the dust cleared seconds after the coffin was opened and hid it in a cowboy maquette in the museum. He explained that he had done so to protect his career and the myth of Jebediah Springfield. After realizing the mistake of celebrating a pirate, the two decide to go public with their discovery. Just as Lisa is about to expose the "real Jebediah" to the parading townspeople, she realizes that Jebediah Springfield's good image means too much to the town, and decides to keep the truth a secret, knowing that town will lose hope and morale if the truth is revealed to the public. She says she was mistaken in her research of Jebediah Springfield and that he was actually a great man. At the parade Homer takes the tri-cornered hat and bell from Flanders and replaces him, marching through the parade with Lisa on his shoulder.
The episode was written by Jonathan Collier
and directed by Mike B. Anderson
. The story was inspired by the real events of when President Zachary Taylor
was exhumed. In the late 1980s, college professor and author Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison and was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative and the Coroner
of Jefferson County, Kentucky, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky
Chief Medical Examiner. The remains were then returned to the cemetery and received appropriate honors at reinterment. Then-show runner
Bill Oakley
said "Lisa the Iconoclast" is "essentially the same" story but with Lisa in the role as Rising. At the end of the episode there is an ode to Jebediah Springfield playing over the credits. The music and lyrics for this piece of music were all written by Jeff Martin
.
Donald Sutherland voiced Hollis Hurlbut in this episode. The script was specifically written with him in mind playing that part. Sutherland wanted to do the voice recordings as one would do a film and start in the middle of the script, so that he could get to know the character, but that idea was abandoned. In the episode, Lisa joked she was getting over her "Chester A. Arthuritis", a play on the word "arthritis
" and the name of Chester A. Arthur
. Sutherland ad-libbed the line "you had arthritis?", and the producers liked it so much that they kept it.
The episode opens with an old documentary on Jebediah Springfield, starring Troy McClure
as Springfield. The writers tried to make this documentary seem as lousy and low-budget as possible. One of these tricks was to have post-production add scratches to the animation. The animaters added production errors that would come in a low-budget film. For example, a man in the crowd looks at the camera, some of the people have watches on, McClure's stuntman does not have the same sideburns as he does, and a boom microphone
can be seen entering the frame. In the Historical Society, the animators spent a lot of time decorating the walls. Besides numerous historical references, they also decorated the walls with The Simpsons characters set in the 19th century. The first painting shows Otto Mann
(Springfield's schoolbus driver) driving children in a horse-drawn carriage
. Another painting shows Marge Simpson
in silhouette
. The last one shows Professor Frink
holding a kite in the manner of Benjamin Franklin
.
The Historical Society of Springfield contains references to historical figures and facts. The episode features Gilbert Stuart
's unfinished 1796 painting of George Washington and tells a fake backstory of how it came to be. In reality, the painting was unfinished and it did not have a part torn off. Hurlbut mentions the American revolutionaries William Dawes
and Samuel Allyne Otis
as equals to Jebediah Springfield. When Lisa passes out the "Wanted for treason" posters, it is a reference to the ones Lee Harvey Oswald
passed around, which were about John F. Kennedy
. Hurlbut claims Springfield's confessions are "just as fake" as the will of Howard Hughes
and the diaries of Adolf Hitler
, both of which are genuine forgeries.
The episode also contains references to popular culture. The opening couch gag shows the Simpson family
in blue boxes similar to the style of The Brady Bunch
. Chief Wiggum is singing "Camptown Races
" from 1850 by Stephen Foster
ventriloquised with the skull of Jebediah Springfield. Lisa's dream in which Washington and Springfield are fighting is a reference to Lethal Weapon
. When Lisa is telling the people at Moe's Tavern about the real history of Jebediah Springfield, they all sit with their mouths open. This is a reference to a scene in the film The Producers
from 1968. When Homer knocks over Ned Flanders in order to take over his job as town crier, it is a reference to the film National Lampoon's Animal House
from 1978. In addition to these cultural references, at least one author has compared this episode to Friedrich Nietzsche
's short work On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life.
town motto
is "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." Schoolteacher Edna Krabappel
comments that she never heard the word embiggens until she moved to Springfield. Miss Hoover, another teacher, replies, "I don't know why; it’s a perfectly cromulent word." Later in the episode, while talking about Homer's audition for the role of town crier, Principal Skinner
states, "He's embiggened that role with his cromulent performance."
Embiggen—in the context it is used in the episode—is a verb that was coined by Dan Greaney
in 1996. The verb previously occurred in an 1884 edition of the British journal Notes and Queries
: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc. by C. A. Ward, in the sentence "but the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything." The literal meaning of embiggen is to make something larger. The word has made its way to common use and was included in Mark Peters Yada, Yada, Do'h!, 111 Television Words That Made the Leap From the Screen to Society. In particular, embiggen can be found in string theory
. The first occurrence of the word was in the journal High Energy Physics in the article "Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking", which was published on January 23, 2007. For example, the article says: "For large P, the three-form fluxes are dilute, and the gradient of the Myers potential encouraging an anti-D3 to embiggen is very mild." Later this usage was noted in the journal Nature
, which explained that in this context, it means to grow or expand.
Cromulent is an adjective that was coined by David S. Cohen
. Since it was coined it has appeared in Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon. The meaning of cromulent is inferred only from its usage, which indicates that it is a positive attribute. Dictionary.com defines it as meaning fine or acceptable. Ben Macintyre
has written that it means "valid or acceptable".
, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210
, Married... with Children
, and Fox Tuesday Night Movie: Cliffhanger
.
The episode received positive reviews from television critics. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson lauded it for the focus on Lisa, commenting that "Lisa-centered episodes tend to be preachy, but I suppose that’s inevitable given her character. I like the fact Lisa takes the high road here, though, as she proves she doesn’t always have to be right. Homer’s turn as the town crier brings mirth to a solid show." In addition, John Alberti praised the episode in his book Leaving Springfield
as "an especially cogent example of the narrative fissuring and disruptive disclosure...Lisa spends the entire episode uncovering the truth about Jebediah and courageously defending her findings against a phalanx of authority figures...a symbol of honesty, integrity, and courage. All in all, a spectacular episode revealing the truth behind our society." The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, thought it was a "clever" episode, and highlighted Lisa's fantasy of the fight between Sprungfeld and George Washington as "fantastic". Dave Foster of DVD Times thought Sutherland offered a "memorable" guest appearance. Total Film
s Nathan Ditum ranked Sutherland's performance as the 14th best guest appearance in the show's history. Michael Moran of The Times
ranked the episode as the eighth best in the show's history.
set The Dark Secrets of the Simpsons, alongside "The Springfield Files
", "Homer the Great
", and "Homer Badman
". On September 8, 2003 the VHS tape was released on DVD
under the name The Simpsons: Dark Secrets in Region 2
and Region 4
, but "Homer the Great" was substituted with "Homer to the Max
". It was released again on DVD
on December 13, 2005 as part of The Simpsons Complete Seventh Season. Bill Oakley
, Josh Weinstein
, Jonathan Collier
, Yeardley Smith
, Mike B. Anderson
, and David Silverman
participated in the DVD's audio commentary
.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
The Simpsons (season 7)
The Simpsons seventh season originally aired on the Fox network between September 17, 1995 and May 19, 1996. The show runners for the seventh production season were Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein who would executive produce 21 episodes this season. David Mirkin executive produced the remaining...
. It originally aired on Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
in the United States on February 18, 1996. In the episode, Springfield
Springfield (The Simpsons)
Springfield is the fictional town in which the American animated sitcom The Simpsons is set. A mid-sized town in an undetermined state of the United States, Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. The geography of the town and its...
's bicentennial approaches, and Lisa
Lisa Simpson
Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...
writes an essay on town founder Jebediah Springfield. While doing research, she finds a confession revealing that Springfield was a murderous pirate named Hans Sprungfeld who never cared about the people of Springfield. Lisa and Homer
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
decide to get the message out, but instead anger the town council.
The episode was written by Jonathan Collier
Jonathan Collier
Jonathan Collier is an American television writer, best known for his work on The Simpsons, Monk, and King of the Hill. He worked as an executive producer on Mike Reiss' DVD movie, "Queer Duck: The Movie". He attended and graduated from Harvard University.-Season Seven:*"Lisa the Iconoclast"*"22...
and directed by Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson, sometimes credited as Mikel B. Anderson, is a television director who works on The Simpsons and has directed numerous episodes of the show, and was animated in "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as cadet Anderson. While a college student, he directed the live action feature films...
. It was Anderson's first directing role. The story was inspired by the real events of when President Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
was exhumed. Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
guest starred as the voice of Hollis Hurlbut, a part that was written specifically for him. The episode includes several references to Colonial America, including Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
's unfinished 1796 painting of George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
. The episode features two neologisms: embiggen and cromulent which were intended to sound like real words but play on the fact that they are completely fabricated. Embiggen, coined by Dan Greaney
Dan Greaney
Daniel "Dan" Greaney is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons. He was hired during the show's seventh season after writing the first draft of the episode "King-Size Homer", but left after season eleven...
, has seen use in several scientific publications, while cromulent, coined by David X. Cohen
David X. Cohen
David Samuel Cohen , primarily known as David X. Cohen, is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons and he is the head writer and executive producer of Futurama.-Early life:...
, appeared in the Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon.
Plot
As SpringfieldSpringfield (The Simpsons)
Springfield is the fictional town in which the American animated sitcom The Simpsons is set. A mid-sized town in an undetermined state of the United States, Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. The geography of the town and its...
celebrates its bicentennial, Lisa
Lisa Simpson
Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...
's class at Springfield Elementary School are assigned essays. Lisa goes to the historical society
Historical society
A historical society is an organization that collects, researches, interprets and preserves information or items of historical interest. Generally, a historical society focuses on a specific geographical area, such as a county or town or subject, such as aviation or rail. Many historical...
to research about Jebediah Springfield, the founder of Springfield. While trying to play Jebediah Springfield's fife
Fife (musical instrument)
A fife is a small, high-pitched, transverse flute that is similar to the piccolo, but louder and shriller due to its narrower bore. The fife originated in medieval Europe and is often used in military and marching bands. Someone who plays the fife is called a fifer...
, she makes the shocking discovery that the town's founder was actually a villainous pirate
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
and enemy of George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
who kept his dark past hidden. He had written his confession on the back side of a portrait of Washington and hidden it in his fife. Meanwhile, upon Lisa's suggestion, Homer
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
is elected the town crier
Town crier
A town crier, or bellman, is an officer of the court who makes public pronouncements as required by the court . The crier can also be used to make public announcements in the streets...
after he demonstrated that he was a better town crier than Ned Flanders
Ned Flanders
Nedward "Ned" Flanders, Jr. is a recurring fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Harry Shearer, and first appeared in the series premiere episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire". He is the next door neighbor to the Simpson family and is generally...
.
Lisa conducts further research about Jebediah Springfield, and finds out that he was actually a pirate named Hans Sprungfeld who, having lost his tongue, had replaced it with a prosthetic silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
tongue. The town, including Marge, does not agree with Lisa's revelations, resulting in an "F" on a report about Springfield while Ms. Hoover deems her to be a "PC
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
Thug." She also receives a ban from the Historical Society for three months. Lisa tries to convince the town her claims are true, but the only person who believes her is Homer. However, she convinces the municipal government to disinter Mr. Springfield's body to search for evidence of a legendary silver tongue. Despite Lisa's suspicions, when they open the coffin, the skeleton possesses no silver tongue. Lisa is forced into admitting she was wrong and Mayor Quimby
Joe Quimby
Mayor Joseph "Joe" Quimby, nicknamed "Diamond Joe," is a recurring character from the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, and first appeared in the episode "Bart Gets an F". A member of the Democratic Party, Quimby is the mayor of Springfield, and is a...
strips Homer of the role of town crier and reassigns it to Flanders.
That night, Lisa has a dream wherein the ghosts of Jebediah Springfield and George Washington appear. After seeing the incomplete portrait of George Washington in her classroom, Lisa soon figures out that the piece of paper upon which the confession is written is the bottom half of the portrait. She confronts town historian, Hollis Hurlbut, with this piece of evidence. Hurlbut confesses that he stole the tongue while the dust cleared seconds after the coffin was opened and hid it in a cowboy maquette in the museum. He explained that he had done so to protect his career and the myth of Jebediah Springfield. After realizing the mistake of celebrating a pirate, the two decide to go public with their discovery. Just as Lisa is about to expose the "real Jebediah" to the parading townspeople, she realizes that Jebediah Springfield's good image means too much to the town, and decides to keep the truth a secret, knowing that town will lose hope and morale if the truth is revealed to the public. She says she was mistaken in her research of Jebediah Springfield and that he was actually a great man. At the parade Homer takes the tri-cornered hat and bell from Flanders and replaces him, marching through the parade with Lisa on his shoulder.
Production
Jonathan Collier
Jonathan Collier is an American television writer, best known for his work on The Simpsons, Monk, and King of the Hill. He worked as an executive producer on Mike Reiss' DVD movie, "Queer Duck: The Movie". He attended and graduated from Harvard University.-Season Seven:*"Lisa the Iconoclast"*"22...
and directed by Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson, sometimes credited as Mikel B. Anderson, is a television director who works on The Simpsons and has directed numerous episodes of the show, and was animated in "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as cadet Anderson. While a college student, he directed the live action feature films...
. The story was inspired by the real events of when President Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
was exhumed. In the late 1980s, college professor and author Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison and was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative and the Coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...
of Jefferson County, Kentucky, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
Chief Medical Examiner. The remains were then returned to the cemetery and received appropriate honors at reinterment. Then-show runner
Show runner
Showrunner is a term of art originating in the United States and Canadian television industry referring to the person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television seriesalthough such persons generally are credited as an executive producer...
Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Oakley and Josh Weinstein became best friends and writing partners at high school; Oakley then attended Harvard University and was Vice President of the Harvard Lampoon...
said "Lisa the Iconoclast" is "essentially the same" story but with Lisa in the role as Rising. At the end of the episode there is an ode to Jebediah Springfield playing over the credits. The music and lyrics for this piece of music were all written by Jeff Martin
Jeff Martin (writer)
Jeff Martin is an American television producer and writer. He was a writer for The Simpsons during the first four seasons. He attended Harvard University, where he wrote for The Harvard Lampoon, as have many other Simpsons writers...
.
Donald Sutherland voiced Hollis Hurlbut in this episode. The script was specifically written with him in mind playing that part. Sutherland wanted to do the voice recordings as one would do a film and start in the middle of the script, so that he could get to know the character, but that idea was abandoned. In the episode, Lisa joked she was getting over her "Chester A. Arthuritis", a play on the word "arthritis
Arthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
" and the name of Chester A. Arthur
Chester A. Arthur
Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st President of the United States . Becoming President after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, Arthur struggled to overcome suspicions of his beginnings as a politician from the New York City Republican machine, succeeding at that task by embracing...
. Sutherland ad-libbed the line "you had arthritis?", and the producers liked it so much that they kept it.
The episode opens with an old documentary on Jebediah Springfield, starring Troy McClure
Troy McClure
Troy McClure is a fictional character in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. He was voiced by Phil Hartman and first appears in the second season episode "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment". McClure is a washed-up actor, usually shown doing low-level work, such as hosting infomercials...
as Springfield. The writers tried to make this documentary seem as lousy and low-budget as possible. One of these tricks was to have post-production add scratches to the animation. The animaters added production errors that would come in a low-budget film. For example, a man in the crowd looks at the camera, some of the people have watches on, McClure's stuntman does not have the same sideburns as he does, and a boom microphone
Boom operator (media)
A Boom operator is an assistant of the production sound mixer. The principal responsibility of the boom operator is microphone placement, sometimes using a "fishpole" with a microphone attached to the end and sometimes, when the situation permits, using a "boom" which is a more intricate and...
can be seen entering the frame. In the Historical Society, the animators spent a lot of time decorating the walls. Besides numerous historical references, they also decorated the walls with The Simpsons characters set in the 19th century. The first painting shows Otto Mann
Otto Mann
Otto Mann is a fictional character on the animated TV series The Simpsons, voiced by Harry Shearer. He is the school bus driver for Springfield Elementary School...
(Springfield's schoolbus driver) driving children in a horse-drawn carriage
Carriage
A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, since they are wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light,...
. Another painting shows Marge Simpson
Marge Simpson
Marjorie "Marge" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the eponymous family. She is voiced by actress Julie Kavner and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
in silhouette
Silhouette
A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...
. The last one shows Professor Frink
Professor Frink
Professor John Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr., or simply Professor Frink, is a recurring character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria, and first appeared in the 1991 episode "Old Money". Frink is Springfield's nerdy scientist and professor and is extremely...
holding a kite in the manner of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
.
Cultural references
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
's unfinished 1796 painting of George Washington and tells a fake backstory of how it came to be. In reality, the painting was unfinished and it did not have a part torn off. Hurlbut mentions the American revolutionaries William Dawes
William Dawes
William Dawes, Jr. was one of several men and a woman who alerted colonial minutemen of the approach of British army troops prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord at the outset of the American Revolution....
and Samuel Allyne Otis
Samuel Allyne Otis
Samuel A. Otis , a Delegate from Massachusetts; born in Barnstable, Barnstable County, Mass., November 24, 1740; was graduated from Harvard College in 1759; engaged in mercantile pursuits in Boston; member of the state house...
as equals to Jebediah Springfield. When Lisa passes out the "Wanted for treason" posters, it is a reference to the ones Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
passed around, which were about John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
. Hurlbut claims Springfield's confessions are "just as fake" as the will of Howard Hughes
Melvin Dummar
Melvin Earl Dummar is a Utah man who earned national attentionwhen he claimed to have saved reclusive business tycoon Howard Hughes in a Nevada desert in 1967, and to have been awarded part of Hughes' vast estate. Dummar's story was adapted into the Academy Award winning film Melvin and Howard, in...
and the diaries of Adolf Hitler
Hitler Diaries
In April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries...
, both of which are genuine forgeries.
The episode also contains references to popular culture. The opening couch gag shows the Simpson family
Simpson family
The Simpson family is a family of fictional characters featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of the married couple Homer and Marge and their three children Bart, Lisa and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town...
in blue boxes similar to the style of The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...
. Chief Wiggum is singing "Camptown Races
Camptown Races
Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster . It was probably composed in Cincinnati in 1849, according to Richard Jackson, and published by F. D. Benteen of Baltimore, Maryland, in February 1850...
" from 1850 by Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster
Stephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...
ventriloquised with the skull of Jebediah Springfield. Lisa's dream in which Washington and Springfield are fighting is a reference to Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon is a 1987 American buddy cop action film and the first in a series of films, all directed by Richard Donner and starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as a mismatched pair of LAPD detectives, and Gary Busey as their primary adversary...
. When Lisa is telling the people at Moe's Tavern about the real history of Jebediah Springfield, they all sit with their mouths open. This is a reference to a scene in the film The Producers
The Producers (1968 film)
The Producers is a 1968 American satirical dark comedy cult classic film written and directed by Mel Brooks. The film is set in the late 1960s and it tells the story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who want to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop...
from 1968. When Homer knocks over Ned Flanders in order to take over his job as town crier, it is a reference to the film National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis. The film was a direct spin-off of National Lampoon magazine...
from 1978. In addition to these cultural references, at least one author has compared this episode to Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's short work On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life.
Embiggen and cromulent
The episode features two neologisms: embiggen and cromulent. The show runners asked the writers if they could come up with two words which sounded like real words, and these were what they came up with. The SpringfieldSpringfield (The Simpsons)
Springfield is the fictional town in which the American animated sitcom The Simpsons is set. A mid-sized town in an undetermined state of the United States, Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. The geography of the town and its...
town motto
Motto
A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...
is "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." Schoolteacher Edna Krabappel
Edna Krabappel
Edna Krabappel is a fictional character from the animated TV series The Simpsons, voiced by Marcia Wallace. She is a 4th grade teacher at Springfield Elementary School. Krabappel is the only character Wallace voices on a regular basis.- Profile :...
comments that she never heard the word embiggens until she moved to Springfield. Miss Hoover, another teacher, replies, "I don't know why; it’s a perfectly cromulent word." Later in the episode, while talking about Homer's audition for the role of town crier, Principal Skinner
Seymour Skinner
Principal W. Seymour Skinner is a fictional character in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. He is voiced by Harry Shearer. Born in Capitol City, he is the principal of Springfield Elementary School...
states, "He's embiggened that role with his cromulent performance."
Embiggen—in the context it is used in the episode—is a verb that was coined by Dan Greaney
Dan Greaney
Daniel "Dan" Greaney is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons. He was hired during the show's seventh season after writing the first draft of the episode "King-Size Homer", but left after season eleven...
in 1996. The verb previously occurred in an 1884 edition of the British journal Notes and Queries
Notes and Queries
Notes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...
: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc. by C. A. Ward, in the sentence "but the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything." The literal meaning of embiggen is to make something larger. The word has made its way to common use and was included in Mark Peters Yada, Yada, Do'h!, 111 Television Words That Made the Leap From the Screen to Society. In particular, embiggen can be found in string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
. The first occurrence of the word was in the journal High Energy Physics in the article "Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking", which was published on January 23, 2007. For example, the article says: "For large P, the three-form fluxes are dilute, and the gradient of the Myers potential encouraging an anti-D3 to embiggen is very mild." Later this usage was noted in the journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, which explained that in this context, it means to grow or expand.
Cromulent is an adjective that was coined by David S. Cohen
David X. Cohen
David Samuel Cohen , primarily known as David X. Cohen, is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons and he is the head writer and executive producer of Futurama.-Early life:...
. Since it was coined it has appeared in Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon. The meaning of cromulent is inferred only from its usage, which indicates that it is a positive attribute. Dictionary.com defines it as meaning fine or acceptable. Ben Macintyre
Ben Macintyre
Ben Macintyre is a British author, historian, and columnist writing for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.- Author :...
has written that it means "valid or acceptable".
Reception
In its original American broadcast, "Lisa the Iconoclast" finished 70th in the ratings for the week of February 12 to 18, 1996. The episode was the sixth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-FilesThe X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210
Beverly Hills, 90210
Beverly Hills, 90210 is an American drama series that originally aired from October 4, 1990 to May 17, 2000 on Fox and was produced by Spelling Television in the United States, and subsequently on various networks around the world. It is the first series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise...
, Married... with Children
Married... with Children
Married... with Children is an American surrealistic sitcom that aired for 11 seasons that featured a dysfunctional family living in Chicago, Illinois. The show, notable for being the first prime time television series to air on Fox, ran from April 5, 1987, to June 9, 1997. The series was created...
, and Fox Tuesday Night Movie: Cliffhanger
Cliffhanger (film)
Cliffhanger is a 1993 American action film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone plays a mountain climber, who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in a U.S. Treasury plane flying through the Rocky Mountains...
.
The episode received positive reviews from television critics. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson lauded it for the focus on Lisa, commenting that "Lisa-centered episodes tend to be preachy, but I suppose that’s inevitable given her character. I like the fact Lisa takes the high road here, though, as she proves she doesn’t always have to be right. Homer’s turn as the town crier brings mirth to a solid show." In addition, John Alberti praised the episode in his book Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture is a non-fiction compilation work analyzing the effect of the television program The Simpsons on society, edited by John Alberti. The book was published in 2004 by Wayne State University Press...
as "an especially cogent example of the narrative fissuring and disruptive disclosure...Lisa spends the entire episode uncovering the truth about Jebediah and courageously defending her findings against a phalanx of authority figures...a symbol of honesty, integrity, and courage. All in all, a spectacular episode revealing the truth behind our society." The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, thought it was a "clever" episode, and highlighted Lisa's fantasy of the fight between Sprungfeld and George Washington as "fantastic". Dave Foster of DVD Times thought Sutherland offered a "memorable" guest appearance. Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
s Nathan Ditum ranked Sutherland's performance as the 14th best guest appearance in the show's history. Michael Moran of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
ranked the episode as the eighth best in the show's history.
Merchandise
The episode was included on April 28, 1997 on the VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
set The Dark Secrets of the Simpsons, alongside "The Springfield Files
The Springfield Files
"The Springfield Files" is the tenth episode of The Simpsons eighth season, which originally aired January 12, 1997. The episode sees Homer believe he has discovered an alien in Springfield. It was written by Reid Harrison and directed by Steven Dean Moore...
", "Homer the Great
Homer the Great
"Homer the Great" is the twelfth television episode of The Simpsons sixth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 8, 1995. In the episode, Homer discovers that Lenny and Carl are members of the ancient secret society known as the Stonecutters...
", and "Homer Badman
Homer Badman
"Homer Badman", also known as "Homer: Bad Man" is the ninth episode of The Simpsons sixth season and originally aired November 27, 1994. It was written by Greg Daniels and directed by Jeffrey Lynch. After his attempt to grab a gummy candy off of the seat of a young feminist's pants is accused for...
". On September 8, 2003 the VHS tape was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
under the name The Simpsons: Dark Secrets in Region 2
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
and Region 4
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
, but "Homer the Great" was substituted with "Homer to the Max
Homer to the Max
"Homer to the Max" is the thirteenth episode of The Simpsons tenth season, which originally broadcast on February 7, 1999. Homer discovers that a television show broadcasting in Springfield, Police Cops, has a hero also named Homer Simpson. He is delighted with the positive attention he receives...
". It was released again on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on December 13, 2005 as part of The Simpsons Complete Seventh Season. Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Oakley and Josh Weinstein became best friends and writing partners at high school; Oakley then attended Harvard University and was Vice President of the Harvard Lampoon...
, Josh Weinstein
Josh Weinstein
Josh Weinstein is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Weinstein and Bill Oakley became best friends and writing partners at St. Albans High School; Weinstein then attended Stanford University and was editor-in-chief of the...
, Jonathan Collier
Jonathan Collier
Jonathan Collier is an American television writer, best known for his work on The Simpsons, Monk, and King of the Hill. He worked as an executive producer on Mike Reiss' DVD movie, "Queer Duck: The Movie". He attended and graduated from Harvard University.-Season Seven:*"Lisa the Iconoclast"*"22...
, Yeardley Smith
Yeardley Smith
Yeardley Smith is a French-born American actress, voice actress, writer and painter. She is best known for her long-running role as Lisa Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons....
, Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson, sometimes credited as Mikel B. Anderson, is a television director who works on The Simpsons and has directed numerous episodes of the show, and was animated in "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as cadet Anderson. While a college student, he directed the live action feature films...
, and David Silverman
David Silverman
David Silverman is an animator best known for directing numerous episodes of the animated TV series The Simpsons, as well as The Simpsons Movie...
participated in the DVD's audio commentary
Audio commentary
On disc-based video formats, an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video...
.
External links
- "Lisa the Iconoclast" at The Simpsons.com