This Sociological Breakdown of Angry Mob Behavior on ‘The Simpsons’ Proves That Moe Is Springfield’s Chaotic, Bitter Beating Heart
When there are torches to burn and pitchforks to wave, one man in the entire Simpsons canon stands at the front of the frothing mob wielding the kind of rage most men reserve for a gangsta who’s dissing their fly girl.
In most Simpsons episodes that heavily feature Springfield’s resident surly barkeep and exotic animal trafficker, Moe Szyslak plays the role of a pessimistic, misanthropic sad-sack who is in a constant battle of wills with the noose hanging in his supply closet. Moe has little in his life for which he can be thankful, and he keeps whatever tenderness is left in his shriveled, broken heart more tightly contained than the hernia he’s holding in with that bumper sticker. For all his misery, his rage and his yearning, Moe would be a perfect tragic protagonist in a Russian realist novel — and, whenever the disgruntled proletariat of Springfield assemble to voice their anger, he basically becomes one, according to a philosophically inclined, unemployed Simpsons fan who assembled his own idealistically motivated movement on Twitter this past weekend.
Writer and Simpsons analyst Rory McCarthy believes that it isn’t sheer serendipity or plot convenience that, whenever a curiously common torch-and-pitchfork horde assembles on the show, Moe is typically at the front of the crowd directing the townsfolk’s rage. Per McCarthy, Moe is the necessary instigator of chaos to combat the oppressive order of Springfield’s late-medieval social structure, and his bar is the “pressure cooker” where the town’s politics turn angry and radical.
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In another TV universe, Moe's Tavern would be the perfect hangout for radical revolutionaries ranging from Leon Trotsky to Emiliano Zapata to Amanda Huggenkiss.
Examining The Simpsons through the lens of revolutionary politics may seem like a silly exercise considering that Springfield’s hierarchy has remained unchanged for the last 35 years and counting, but that may be exactly the point — the power structure of the town continues to keep the disenfranchised and the foolish firmly in their place at the bottom of the ladder, no matter what temporary political cohesion emerges among the lower classes. Every slate is wiped clean when the credits roll, and the commoners, the alienated and the misanthropes all return to their hovels or their taverns to continue grumbling about the powerful into their beer mugs.
If any town was ever in need of a political spark plug such as Moe, it’s Springfield. And yet, each time Moe reaches the front lines of an empowered mob, the movement evaporates as easily and as arbitrarily as it began for all its fire and rage. Is Moe the angry mob leader a commentary on the folly of the Communards and their many derivatives? Or is the entire town of Springfield a metaphor for the American neo-feudalism that prevents community movements from seizing power back from the powerful?
Will Twitter’s many active Simpsons writers comment on such an analysis? Will someone please offer McCarthy a job?
