Marge Simpson Anime: The Liberation of Marjorie Bouvier

[history79]

"I wanted to distance Homer Simpson as far away as possible from Marge. I wanted her to be Marjorie Bouvier – I wanted it to be a story about her coming home to herself. It’s called the Marge Simpson anime because it’s a play on what anime means to our current culture, and who consumes anime the most in Western culture. The title refers to Marge Simpson because of how we identify with her, but the subtitle is ‘The Liberation of Marjorie Bouvier’ because that’s the end goal."

"There’s nothing in place to stop male mediocrity from being as successful as it is. Everything we’ve constructed in our society to this very moment – that hot combination of compulsory heterosexuality, patriarchy and capitalism – refuses to provide any punishment for being a mediocre man. And when I speak of male mediocrity, I’m not referring to someone who isn’t as intelligent as an astrophysicist or as attractive as a hot actor. When I speak of male mediocrity, I’m referring to someone who doesn’t challenge the space they exist in or who has never looked at the world critically. There’s no punishment for that."

"My art project was me asking the question, ‘What if I told you Homer Simpson wasn’t good enough? What if I could tell you that I could give Marge a better reality than the one she’s been offered? What if I told you that she could still be an incredible human being if Homer wasn’t in her life?’"

- Soolagna Majumdar

Source: http://www.uwastudentguild.com/damsel-marge-simpson-anime-and-the-liberation-of-women-words-with-soolagna-majumdar/



Source: https://margesimpsonanime.tumblr.com/

episode 12: Bouvier Uprising pt. 4



episode 16: gal pals



episode 26: all about my children



episode 27: the soft exultation of Marjorie Jacqueline Bouvier

Comments

[thanekos]

Take art created to challenge a status quo, drop it into a fandom space consisting in part of pedantically defending personal status quos, and what do you get?

Several of the comments to this post.

[servant_iskandar]

I get what you say, in broader terms. We often talk about what is canon and what is not, what is "in character" and what is not. So we, too, can be agents of the status quo as in sharing a frame of reference, or at least a set of shared/acknowledged/agreed upon viewpoints about oft-beloved narrative and fictional characters.

That said, however...do no take offense, but I believe your statement is off the mark, and that dismissive tone does not help to corroborate your point.

Simply put, I doubt people such as Jane, Gnarli and Tommy, who all have a rich and positively progressive posting history in this community, are voicing their legitimate criticism as a way to enforce conformism.

Change is good, but change for the sake of change without substance and substainability to back it up have already been one of the big issues in the comics industry for decades.

It's frankly a bit upsetting to see the creators of this new generation falling back to the old tricks, including fanning the flames of controversy, or seeking that Grand Statement that will make them the shepherds of the next flock of yes-persons. Sometimes, it's just fragility. Others wrote in better detail than I ever could here about what's happening to Tom King, who was probably fagocitated both by personal problems and a sudden, perhaps too fast rise to prominence.

A final note - being Italian, like Jane, and especially in the times we've been living in recently, I'm always wary when someone starts advocating against "being average" and "mediocrity" in such an oblique way. Nurturing a feeling of superiority helps to win the complacence of the silent majority: as in, there's always Others to make us feel good, and as such we won't regret someone stomping down on them, until we're the ones under Orwell's boots.

If there's a thing I expect of this community, is to keep our heads high and reject that kind of mindset.

[deh_tommy]

I'm bemused by the idea my ramblings are in any way rich or progressive, but thanks anyway for the compliment.

[laughing_tree]

Bingo.

[deh_tommy]

...sorry.

[thezmage]

What status quo is it challenging? Just the specific Simpsons one where Homer and Marge are married and love each other? I’m not sure that’s a status quo that deserves much challenging.

Is it the status quo where the disabled are treated as less than? Because the talk of punishing Homer for having brain damage and/or a genetic disorder seems to be enforcing that.

It’s not challenging the status quo where women are treated as objects? The supplied quotes talk about “punishing” Homer more than they talk about Marge. When they do talk about Marge it’s as something to be earned and won, not as a person with her own choices. Homer deserves Marge every bit as much as Manjula or the artist or Moe or Disco Stu does: not one bit. She is not “deserved” or “won,” she makes her own choices. She’s not blind to Homer’s faults and, despite what the quote would say, she’s been given plenty of choices over the past thirty years. Smarter people, richer people, people who “challenge the space they exist in,” and I’m not sure but I’d be willing to bet by now women as well. Every time she chooses Homer. Regardless of how it may feel some times, Marge is not trapped in her marriage, she chooses to be in it.

And I know that, being a fictional character, she doesn’t really have choices, but looking at it this way only exacerbates the problem. Through that lens Marge is truly an object, no more able to be “liberated” than a rock. Not able to “come to herself” and definitely not “an incredible human being” whether Homer were in her life or not. Unless we can look at her as if she were a human being capable of making her own choices and deserving respect for the choices she makes there is no “liberation [for] Marjorie Bouvier.”