YMMV / The Simpsons S2 E9 "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge"

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • If there is a relatively clear Aesop in the episode, is that if you are going to show something to someone, better make sure the person can handle it, and parents should take responsibility for what they expose their children to. Maggie, being a baby, imitates the violence on Itchy and Scratchy because she does not know better. Bart and Lisa, for their part, can watch the show and enjoy it without emulating the worst aspects of it because they're far older children. But instead of simply forbidding Maggie from watching it (which should be relatively easy, given she is a baby), Marge starts a media campaign against the creators of Itchy & Scratchy.
  • In the same venue of this, when the show is altered and becomes boring, all the children start undertaking new hobbies, which are shown in a far more positive light. But this could have been achieved had their parents been a bit more strict about them watching cartoons unrestrictedly, or being in front of the TV all the time. So, instead of taking it with others or simply not caring, parents should take responsibility and ensure children's have a balanced life, without the need to censor anything.
  • On the other side of the coin, a lot of Meyer's woes from Marge could likely have been avoided if he had just made these points and defended the show in a remotely civil way. When his work gets critique from Marge that he views as a naggy, condescending nitpick, he defends his case by rudely insulting her, undermining her on TV and getting his staff to mock her via the cartoon itself, all while making clear Marge's opinions are insignificant. This only angers Marge into taking further action and lobbying for more support until Meyers gets harassed into changing the show. Also applies as Values Resonance since the birth of the internet has only elevated controversies pivoted by how creators decided to defend their works against critique.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Itchy and Scratchy sitting on a porch drinking lemonade really the only non-violent material the In-Universe writers could come up with? Or were they engaging in Malicious Compliance, deliberately writing the most boring dreck they could think of as a form of Writer Revolt, knowing that kids would probably tune out anyway? Noteably this wouldn't be the only time the show's quality capsized the moment the writers had to compromise the normal formula.
• Applicability: Because the episode focused more on the idea of consequences than how forms of media should be censored for the greater good, the theme of the episode has applied to more than just TV violence. The lesson format has evolved to include internet content and video game content due to those platforms facing similar criticisms from the public. Keep in mind, this episode was released in 1990, whereas the concept of age rating in video games was made in 1994 through the creation of the ESRB, The Entertainment Software Rating Board, in response to Murder Simulators.
• Franchise Original Sin: This was the first episode to be entirely dedicated to the writers using the show to try and push their personal viewpoints on a topic (in this case, Moral Guardians and TV censorship). The main difference, however, is this episode handled it a lot more tactfully, showing that both sides have valid points, in that entertainers shouldn't be forced to dumb down their works because some might find it offensive, but at the same time certain things shouldn't be included in things explicitly intended for certain demographics. Later episodes would be a lot more one-sided in this regard.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The basic plot may also remind some of YouTube's controversial attempts to make the site more and more child-friendly, at the expense of creative freedom. In particular, the way Marge demands the show to be changed instead of just keeping Maggie from watching it brings to mind the countless amount of clueless adults who use Youtube as a babysitting tool and then blame the site when their child clicked their way into something they shouldn't have, ignoring the small fact that Youtube isn't exclusively for kids in the first place.
  • The episode also anticipated the 1993 controversy in which the mother of a five-year-old Ohio boy who set fire to his family's house and killed his two-year-old sister claimed that he told her that he was copying something he saw on Beavis and Butt-Head, which led a nervous MTV to ban references to fire on the show and other programming. It was widely suspected that the mother made the whole thing up to deflect blame away from her parenting, and after becoming an adult the son confirmed that he'd never seen any episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head and the family didn't even have cable TV at the time.
  • In 2023, a small group of parents did protest against a school lesson that featured an image of Michelangelo Buonarroti's classic statue David, eventually causing the school's principal to resign.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Over dinner, Bart and Lisa mention that they're building soapbox derby cars. The next season has an episode where the plot revolves around Bart becoming a soapbox derby racer.
• Memetic Mutation: The scene where Itchy and Scratchy share a lemonade.
• Narm Charm: The bizarre voices Itchy and Scratchy have here arguably add to the Stylistic Suck aspect of the morally correct retool, giving it an additional layer of Uncanny Valley if you're used to their regular voices.
• Strawman Has a Point: While Roger Meyers is portrayed in the wrong for mishandling Marge's complaints about the show, fans of the show have taken his side and made the argument that it isn't Meyer's responsibility to monitor the behaviour of children and have also pointed that Marge should have just kept a closer eye on her children and controlled their exposure to mature-rated content, such as murder and violence.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The episode is a parody of the moral panic the series received upon its premiere (as well as Terry Rakolta's boycott of Married... with Children over sexual content in the show, which did lead to one episode getting banned from airing on TV for many years) with Marge forming a concerned parents group. While the focus of attention shifted to other cartoons and video games soon after, these kinds of campaigns lost steam by the later years of the decade.
  • In the opening, as Marge prepares her pork chops she loudly proclaims the secret ingredient is care, before whispering about adding monosodium glutamate (MSG). At the time, it was a controversial additive, but tests done since have proven that health concerns previously linked to it were almost always psychosomatic, meaning she wouldn't be so quiet about it these days.

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