Small Shelly Fauna

The demented melancholy of a Tennessee Williams heroine

I won't bore you all (at least not today, anyway) with the reams of virtua-paper I could fill on the topic of the decline and fall of The Simpsons. I will limit myself to discussion of The Simpsons motion picture that will be premiering on July 27, 2007. This was, unfortunately, an inevitability. The true tragedy here is that I will undoubtedly have to see it sooner or later. I mean, I'm like the biggest fan ever, right? So I've gotta see a Simpsons movie. Many years ago I made a New Year's Resolution that I would never watch another new episode of The Simpsons again. I've held to that, and I've been a much happier person because of it. But in the back of my mind, I always told myself that I'd probably make an exception for the final episode or the movie, if I lived to see either of them (it's still an open question on the former.) And now that these dark events have finally occurred, jeez, I don't know. Not only would I have to watch new Simpsons material, I'd be stuck watching two freaking hours of it. I've only ever walked out of one movie (Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, for the record), and I'd like to keep it that way. And if the contents of the movie were anything like that of the show in general when I stopped watching it, I can only see two possible outcomes of my going to see it: an early walkout, or the murder of each and every other person in that theater. You know, I like to imagine that there exists an parallel universe where they forged ahead and made a Simpsons movie in 1994. It would have been the best thing ever, and I can imagine parallel-universe me watching the DVD on the weekly basis, relishing to this day the greatest day of his life, when he first saw The Simpsons: The Movie in theaters. It would have been to our world what Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie was to the Simpsonian world. Alas, in reality we get only an ashen husk that once was glory, and the likes of me left to ponder what might have been.