Upon re-watching “Bart to the Future”, the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons‘ eleventh season recently, the reality sunk in that we were so close to our first female president. Watching Lisa Simpson sitting in the oval office, the words of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” resounded in my head: we could have had it all. A Lisa sitting in a purple suit with pearls, similarly donned by Vice President Harris at President Biden’s election in 2020 and who’s self-awareness came to light when she quoted a Simpson episode as part of her political endeavors, a clip of her during a Simpsons panel at SDCC last year was played where she quoted “We must move forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.” from “Treehouse of Horror VII”.
Granted one of the first matters of business Lisa has to attend in “Bart to the Future”–where Bart sees a vision of his, his family’s, and the nation’s future–is the debt we accumulated from President Trump. A frankly super throwaway line from the year 2000 that no one could have believed would come true, let alone twice, which really manifested itself. Alas, here we are, and results have varied day to day in this dystopia. Ironically, Bart has a line that says the United States couldn’t handle him as the president for being “too real,” a line of opinion that seems to be going around these days. Future Bart might have more in common with those in power than he could have imagined. But if that’s a parallel we can draw with the gift of hindsight, it also raises another question: what’s it going to take to see a Lisa Simpson in office?
Growing up alongside the show, Lisa has always been the voice of reason in the Simpsons family. The black sheep in the community of middle class neighbors, who represent all walks of life one could find in any-town, America. The comedic episodes ful of silly and often questionable Springfieldian antics were often grounded by the empathy Lisa expressed for her fellow man, in the face of being quite often misunderstood. She made sense of her parents, her erratic father, her overstressed high-functioning mother, her rebellious brother, and everyone around her, and often did so to make them to come together and face whatever hardship they were struggling with this week. From being an advocate for human and animal rights as a role model for young girls, I really put stake into her ideals and hunger for knowledge. And much like the cartoons before it, in the way that Looney Tunes introduced many of us to classical music and opera, I learned so much about culture I wouldn’t have sought after if not for the show, through Lisa’s eyes. Her Tell-tale Heart “It’s the beating of that hideous heart!” line delivery in “Lisa’s Rival” lives rent free in my head and got me into Poe’s works. Even that episode, where Lisa sabotaged a classmate’s project to better her own chances, showed how no matter how perfect a kid could strive to be, they were only human and prone to jealousy too. And let’s not forget what a little heartbreaker she is, from Ralph’s “I Choo-choo-chose you” rejection, Milhouse’s pining to Nelson’s unlikely romance. Lisa Simpson will forever be that girl and perhaps no one could match her likes in animation history.
But now as I approach the age of someone who could be a president, the allure of a figure exemplifying the ideals Lisa did in our own higher office remains, decades-old prescient episodes of the show or not. Lisa’s compassion her sense of justice and injustice, her willingness to get stuck in and deal with the messes laid out ahead of her, and the love she had for her family and community, are broad ideals befitting the highest office of them all in this country. And while the news, however outrageous, continues to shock and dismay us day to day, and it has still has me thinking back to another exchange in “Bart to the Future”, where Homer says, “What a bleak and horrible future we live in!” only for Bart to respond “Don’t you mean “present”?”
Sure, that’s where we are right now, but I’d like to think we’re still waiting for the President Lisa Simpson on the horizon–and that she could be any one of us.
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