[The long of it]
Lately, we've had a run of episodes that have been funny, made insightful pop culture references, and even had some sweet family moments. Yet, something seemed to be missing. "The Simpsons" hadn't become tame, exactly, but some of the subversive flair that the show had in its earliest days was gone now. Perhaps the show didn't change, but the entertainment world did, moving away from "safe" series like "The Cosby Show" and "Full House," and toward shows like "Family Guy" and "South Park" that aren't afraid to shock audiences as much as amuse them. And then along comes "Girls Just Want to Have Sums," which reminds me of the days when "The Simpsons" didn't just address social issues, but made you laugh first and then think later.
The show opens with gloriously tacky musical based on the "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoons. Actors in costumes and working life-size puppets re-create all the gory details of the original cartoons, culminating in a parade of Scratchy's internal organs. The musical's great, but the real show begins when Skinner tries to congratulate the director, a Springfield Elementary alumna. When she modestly mentions she didn't excel in math, Skinner tries to reassure her by saying, "Well of course not, you're a girl." The comment goes down about as badly as you'd expect (and it is a dumb thing to say). The aftermath couldn't be handled better. The school is forced to hold a diversity forum and everything Skinner says just digs himself deeper, each step a commentary on the no-win nature of gender politics. When he says that men and women's differences should be respected, he's blasted for implying that they're not equal. If he says that they *are* equal, he's condemned for implying that the two sexes are interchangeable. Finally, he's reduced to, "It's the differences, of which there are none, that make the sameness exceptional ... just tell me what to say," and we see that we'll make no real progress on this issue until both sides stop assuming the worst about each other.
The school district quickly gives up on Skinner, and appoints a new principal who divides the school into two facilities, one for the boys, and the other for the girls. This section plays a lot with gender stereotypes, but without becoming lazy or obvious. (It says something, for instance, that there is no gym class scene.) The girls' side has beautiful facilities, but has a hilariously single- minded focus on self-esteem at the expense of learning. The boys' side looks like a war zone, where the bookmobile burns in the playground, the grass is dead, and the students draw pictures of gun- wielding robots that shoot down planes made of guns. Both sides are darned funny. As one of the schoolyard bullies notes, there's a kernel of truth in every joke, and that holds here: In my school, the boys were a lot more likely to doodle killer cyborgs and get into fistfights, while the girls were sweet and well-behaved.
Lisa, desperate to get some real lessons in math, masquerades as a boy. In addition to math, she learns that it's tougher to be a boy than you might think. As the new kid, she's instantly given a humiliating nickname, "Toilet," and challenged to fights. Most interestingly, she's forced to part with her principles, one by one. Ultimately, she even consents to beating up Ralph, "the most harmless student in the school."
The strongest point of this episode is that it doesn't offer pat, easy answers (or any answers, really) to the issues it raises. Are the students better off in separate classes? They're free to be true to their natures, but each half of the school seems to draw out the worst tendencies in its students. Lisa gets the solid education she craves, but at what cost to herself? For that matter, what happens to kids like Lisa, who don't fit perfectly into their gender roles? (I could ask the same question about Martin, who as a sensitive, artistic type might have flourished at the girls' school.) The show resolutely doesn't say; when Lisa is about to propose a solution, she's interrupted. Ultimately, there may be no answer, or at least no answer that suits everybody.
It's fitting that the episode opened with a Broadway-style salute to "Itchy & Scratchy," because "Girls Just Want to Have Sums" reminds me of "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge (7F09)." That episode presented all sides of the free-speech argument, made fun of them, and endorsed none of them, forcing the viewer to decide what was right. "Girls" does the same thing, using humor to keep things entertaining for the viewer while it provides food for thought. Insightful and funny, it's edgy without falling into the trap of providing shock humor just for the sake of being shocking. It's a lesson in how to do a social issue episode the right way.
[The short of it]
This show reminds me of the days when "The Simpsons" didn't just address social issues, but made you laugh first and then think later. After a cool musical, Skinner's attempts to recover from his controversial statements about gender really highlight the no-win nature of gender politics. Scenes at the boys' and girls' schools play with stereotypes, but have enough truth in them to seem funny and realistic. It's also interesting to see the toll that acting as a boy takes on Lisa. The episode offers no easy answers to the questions it raises, but instead lets you decide for yourself. It's a funny and insightful lesson in how to do a social issue episode the right way. (A)
[DYNs]
... the positions of the protesters and their signs in the long shot match the ones in close-up? (See animators, we really *do* pay attention to this stuff!) ... Lewis "dips" Bart during the ballroom dance sequence? ... Maggie nods in agreement when Marge says girls can be as good mathematically as boys? ... the downed helicopter in the boys' half of the playground? ... Lisa, a second-grader, is admitted into the fourth-grade math class?
[References]
"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (song) - episode title a spoof
"Camelot" (musical) - I&S musical called, "Stab-a-Lot"
"The Lion King" (the musical, more than the movie) - costume and set design similar to the live-theater musical - opening number a takeoff of "Circle of Life"
Lawrence Summers controversy - former president of Harvard made a faux pas similar to Skinner's [See "Personal Comments & Observations" for more -- Ed.]
Wang Chung (pop group) - one of their hits has a line that goes, "everybody Wang Chung tonight"; Homer uses this a come-on line to Marge
[Previous Episode References]
[4F21], [DABF06] Lisa yearns for a better education at a different school
[FFF]
Theater marquees:
NATHAN MATTHEW ONE GUY
AND NAMED [Moe]
LANE BRODERICK MOE
IN
$ $ $ STAB-A-LOT
THE
ITCHY AND SCRATCHY MUSICALProtest signs:
SKINNER + WORDS = HATE XX = XY WHY DID I
MULTIPLY?Diversity forum banners:
DIVERSITY FORUM TONIGHT
PUBLIC WELCOMEALBANIANS ENTER IN BACK
"Cathy" painting:
I FINALLY FIT
INTO MY SUMMER
BATHING SUIT ...
AND IT'S OCTOBER!Boys' math textbook:
REAL MATH
NOW
EXTRA
CHALLENGING!Math problem:
Y + Y = 25
Y = 5, -5Award ceremony banner:
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
(SOME AWARDS PRE-TAPED)[Personal Comments & Observations]
A snippet from Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" plays on the radio before Otto lets the boys out of their cage.
We hear "I Know What Boys Like," by the Waitresses, as Lisa learns to fit in at boys' school. (Ironically, the point of the song is that what boys really like are girls who are, ahem, willing to flaunt their femininity.)
Martin, demonstrating his skill with the flute, sings Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick." The original version of the song plays over the end credits.
Poor Principal Skinner -- he could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had paid attention to the Lawrence Summers flap at Harvard. Speaking at some sort of assembly, Summers mentioned that men tended to do better than women at math and engineering. Apparently, this was based on observations that showed that men do indeed fare better than women at math and engineering. That alone would have been enough to anger feminists, but he went a bit further, suggesting that this disparity just may be one of those biological differences between men and women. Women's rights advocates were incensed, noting that his remarks could be interpreted to mean that it was a waste of time to try to teach "hard" math and sciences to women who were, after all, biologically incapable of understanding them. Summers tried to explain that this was not what he meant, but to no avail; he turned in his resignation earlier this year. At least he wasn't demoted to assistant groundskeeper.
People who reject the notion that men are inherently better than women when it comes to adding up numbers still need to explain why men's math scores on standardized tests usually surpass women's marks. Cultural bias is usually cited as a culprit -- and there may be something to it. Psychologists have camped out in classrooms, observing how the two sexes learn. One thing they noticed is that boys tend to hog the teachers' time by, for instance, asking more questions. They were also more aggressive about *answering* questions in class. Over time, girls develop an attitude that math and science are really more of a boy thing, and retreat to other subjects, or just lose interest in school altogether.
One of the suggested fixes for this makes the arguments over Summers' fate at Harvard seem positively polite: Going back to the notion of single-sex classrooms. Advocates think it will provide a non- threatening place where girls' natural math and science talents will blossom. They also point out they boys can be given more slack to be their usual boisterous selves. Opponents worry that this will backfire, reinforcing outdated gender roles, and dooming either boys or girls (take your pick, because I've heard it argued both ways) to a second-class education. I don't think anyone has come right out and said girls will be given mushy feelings-based nonsense that Lisa had to endure, but that is an underlying fear.
Liquid Paper (or as it's generically known, correction fluid) was invented by a secretary in the days before personal computers. She made a fortune from it, which she passed on to her son, Mike Nesmith of "Monkees" fame. It's probably a measure of the male-centered bias of our society that I know her only as "Mike Nesmith's mom," and not by her actual name.
The all-artist edition ...
Frieda Kahlo -- Mexican artist, and subject of the recent film, "Frieda." I believe the picture hanging in SES is a self-portrait.
Georgia O'Keefe -- Another female artist, at a time when this was considered an oddity. Two of O'Keefe's favorite subjects were orchids (the painting Lisa sees is typical) and cow skulls, the latter being a frequent decorative motif in New Mexico, where she lived.
Cathy Guisewhite -- Cartoonist. Her creation "Cathy" was a thinly- disguised commentary on her own life and issues facing women. In particular, the strip pointed out how society seems to set the bar unrealistically high for women. Lately (in my opinion), it's devolved into three panels of Cathy listing things that annoy her, plus one panel of punchline.
(By coincidence, my local paper announced to day that it has bumped "Cathy" from its daily comics pages.)