I went to see the Simpsons the other day with my twelve year old son. He had seen the movie before but was keen to see it again. On our way to the cinema, walking the streets of Amsterdam, he made a point of telling me not to blabber about things without thinking first. I was curious what brought that on, because I am ALWAYS blabbering and he never minds. I decided to put it down to the movie we were going to see.
The Simpsons generally are so dysfunctional that it is easy to feel better about yourself, watching them. It’s a rule that every member of the Simpson family has a knack for going on when they should simply shut up. It is why they are funny.
The one exception was of course good ole Homer Simpson’s epiphany.
It was Homer’s one and only chance to ever become a normal person. You feel all of a sudden a sense of hope and that is unique in Homer’s case. The scene alone justified the entire movie, I think.
There is another dimension that we ‘invite’ all the time without thinking about it and which Homer is very examplary of. At one point, we might have to pay the bill for things we generally shrug off. We do not know when, how or why. It’s the nature of an ephiphany.
I have been wondering about why the quintessential cynic in cartoondom had to go through one? It might be question of a similar magnitude as why it took the makers so long to get round to doing a movie only now, even when fans called out for one as early as its fourth episode. The answer to the second question isn’t readily available, so I’ll home in on the first issue.
A true epiphany can hardly be communicated, yet the chances that an epiphany will happen in someone’s life are very high. That is because you never expect an epiphany when it happens. In that sense, it happening to Homer, that most unlikely of characters, was a master stroke.
Life itself brings us many surprises every day. Scientists say that for every event that a human expects, there might be as many as 80 surprises/discoveries/new events. The stream of surprises that surrounds us is endless. Plus another fact is that humans are quite open to surprises: we like them, it is why we read newspapers. Humans have a natural craving for news.
Bringing on an epiphany isn’t how it works. It’s only people that are idiots that want to bring one on. Or Jackasses maybe. Or people who are generally so bored they do not know what else to do.
Perhaps we are ready for a collective ephipany. Perhaps that is what the Homer Simpson experience really indicated.
Perhaps he spread the bug to my 12 year old before I cottoned on to it. One thing is sure; I’ll sure watch what I blabber on about in future.
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