2023-09-09 20:42:55
The Simpsons’ ability to predict the future has been (much) exaggerated. But there is still some truth in all this.
Yes, the Simpsons correctly predicted the election of Donald Trump
This is probably the best-known prediction… but also the one regarding which there have been the most urban legends. The Simpsons actually correctly predicted the election of Donald Trump in the episode “Bart to the Future” (which translates into French as “The Simpsons in thirty years”), dating from the year 2000.
In it, Bart has a vision of the future. If the episode is mainly interested in the future life of the young boy, it nonetheless remains interesting for a very specific element: the election of Lisa Simpson to the presidency of the USA.
In one scene, the new president discusses the actions of her predecessor, a certain… Donald Trump, who allegedly left the country in a budget crisis.
Let’s still analyze this prediction a little to understand how it came to be, and note a few errors along the way. First of all, The Simpsons got the date a little wrong, since if Lisa Simpson’s presidency takes place in 2030. Even if it is not specified that Donald Trump is her direct predecessor, the context suggests, which would place Trump’s tenure in The Simpsons somewhere during the 2020s.
Secondly, the prediction does not come out of nowhere, since the year 2000 was marked by the candidacy of Donald Trump for the elections. Because yes, he did not wait until 2016 to try to lead the country…
As for the announced budgetary crisis, it more or less actually happened. But was it so difficult to predict?
The takeover of Fox by Disney
This is one of the best predictions of The Simpsons, particularly because little else suggested this merger at the time the episode was written (except perhaps Disney’s tendency to buy its competitors).
It is in the episode “When you dish upon a star”, or in French, “Homer makes his cinema”, released in 1998, that a rather particular version of 20th Century Fox appears. Indeed, at the bottom of the image, we can see a somewhat unusual mention appear: “A division of the Walt Disney Company”.
In 2017, Disney announced its intention to buy Fox. Acquisition which has since been largely completed, to the great dismay of certain cinema enthusiasts who see it as an attack on competition and a threat to the diversity of film production.
But the fact remains that in 1998, it was a truly visionary prediction!
The Horsemeat Scandal
It must be understood that, although horse meat is already not particularly popular with European consumers, in the United States, its consumption is quite simply a taboo subject. Most Americans even believe that it is illegal in the United States (when this is not the case).
So when the cook at the Springfield school secretly adds horse testicles to the canteen dishes, in the episode “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song” (in French: “A Very Dear Enemy”) we must understand that the American public is even more horrified than the European spectators.
If, until further notice, the horse meat fraud scandal of 2013 did not concern this type of part of the animal, the fact remains that the discovery of the fact that certain food companies were passing off horse meat smuggled into supposedly beef dishes gives this scene a bit of a prophetic feel.
Censor Michelangelo’s David statue
This prediction has a bit of a bitter taste. Indeed, in the episode “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” (“All at the demonstration!”), the residents of Springfield all come together to demand the censorship of… Michelangelo’s David, who was in town due to of a traveling exhibition.
The episode dates from 1990, and yet, in March 2023, an American teacher will pay the price for the mentality that this episode probably wanted to denounce.
Indeed, Hope Carrasquilla, who taught in a school in the city of Tallahassee, Florida, had to resign following showing her students photos of the statue. The parents in fact judged the statue, which is a masterpiece of renaissance art if ever there was one, to be “pornographic”.
A little more recently, Professor Carasquilla was invited by the city of Florence to visit the city and see the real statue with her own eyes. A little snub to the Florida conservatives.
Lady Gaga’s choreography at the Superbowl
A well-known prediction… Unless the singer was inspired by The Simpsons? Still, in the episode “Lisa becomes Gaga”, Lady Gaga appears in Springfield and takes the opportunity to put on a spectacular performance in a somewhat unusual costume, as the artist is accustomed to.
And in 2017, during the Super Bowl, the biggest American Football event, unmissable in the United States, the singer will do a choreography which has enormous similarities with that of the episode. All in a costume which, if it does not present some of the most ridiculous elements that the Simpsons included, still has a certain resemblance to the one presented in the American series.
So is it a coincidence, or is there an inspiration?
_
Follow Geeko on Facebook, Youtube and Instagram so you don’t miss any news, tests and good deals.
1694293699
#Times #Simpsons #Perfectly #Predicted #Future