oops, hit reply instead of paste - didn't mean for that to look like snark
Not mentioned in many of the articles - most of which breathlessly informed viewers that animation of The Simpsons is done in South Korea, in case they had never bothered to read the credits - is the fact that animation is one of North Korea's few successful exports (legal ones, anyway). Although The Simpsons isn't prepared under the watchful eye of the Dear Leader, the head of the SK studio that produces it is the prime mover behind NK's animation industry, which I understand was set up during a less frosty period of north-south economic cooperation.
Less well-known again is the fact that North Korea also exports development services, and Fox parent News Corporation recently came under scrutiny for its ownership (following a takeover) of a firm that has developed mobile game spinoffs of a few Fox movies using NK labor.
I think it's more subtle than it lets on. The message wasn't "the simpsons is produced by sweatshop labor" which of course isn't true. Because if it was, this intro never would have aired. By joking openly, "we use sweatshop labor", they're really reiterating that they don't.
The real message is "think about where your consumer goods come from". Which of course isn't the most original or controversial statement in the world, but the context makes you pay attention, much more so than if it had been direct, like a documentary. I thought it was a clever, self-deprecating way to bring up the subject, and a great use of context.
Exactly! The more you think about it the more brilliant it gets. Like the Babel Fish argument against the existence of God in the Hitchhiker's Guide:
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Unsubtle, agreed, but provocative? It's too unsubtle to be provocative.
You would have to be pretty humorless not to see the whole thing as a joke. And presumably the Simpsons writers stopped listening to the humorless people twenty seasons ago.
In a way it is. I'm not a regular Simpsons watcher, but at least in some episode there are multiple layers and meanings going on at the same time. It can be almost Shakespearean sometimes.
"For every season, Homer loses 5 IQ points. Right now he's as intelligent as a speaking dog." (Paraphrased, saw this on TVTropes. I'm not sure whether I agree.)
