By Vivian Kane | Twitter | August 16, 2016 |
By Vivian Kane | Twitter | August 16, 2016 |
Thanks to the FX Simpsons World app and a huge hole in my fiancee’s pop culture catalogue, I’ve spent the last couple of months slowly working through a full Simpsons rewatch. And there’s something I noticed that I couldn’t possibly have been aware of on my first childhood watch, or when revisiting individual episodes later on: this show is dark. Way darker than I remembered. And most specifically, Marge is a character with obvious depths of loneliness—
Anxiety—
And self-esteem struggles.
This darkness comes up over and over and over, and most of us never noticed it, at least not as any deep, permanent and insightful through-line for her character. But Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Bojack Horseman noticed. And when this man, of all people, takes notice of your character’s palpable sadness, you know the bleakness runs deep. He posted a multi-tweet poetic tribute to Marge’s unexplored loneliness, as told through an imagined encounter with her now late neighbor.
Bob-Waksberg posted the tribute last month, but in typical overlooked, unexamined Marge fashion, people are just now starting to take note.
Does Marge have friends?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
(a poem in fifteen tweets)
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Who are Marge’s friends? Is Helen Lovejoy a friend? Sarah Wiggum? Agnes Skinner?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
To whom does Marge spill her secrets over coffee on cold days? Who laughs at Marge’s jokes? Who knows Marge, truly and well?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Who tells Marge to leave the brute, knowing she won’t? “You don’t have to stay. You deserve so much more.”
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Who, on a morning walk, sees a tall blue bush, texts a photo to Marge, “this made me think of you”? Surely not Lenny, or Kirk or Luann.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Did Marge mourn for Maude Flanders? Late nights, at the kitchen table, staring at her own hands. Is she haunted still by her absence?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Does she see in her late neighbor a cautionary tale? Seldom-remembered, semi-anonymous Maude — could this fate too befall Marge?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Perhaps, once at a summer barbecue, when both were still alive, Maude grabbed Marge’s hand under the table and held tight.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
What prompted this sudden connection, this sudden expression of— what was it, warmth?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
The two weren’t close— acquaintances, sure, had they ever even hugged?
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
And yet here they were, holding hands, silently, secretly, while their children shrieked and their husbands grilled the hot dogs.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
One night, Marge couldn’t sleep, the linens, hung to dry in the yard, flapping in the wind with unprecedented accent.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Marge wandered into the night, a fleck of yellow in a blanket of white stars, and she felt, as she often did, alone.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Marge felt the sharp grass on her feet, the breeze on her face. Over the fence she saw Maude, pale as a sheet, her eyes wet with tears.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Marge looked to her— “Maude?” and Maude shook her head.
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
And Maude whispered this: “It’s not the calm before the storm that frightens me. It’s the calm that follows.”
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) July 12, 2016
Via The AV Club.