Throughout the decades, The Simpsons have been gaining more popularity as it seems that they are able to “predict” the future. There are plenty of examples in which reality appeared to have fulfilled some of the facts mentioned in the chapters. Usually, those scenes have a few minutes of screentime, so at first, it is possible that not many people noticed them.For example, in season 11 episode 7 it is mentioned that Donald Trump was president before Lisa. Bare in mind that due to social media, there are many of these “supposed” predictions that are mere montages.
However, it is important to highlight that the Simpsons do NOT predict the future, they are just satirizing certain social trends or patterns, or in some cases, exaggerating some situations or social reactions to certain events, using parody to criticize society. For example in season 22 episode 6 , when a pandemic spread by cats (which was generated by the government) is mentioned in the news, people panicked, acting irrationally such as burning down everything a cat had touched; ignoring the fact that vaccines can stop the epidemic. This extreme reaction criticizes how society tends to generate panic and chaos in some situations. Moreover in the first clip of the episode it is visible in the helicopter the sentence “not racist but nº1 with racist” which is a great mockery of how fox news tries to sell itself as non-racist but “somehow” is associated with racists. There are more examples similar to these about other social situations.
Instead of questioning what will be the next “predictions”, we should be questioning why reality seems to be validating them.
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