Matt Groening has been asked many times as to why he chose to make the Simpsons yellow, and he typically responds with some version of “I wanted them to look unique.” For its first few seasons, “The Simpsons” were considered very strange and outré. Despite their popularity, they had a subversive, cynical punk sensibility that came to inform the art of the decade that followed. After enough time, though, the yellowness of the Simpsons became a widely accepted facet of their design, and they stopped looking quite as striking. Just as one might stop noticing that Mickey Mouse wears gloves, or Donald Duck has no pants.
The color scheme of “The Simpsons” was always a little odd. The walls of the Simpsons’ house, for instance, are pink, as is the Simpsons family car. Their TV is purple, and their carpets are a deep teal. Bart always wore teal shorts and a blood orange shirt, while Marge always wore a lime green dress to go with her blue hair. Marge’s sisters had lavender hair, and Krusty the Clown sported a purple/teal shirt/hair combo. Lisa always wore red, making her one of the more plainly dressed characters on the show. It was this last element, however, that got “The Simpsons Movie” in trouble back in 2007.
“The Simpsons Movie,” like the TV series, sported a massively complex story that began with multiple digressions before getting to the point. The basic plot: Homer (Dan Castellaneta) instigates a strange and disgusting environmental disaster involving a silo of pig waste, incurring the wrath of the Environmental Protection Agency. In response, the EPA covers the entire city of Springfield with a massive glass dome, much to everyone’s consternation.
“The Simpsons Movie” was banned in Myanmar in 2007, but not because of its rude humor or political messages. It seems that Myanmar’s military junta was wrestling with a progressive political party called National League of Democracy. The movement’s flag was colored red and yellow.
Myanmar banned ‘The Simpsons Movie’ because of its red-yellow color scheme
The National League of Democracy was founded in 1988, one year before the debut of “The Simpsons,” and quickly rose to prominence in Myanmar, securing a majority of the votes in a 1990 election. The military junta in Myanmar, however, repressed the League regularly, even going so far as to put its leaders under house arrest. The NLD was popular, and encouraged democracy, angering the repressive government. In the early 2000s, many of the movement’s more prominent members were assassinated while they canvassed around the country, gaining support.
“The Simpsons” only mentioned Myanmar, also known as Burma, in a few episodes. In “The Last Temptation of Homer” (December 9, 1993), Homer watched a documentary about Burmese Melon Flies. And in “The Old Man and the ‘C’ Student” (April 25, 1999), the camera pans past the Olympic Committee building, and a sign outside says “Now with Myanmar!” Clearly, the writers of “The Simpsons” weren’t involved in the politics of Myanmar at the time, and never expressed support or censure for the NLD.
But the sight of the yellow Lisa Simpson in a red dress was enough to make the Myanmar authorities to remove it from sight. “The Simpsons Movie” was thought to incite violence, so it was banned.
By 2015, the NLD would be elected into power in a landslide victory. In 2020, they won again. Members of the junta, however, made claims of election fraud as a flimsy excuse to stage a coup. In 2021, the military re-seized power, and jailed many members of the NLD. The conflict was covered in multiple international newspapers. It’s unclear if the military squatters allow “The Simpsons” on TVs in 2024.
Remember, kids: military juntas and repressive right-wing regimes hate fun.
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