3mo ago

Why is it so hard to hate Mr. Burns from The Simpsons?

He's an absolute piece of shit and everything he does is horrible but I find it hard to hate him.

I think the show does an {excellent} job of making him look pathetic and pitiable, maybe there's something to that overruling the digust I inevitably feel from everything he does or says. He's definitely someone I never tire of joking about or referrring to as a short hand for senility and capitalism embodied, i dunno, I feel more sad for him. Like its lonely at the top and its worse if thats all you have.

Maybe sometimes I feel not so different from him (of course without all the money and the psychopathy lol)

18 comments

He's somehow less of a psychopath than any real life bourgeoisie. He's given Homer his job back like 12 times, and apparently pays him enough to own a house and support a housewife and three kids.
- The reason why was explained in a recent episode where burns made a promise to Abe Simpson to never fire homer under any circumstance.
- When The Simpsons started that was normal.
Smithers, is that you?
- Its for...a...friend...?
  
  Joke aside, this is a good question.
He's very sincere and open about his villiany.
Weirdly there’s a child-like innocence about him and Smithers being infatuated with him also helps to humanize him further.
- Its weird with Smithers because heis his assistant and fixer but he seems so parentified in my mind. Like Mr. Burns liteeally depends on and clings to him emotionally like a helpless child
  
  Just like Cohen and Trump.
  /s (kinda)
I think there are times in the show where the way in which burns acts causes me discomfort and dislike for his actions. Like when he reels in the ocean with the plastic net for the lil Lisa's patented animal slurry.
I like that clip too because he doesn't understand why it's evil, he was trying to be good but it's just in his nature to be diabolical. He's just such a good caricature and at times punching bag for psychopathic billionaires
Ever notice how the least likable characters are the most morally intact? Except maybe Paul and Linda McCartney...they seemed to do all right for the short cameo they had. But Lisa isn't typically scoring a lot of 'like points' unless she's being uncharacteristically mean or sneaky. I suppose Maggie giving Homer a non-toxic playdoughnut was a nice gesture that endeared her to me a little more...but if it had been a real donut, well I'm not sure if the endearment would have been as deep.
I guess the Simpsons helps us cope with the darker tendencies lurking in our midbrains...and it feels kinda...nice.
I don't mean to be a bit obvious but I really think of all the insightful analysis you might get it really boils down to "he's a cartoon character" both literally and metaphorically.
When he's evil, it's funny. His evil plans are... well... cartoonish. He tried to block out the sun, he built a factory that uses the plastic from beverage packaging to deliberately snare sealife as a business venture, he tried to pose as a child in an elementary school in an attempt to trick the principle in to donating school funds to his power plant. It's true he had more realistic and grounded evil too like trying to cancel all the plant employees' dental plans, but in the same episode he does zany wacky stuff with a 1000 monkeys at a 1000 typewriters writing the world's greatest novel and you tend to forget he's evil because that's just so funny. In fact his hilarious ways of spending his ill gotten wealth or his old-timey antics are so cooky and eccentric it's kind of hard to hold on to resentment that he has undeserved power and privilege and besides, again, it's a cartoon so there's no actual real harm to be upset about and the tone of the show and his appearance in it never tries to portray that harm in a serious way so you can't really even be so wrapped up in the fiction that the harm even feels real as in other works of fiction.
They have also occasionally humanized him, as a necessary measure for when entire episodes have revolved around him so he has his troubled past with his lost toy BoBo and his own quick abandonment of his own parents, he's been unlucky in love and he's insecure about his baldness even showing genuine empathy towards Homer for his desperate attempts to use the company medical insurance for hair replacement medicine. In fact I think the few times they really show him as an actual unlikeable prick are when he stays at the Simpson home and behaves like a monster and the time he tried to marry Marge's Mum and was extremely hasty and controlling about it. In both those instances we could genuinely hate him, but they more or less redeem him by having him be forced to accept consequences for the behaviour.
It isn't. What are you talking about?
Honestly I get curious about why you think you should hate him.
I think there's this prevalent largely unconscious idea that hating the bourgeois does something to them. That somehow by hating them we're subty changing the world for the better, we're making them less likely to exist.
It's magical thinking. Sure the hatred they receive might be slightly damaging to them, but not in a way that damages their power or effect. If anything it pushes them to lean further into their power.
I think pity is actually a more reasonable and healthy emotion to have. Hate is tied up in envy and ultimately a disbelief in the power they hold over us to be shifted.
Pity is reasonable. As cartoonish as Mr. Burns is, I feel like most of the ultra-wealthy are equally cartoonish and often more clearly miserable and worthy of our pity.
Excellent

18 comments