From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Apr 09 2002 - 13:10:32 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker:
>The other one that I have a hard time avoiding is Nancy Cartwright,
>the voice of Bart Simpson. I still watch the television show,
>but I don't have any merchandise.
http://www.free-market.net/rd/433363210.html
RIO DE JANEIRO - City tourism officials plan to sue the producers of
the animated sitcom "The Simpsons" over its depiction of Rio de
Janeiro in a recent episode, according to a report in O Globo, a
daily.
In the episode, "Blame it on Lisa," broadcast March 31 in the United
States, the family travels to Rio to find a missing orphan that
middle child Lisa Simpson sponsors from a distance.
Brazilian critics decried the use of cliches and stereotypes in the
episode, as well as the mixing of Brazilian elements with broader
Latin American themes.
For example, the Brazilians on the show danced conga, had Spanish
accents and wore mustaches.
In the episode the Simpson father, Homer, is kidnapped by a taxi
driver, the family is assaulted by begging Brazilian children on a
beach, and the family visits Rio slums infested by violent monkeys.
Tourism Secretary Jose Eduardo Guinle asked the lawyer for Rio's
tourism agency, Riotur, to file suit in U.S. courts for damages
caused to the city's image.
Riotur has invested $18 million to promote the city around the
world, officials said.
Brazil is not the first foreign nation to be the target of the zany
satire that has made "The Simpsons" the longest-running animated
series on U.S. television.
Earlier this season, "clean, bland" Canada and its ingrained
insecurities were riffed and ridiculed by the yellow-skinned Simpson
family, while Australia, Britain, Japan and France have been
targeted in past episodes.
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I regain consciousness." --Ashleigh Brilliant
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