Plot
Homer clumsily attempts to build Marge a spice rack. While he is doing so, Maggie sneaks up behind Homer and hits him on the head with a mallet (parodying the shower scene from Psycho). Marge is initially clueless as to what would motivate Maggie to do such a deed, but then notices that, when Maggie sees an episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show, a cartoon which is known for its violence, she mimics its content and tries to stab Homer with a pencil. Marge immediately blames The Itchy & Scratchy Show for Maggie's actions and bans Bart and Lisa from watching the show. Despite the ban, Bart and Lisa still manage to watch Itchy & Scratchy at their friends' houses. Marge writes a letter to the producers of the show asking them to tone down their violence, but in response, Roger Meyers, Jr.—the chairman of Itchy & Scratchy International—writes a letter to Marge, telling her one person can not make a difference and calls her a "screwball". In response, Marge decides to "show what one screwball can do".
Marge forms "Springfieldians for Nonviolence, Understanding, and Helping" (SNUH for short), and forces the family to picket outside the Itchy & Scratchy Studios. Marge's protest gains momentum and soon more people join the group and even start to picket The Krusty the Klown Show, on which Itchy & Scratchy is shown. Marge appears on Kent Brockman's show, Smartline where she confronts Roger Meyers over the violence and suggests that concerned parents send letters to Meyers. Many angry letters are sent to the Studio and Roger Meyers concedes defeat, and agrees to eliminate violence in Itchy & Scratchy. Eventually, a new short in which Itchy & Scratchy sit on a porch drinking lemonade airs, but Bart, Lisa, and other kids across Springfield reject the cleaned-up show. A lengthy montage follows, in which the children of Springfield go outside and engage in various wholesome activities and that night Bart and Lisa brag about their various outdoor activities while Marge listens happily.
Meanwhile, Michelangelo's David goes on a coast-to-coast tour of the United States, and Springfield is one of its scheduled destinations. The members of SNUH try to urge Marge to protest the sculpture, insisting that it is offensive and unsuitable. However, Marge reveals that she believes that the sculpture is a masterpiece. While appearing on Smartline, Marge admits that it is wrong to censor one form of art but not another, and sadly concludes that while one person can make a difference, at the end of the day they probably should not. Because it is now legally able to, Itchy & Scratchy immediately returns to its old form and Springfield's children abandon their wholesome activities and return to spending every day indoors watching the violent Itchy & Scratchy cartoons. Homer and Marge go to see David and Marge expresses her disappointment that the kids are at home watching "a cat and mouse disembowel each other" rather than seeing the sculpture. She cheers up when Homer tells her that the school will be forcing them to see the sculpture on a school trip.
Read more about this topic: Itchy & Scratchy & Marge
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)