Bear Witness to the Profane

If you are like me, you’ve been experiencing a general feeling of reality collapsing in on itself over the last month or so. We’ve experienced the American electorate giving over to its most ugly, base, and nihilistic instincts at the ballot box. There was the murder of the United Healthcare CEO and, uh… everything surrounding that. Prospect Park was on Fire. I read headlines about Hawk Tuah’s cryptocurrency scam, Jeremy Allen White being cast as Jabba the Hutt’s son in an upcoming Star Wars film, and sedan sized drones just kind of hanging out in the skies over New Jersey. But I also bore witness to something that perfectly encapsulated this unsettling, weirdly familiar, uncanny valley, what-the-hell-is-going-on moment: The Simpsons Funday Football broadcast on Disney Plus.

The Simpsons Funday Footbal, which took place on December 9th, was an animated simulcast of the Monday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Cincinnati Bengals. Through the power of Sony’s Beyond Sports Technology, you could tune in to watch the game that was happening live broadcasted with an animation overlay that depicted the action as happening in the universe of The Simpsons at Springfield’s Atoms Stadium. All of the football players were depicted as faceless, featureless avatars in their respective uniforms, occasionally being subbed out for Simpsons characters. This is difficult to describe, so please refer to this video of Homer Simpson throwing a touchdown pass to CeeDee Lamb:

Some context: through scripted animation segments, we learn that Homer has fallen asleep on the couch watching football and this game is taking place within his dream. In this dream, he is playing for the Dallas Cowboys along with his pals from Moe’s Tavern: Lenny, Carl, Barney, and Moe. Siding with the Bengals are Bart, Lisa, Krusty, Nelson, Milhouse, and Ralph. Many other characters appear in various capacities throughout the game, and the whole thing features the live commentary of 3 real people, Mina Kimes, Dan Orlovsky, and Drew Carter, who have somehow wound up in the universe of Homer’s dream. Steven A. Smith is also there, but he actually appears as an animated character that seems to exist in the Simpsons universe, acting as a bridge between that world and ours.

Watching this game and, indeed, typing these last two paragraphs gave me the sensation of having been hit over the head with a cast iron skillet. How can I articulate what I have observed and not feel as though I’ve contracted a televised variant of CTE? Is this how Gronk sees the world? Anonymized football players aside, the crude 3D renderings of The Simpsons characters were ugly and unfamiliar to the general viewing public, but ugly and all too familiar to anyone who spent 1/3 of the year 2004 playing Simpsons Road Rage on the Nintendo GameCube.

I was left speechless. Sure, there were some solid jokes like showing Mr. Burns sitting in Jerry Jones’s owner’s box, and some sort of broadcasting medal of honor should be given to the folks calling the game for shoehorning in some tremendously deep cut references (Mina Kimes might be one of us), but overall I felt queasy. This kind of unholy alliance of intellectual property piques my curiosity and interest, but when I start to peel back the layers I realize it stems from the impulse to observe the grotesque, like not being able to look away from a car crash. Ay carumba indeed.

Its the holiday season, folks. Hold your loved ones close, for you may not know what kind of darkness they have witnessed.