South Korea’s a civilised country; they don’t employ children, they have democracy and unions and a citizenry that isn’t afraid to protest against the government.

Hell no! (Warning: Some graphic images): http://www.who-sucks.com/people/the-exciting-world-of-south-korean-protests

Never quite sure what to think about Banksy, have a somewhat love/hate view of him…

On one hand, much of his actual art is really very good and often quite clever.
but then again he still resorts to just tagging stuff with his banksy name, which is just mindless vandalism in my book.

Same goes for all graffiti really: The art is nice but just writing your name on stuff is idiotic vandalism.

Face it, kids. America can’t get by without slavery of one kind or another. We just exported it.

Why does industry need SO MUCH profit that it willfully ruins lives worldwide?

Oh, well. That Bart sure is funny!

It’s the funniest thing they’ve done in ten years!

No, wait…it’s the only funny thing they’ve done in ten years.

And when people see all the throwaway product tie in crap at the store, there is a lot of pain and suffering that goes into making that stuff as well.

I see the kitties (that are shredded to make stuffing for the Bart dolls) and the dolphin head and the panda and the unicorn, as all symbols of childhood naivete’ about the world of cartoons and the magic of television. They get the treatment in this short opening that your enthusiasm about working in the world of television gets the minute you start your first job. Perhaps they also represent the environmental impact that shipping all this rubbish around the globe represents, but the unicorn tilted me towards the former theory . . .

Just finished watching the whole episode. The credits include:

Couch Gag
by
Banksy

Cue libertarians apologizing for sweatshops.

i’d gotten tired of the “couch gag.” until now…

and, yes, it always surprises me what fox will let them get away with: i mean, don’t bite the hand that feeds you – corporatism knows that anti-corporatism sells

The decapitated dolphin head made me LOL.

Not saying this to be humourless, because it was funny in a Tim and Eric style– but it sort of makes me think about a sort of Bourdieu-an symbolic violence against the criticism itself. Does the exhausted unicorn accuse Fox and the terrible production conditions of the show and its merch, or does it skewer the bleeding hearts of the people who would criticise it in the first place?

That said I’m sure we’ve all wondered what those Korean animation shops look like, and what a brilliant way to make people who hadn’t noticed the “Rough Draft Korea” credit to finally realize it. Not that I think the real animation shops are like this, but they’re probably not particularly great either ;)

It’s obviously a Temple of Doom reference, but specifically the design of the ladders really reminds me of something – I think the Temple of Doom arcade game maybe.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/video/item/banksys-simpsons-intro

That’s what I love about Banksy’s work, he’s writing a clever joke on the tombstone of the world.

Fox operates according to the exact same principle that all American TV networks follow:

If a show is popular/profitable for the network, it can say and do anything it wants. But if a show is not popular/profitable for the network, nothing it says or does can save it.

As long as The Simpsons puts money in the pockets of the folks who run Fox, it can get away with just about anything that doesn’t cause the show to lose viewers. But a show like Firefly (may it rest in peace), which never had a huge audience, and was never profitable for Fox, is totally at the mercy of the network, and is forced to submit to the network’s every demand. Yet that doesn’t help it much because, unless it starts pulling in high ratings pretty soon, it’s doomed to cancellation.

Sad, but true.