After running more than 30 seasons at 20+ episodes a pop, it stopped being a surprise years ago whenever someone discovers that The Simpsons predicted a future event. The writers threw anything and everything at the wall, so it only stands to reason a few of those gags are going to be eerily accurate. However, this time, writer Bill Oakley is voicing his anger over a classic episode being used in a coronavirus meme that’s been knocking around Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ashakiiii/status/1222903869639778304
The screengrabs come from the 1993 episode “Marge in Chains” where the residents of Springfield are infected by the “Osaka Flu” that finds its way to the cartoon town after a Japanese factory worker coughs into boxes for a popular product called the “Juice Loosener.” The virus manifests itself as a green mist that comically spreads to every Simpsons character. Obviously, that sounds bad by today’s more racially aware standards, and even worse in light of the unfair stigma towards the Asian community after the coronavirus pandemic began in China.
As Oakley explains to THR, he thinks the Simpsons meme is “gross” and doesn’t like that it’s being used for “nefarious purposes,” particularly attempting to blame Asia for the coronavirus. He also says he hadn’t thought about the episode in years until he saw the meme:
“I believe the most antecedent to [Osaka Flu] was the Hong Kong flu of 1968,” Oakley says, adding he was aware of that flu from news headlines during childhood. “It was just supposed to be a quick joke about how the flu got here.”
He continues, “It was meant to be absurd that someone could cough into a box and the virus would survive for six to eight weeks in the box. It is cartoonish. We intentionally made it cartoonish because we wanted it to be silly and not scary, and not carry any of these bad associations along with it, which is why the virus itself was acting like a cartoon character and behaving in extremely unrealistic ways.”
As for The Simpsons‘ knack for predicting future events, Oakley has a simple explanation for the phenomenon. “It’s mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself. Most of these episodes are based on things that happened in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s that we knew about.”
