The Itchy & Scratchy Show

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Australian electronic music act, see Itch-E and Scratch-E.

The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a show-within-a-show of The Simpsons which appears as a segment of the fictional Krusty the Clown TV show, watched regularly by Bart and Lisa Simpson and other characters on the animated series. Itself an animated cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show depicts an anthropomorphic blue mouse, Itchy (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) who mutilates an anthropomorphic black cat, Scratchy (voiced by Harry Shearer). The graphic violence is similar to, but predates, Happy Tree Friends and Kenny McKormick's deaths from South Park.

1 Background
2 History within The Simpsons
3 Video games
4 See also
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Background

The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a parody of violent animated cartoons. David Silverman, a key director and producer for The Simpsons, states that the show is based on Herman and Katnip. While not usually as openly graphic or bloody as Itchy and Scratchy, these works depicted physical abuse between their characters with no long-term consequences; Itchy and Scratchy take this violence to its logical extreme, and it does not flinch from showing fair approximations of the real effects of violent behavior.<ref name="silverman-interview">The David Silverman Interview. Retrieved on 2006-09-19.</ref>

Itchy and Scratchy often play out an exaggerated form of the conflict in the surrounding episode. For example, when the Simpson children are taken into foster care, they watch an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon with a similar theme<ref name="homesweet">"Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily." The Simpsons. </ref>, and when Homer is recruited by NASA, he watches an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon which directly (and gruesomely) parodies the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien.<ref name="deepspace">"Deep Space Homer." The Simpsons. </ref>

Itchy and Scratchy have occasionally been used to parody the work of famous directors specifically. One episode, Reservoir Cats is supposedly guest-directed by Quentin Tarantino and mocks Tarantino's films Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. In it, Itchy douses a bound Scratchy with gasoline while the melody of Stuck in the Middle With You plays. The camera moves away while Itchy slices off Scratchy's ear. Tarantino then enters and explains his motivation behind the violence in the episode before being brutally attacked by the duo, who then begin twisting to Dick Dale's Misirlou. Another cartoon was "guest directed" by Oliver Stone and shows Itchy shooting Scratchy in a manner similar to Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, in reference to Stone's film JFK.

[edit] History within The Simpsons

[edit] Origins

Chester J. Lampwick invented Itchy in 1919 and owns the rights to that character. Roger Meyers, Sr. plagiarized Itchy and established Itchy and Scratchy Studios in 1921. It is unknown who created Scratchy. Originally Itchy was called "Itchy the Lucky Mouse" (a parody of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit).<ref name="dayviolence">"The Day the Violence Died." The Simpsons. </ref>

Scratchy starred in his first cartoon in 1928, entitled That Happy Cat. The film, which is about fourteen minutes of animation showing the cat whistling and tipping his hat, did very poorly. Later that year, Itchy and Scratchy starred in their first cartoon together entitled "Steamboat Itchy" a parody of Disney's Steamboat Willie featuring Mickey Mouse. In this film, Itchy is steering a steamboat, until Scratchy enters the scene, at which point Itchy produces a submachine gun, shoots out Scratchy's knees, and kicks his head into the boiler.

[edit] "Past"

In the 1930s, there were a series of tasteless Itchy & Sambo cartoons.<ref name="ismovie">"Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie." The Simpsons. </ref>

During World War II, cartoon shorts were created teaming the pair together, supporting the United States against Germany. Despite creator Myers, Sr. being labeled as a Nazi sympathizer (he was criticized for his 1938 cartoon "Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors"), one film showed Adolf Hitler being repeatedly injured and eventually beheaded by the cat and mouse team.<ref name="ismovie"/>

In the 1950s, the duo appeared in television commercials for Laramie Cigarettes; this was a spoof of television stars pitching cigarettes in 1950s- and 1960s-era television commercials (most notably The Flintstones).<ref name="homr">"HOMR." The Simpsons. </ref>

In the 1970s there were a series of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons featuring sex and adult situations. This was in reference to the X-rated animated films released during this era, usually as an attempt to cash in on the success of Ralph Bakshi's successful film Fritz the Cat (based on the character created by Robert Crumb), which was the first feature-length animated film to receive an X rating in the United States.<ref name="dayviolence"/>

At one point, additional characters were added to the pair on a show titled Itchy & Scratchy and Friends Hour: Uncle Ant, Disgruntled Goat, Flatulent Fox, Ku Klux Klam, and Rich Uncle Skeleton. These characters lampooned the addition of superfluous, two-dimensional characters to TV shows in an effort to draw viewer interest, although, according to Bart, Disgruntled Goat had his moments.<ref name="island">"Itchy & Scratchy Land." The Simpsons. </ref>

[edit] "Present"

Since The Simpsons exists in a form of floating timeline, "present" refers to events that occurred during the course of the series.

Itchy and Scratchy Studios is currently run by Roger Meyers, Jr., the son of the cartoon's creator. It is animated in South Korea, just like the Simpsons cartoon itself. June Bellamy voices both Itchy and Scratchy. She tells Homer she was the voice of the Roadrunner (the meep-meep sound) and that Eleanor Roosevelt provided the voices of Itchy and Scratchy during World War II.<ref name="ispoochie">"The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show." The Simpsons. </ref>

The Itchy and Scratchy Show underwent a non-violent retooling following a protest campaign led by Marge Simpson. Marge was later discredited and the cartoon returned to its original violent format.<ref name="ismarge">"Itchy & Scratchy & Marge." The Simpsons. </ref>

The Itchy and Scratchy Show was adapted for film and received nine Academy Awards. Forty years from "now," Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie will be considered an animation classic.<ref name="ismovie"/>

The Itchy and Scratchy Show moved to the Gabbo show during its short-lived run. On the Krusty the Klown Show, it was replaced by a show called Worker and Parasite. The resulting cartoon showed a poorly drawn cat and a poorly drawn mouse jumping around inexplicably while experimental music played. This may be a reference to the surreal and poor quality short run of Gene Deitch produced Tom and Jerry cartoons or of Soviet-bloc government-made cartoons.<ref name="ismovie">"Krusty Gets Kancelled." The Simpsons. </ref>

An amusement park based on Itchy & Scratchy opened, although it was temporarily shut down because of malfunctioning robots (a la Jurassic Park or the movie Westworld). Euro-Itchy and Scratchy Land apparently failed to match the success of its domestic counterpart, with no visitors upon its opening (in a parody of the early failure of Euro Disneyland theme park).<ref name="island"/>

[edit] Poochie

Poochie was a dog character added to the Itchy & Scratchy lineup. According to the show's plot, the producers believed the cartoons were getting stale, and needed a new character to reinvigorate the show, despite the objections of one of the show's writers, who 'at the risk of sounding pretentious', felt that Itchy and Scratchy comprised 'a dramaturgical dyad'. Homer Simpson gets the job of voicing Poochie, who is introduced in the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon "The Beagle Has Landed." A product of marketing department thinking, Poochie was near-universally despised, and was killed off in his second appearance, despite Homer's objections.

Both plots were a reference to TV shows which added new characters purportedly to reinvigorate the show (often in the show's waning years and/or to replace stars who had either departed or grown up, if they were child actors). Famous examples include Scooby-Doo (when his nephew, Scrappy-Doo, was suddenly added); The Flintstones, who suddenly found themselves co-starring with The Great Gazoo; The Brady Bunch, when Cousin Oliver came to live with the Bradys; and Inspector Gadget when they added Corporal Capeman to the cast. Quite often, these additions of superfluous characters are seen as jumping the shark moments; such changes are regarded by fans to be the defining events in the decline of a TV show. This is itself satirized in the episode, with the mysterious addition of a new character, "Roy," to the Simpson family; Roy leaves the show at the end of the episode.<ref name="silverman-interview"/> In real life, this episode marked The Simpsons officially becoming the longest-running cartoon, so the writers celebrated this fact by writing an episode about cartoons jumping the shark.

Many fans of the show also saw Poochie's creation, depiction, and demise as a response to various criticisms of The Simpsons by its viewers. The focus group's desire for a show where its characters solve real-life problems, and simultaneous desire for a show with its characters "getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers" reflects the division between fans of earlier episodes of the series, which tended to focus on the family's relationships with each other, and fans of the later episodes, which tended to rely more heavily on sight gags, cameo appearances, and non-sequiturs. Other aspects of the episode also play up this argument, including Bart's declaration that the creators of Itchy and Scratchy are "giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free" and Lisa's closing lines about how Itchy and Scratchy's viewers "should thank our lucky stars that they're still putting on a program of this caliber after so many years."<ref name="ispoochie"/>

Despite being created for a single-episode appearance (and despite a legal document from Krusty stating that he would never reappear), Poochie has appeared in later episodes of The Simpsons, such as an Itchy & Scratchy episode ("Tears of a Clone")<ref name="littlebig">"Little Big Mom." The Simpsons. </ref>, and was on a Krusty-Brand show T-Shirt (as well as "Itchy-Poochie").<ref name="fatmanlittleboy">"Fat Man and Little Boy." The Simpsons. </ref>

According to The Simpsons comic system, many spin-offs featuring Poochie were made before his debut on the show. Many of these spin-offs were simply badly-disguised rip-offs of other popular comics. A Poochie comic was called Astro-Poochie (a rip-off of Astro Boy) which shows Poochie resembling the anime character. Some small print on the top reads "here is another idea we had...".^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Video games

A video game named The Itchy and Scratchy Game was released for Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Super NES and Game Boy. Another game Itchy and Scratchy in Miniature Golf was released for Game Boy.