The "Simpsons" never moved away from violence. Indeed, the show probably benefited from the controversy caused by the depiction of a father who routinely strangled his son. The Simpsons were not your typical TV family and that was the point. The Fox's show and the still airstroke were involved in a new generation of a small screen, much to the joke of then -President George Bush, who gloriously complained that American families should be much more like the willons and "much less like the Simpsons".

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But even when Bush uttered that poorly informed sneezing, it was already too late. The Simpsons may have had a strong emotional core and often delivered cordial episodes that influenced the audience much more than you should need animated comedy. But it was also as a de facto mascot of the show in the early years, Bart Simpson, vulgar and proud of it.

One of the most unpleasant violent elements of the series was Bart's favorite cartoon, "The Itchy and Scratchy Show", which formed part of "The Krusty the Clown Show". This play, within a show within a show, featured a psychopathic mouse, a slate, which would cripple and kill a constantly stripped cat with each episode. The Simpsons writers wanted "itching and scratched" because they allowed them to break each TV ruleAnd the viewers wanted it to be so absurd over-turn in their brutality. The joke was immediately obvious to anyone who grew up with Tom and Jerryryers and recognized this sadistic parody of the desired MGM cartoon. But even the spicy fans of the "Simpsons" may be surprised to hear that this legendary duo for cats and mice were not actually the inspiration behind "itching and scratched" - at least not the only inspiration.

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Created in 1940 by legendary animators Will Jana and Oeo Barbera, Tom and Jerryers have become so successful that they have probably become even more famous by their creators, to the extent that they are now an indelible part of the 20th -century pop culture. The series shows Tom Cat, who, despite his endless desire to capture and kill the mouse jerryers, is always prevented by the cunning rodent. In "itching and scratched show", this dynamics have been brought to extreme levels, with the itching of the mouse being shown as a killer who constantly spoils the cat on more and more ingenious ways. For what is certainly the vast majority of Simpsons fans, the joke here was clear. This was an absurdly bloody parody of "Tom and Jerryry". But it turns out that this is not actually the full story.

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Mike Reis, the longest Simpsons writer and producer, wrote a book titled "Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and fully lies with life writing about the Simpsons", " in which he remembers how itching and scratched The Simpsons from the beginning, when it was launched by the "Sketch Comedy" series. The Simpsons have begun life as a series of shorts that will act as bumpers between Tracy Ulman Show's commercial breaks, and "Itching and Ridge Show" actually debuted in one of these 1988 shorts, titled "Bart Simpson" show. The duo with cats and mice then appeared for the first time in the "Simpsons" respectively in the episode of the season 1 "There is no shame at home". But, as Reis noted, the characters with cats and mice were not actually a parody of "Tom and Jerryry" and were "inspired by" Herman and Katnip ", cheap, ultraviolet knockout on T&C". " Ultraviolet may be a little stretching, but "Herman and Katnip" was certainly a knockout "Tom and Jerryry", which has much more intense slap violence than the original.

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Unlike Tom and Jerryryers and his MGM theater shorts, Herman and Katnip were produced by "Famous Study", the first paramount animation department. The studio fueled a series of theater cartoons featuring Herman Mouse and Katnip Cat during the 1940s and 50s. These cartoons had a similar rivalry among the title characters, but took things away from Tom and Jerryiers, with more malicious escape than the MGM original. The poor old Katnip was at the same time sent to the bottom of the well, before Herman sent a dynamite stick after it, putting the cat underground and turning the well itself into a makeshift tombstone. Oh, and Katnip was actually sent to hell at one point. In these surprisingly violent vignettes, the seed for the "Itching and scratched", which at one point became Spinoff who, when tested, was so violent that he ill with the audience.

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Interestingly, it seems that while Mike Reis unequivocally claims that Herman and Katnip inspired "itching and scratched", things may be a little more complicated than that. On the one hand, director David Silverman supported Reis's claim in MSNBC Interview saying:

"People say (" itching and scratching ") like crazy" Tom and Jerryryers ", but it's really more than crazy" Herman and Katnip ". "Herman and Katnip" is funny because it's bad.

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But in an old interview for TV -guise (through Simpsonarniv. This makes sense, as there is no way a parody cartoon about rivalry between a cat and mouse could not take some indications of the most culturally significant example of this popular mid -20th -century animated trophy.