After a Florida school principal resigned for showing Michelangelo’s David in class, it turns out The Simpsons predicted this exact scenario over 30 years ago.
It’s the latest in a series of real-world events predicted by Matt Groening’s cartoon, which includes Donald Trump’s presidency, the Disney and Fox merger, and murder hornets.
fans of The Simpsons will note that a recent news story coming out of Florida sounds eerily familiar to the Season 2 episode “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” from 1990.
On Monday, Hope Carrasquilla, the principal at Tallahassee Classical School resigned from her position at the school after a Renaissance art lesson included a section showing Michelangelo’s classic marble sculpture of a naked man.
The school board’s chair Barney Bishop reportedly told Carrasquilla that she could either quit or be fired but gave no reason for the ultimatum. Three parents complained that their children felt uncomfortable with the lesson, which included a section on David. Newsweek has reached out to Tallahassee Classical School by email for comment.
If this situation sounds familiar, it’s because Marge Simpson went through a similar battle when it came to censoring art for children in Episode 9 of the simpsons second season, which first aired on December 20, 1999.
After successfully leading a group to censor the TV cartoon Itchy & Scratchy over its depiction of violence, the group then call for Marge to help them censor an upcoming traveling exhibition of Michelangelo’s sculpture David at Springfield.
Protestors in Springfield call David to “subscription” and “filth.”
“It graphically portrays parts of the human body, which practical as they may be, are evil,” Helen Lovejoy tells Marge.
It didn’t take long before people started comparing The Simpsons episode with the recent event in Tallahassee.
“Yet another time when The Simpsons predicted a real-life event,” wrote @FCasquezJr on Twitter.
Policy professor at Georgetown University Don Moynihan was one of many to notice the comparison too. “Well, it happened. Schools in Florida under Ron DeSantis are run by the type of parental mobs The Simpsons satirized more than 30 years ago,” he wrote.
The Simpsons has now been on the air for 34 years, and, in that time, have created many jokes and storylines which turned out to have some prophetic real-world resemblance.
Recent examples include people thinking The Simpsons predicted the monkeypox outbreak in September 2002, or singer Bad Bunny throwing a fan’s phone away.
The phenomenon has become so rampant that sometimes fakes emerge online. One example includes a TikTok video that claimed The Simpsons predicted the death of Queen Elizabeth II, but the clip in question turned out to be a hoax.
After a Florida school principal resigned for showing Michelangelo’s David in class, it turns out The Simpsons predicted this exact scenario over 30 years ago.
