Drawn to history: The portrayal of museums in animated sitcoms

In the spring of 2021, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) published a landmark self-study titled “Museums and Trust” to gauge the levels of confidence the American public had in these important educational and cultural institutions (Wilkening, 2021).1 For decades, museums claimed to be at the pinnacle of public trust, and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the proliferation of deceptive media, the AAM wanted to verify that the public still considered museums to be reliable sources of information.2 The news was predictably good. Drawing from a sampling of 1206 respondents whose demographic “closely represents the US adult population by age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity,” the report declared that “yes,” museums remained “highly trusted institutions.” On a scale of 1 to 10, museums scored a 6.4, second only to “friends and family” who fared slightly better at 6.6. Notably, museums scored higher than researchers and scientists (6.1).3 While it is reassuring that the public continues to have comparatively robust faith in museums, it is also telling that the respondents were overall inclined toward caution. Confidence remains just below the two-thirds mark. Trust and distrust, it seems, are relative. It is this murky area of doubt that this paper seeks to understand. What is it about museums that makes them so vulnerable to suspicion and dismissal by the American public? The “Museums and Trust” survey included a choice list of reasons for confidence (cited below) but did not ask for elaboration or clarification from respondents. For these nuanced, subjective data, we need to look to other representations of the relationship between the public and museums. Remarkably, we can find a rich vein of information in contemporary popular culture, specifically satirical animated situational comedies. Humorous adult-oriented cartoons might seem an unlikely place to collect data for interpreting the public perception of museums, yet these institutions do appear in several programs. Since it is unrealistic to expect the harsh criticism of cartoons like Family Guy or South Park to treat any subject with deference, it would be folly to consider museology somehow uniquely beyond reproach. Museums as influential cultural institutions have proven to be regular targets of these programs, and there is no reason to expect the fiery darts to soon stop flying from writers' rooms in Hollywood. This fact, coupled with the satirical aims of these shows, does connect cultural dots. Indeed, there is something in the nature of comedy that lends itself to understanding the zeitgeist of a people, and no vehicle for humor has ever reached a broader audience than television and film. While the programs analyzed in this study fall under the larger umbrella of satire, not every humorous situation they created was necessarily satirical. These animations employed a variety of approaches including farce, burlesque, parody, absurdity, sarcasm, and irony. This paper recognizes the utilization of these comedic conventions while acknowledging that satire is the overall goal of these situational comedies. Typically, the biting criticism which is the hallmark of satire manifests itself as a collective condemnation rather than a personal invective (Gilmore, 2018, pp. 2–3, 6–8). Satire as a genre, therefore, is a tool for the many to challenge the few. It permits the masses to expose and ridicule the hypocrisy and excesses of the powerful. In the words of media ethicist, Michael Bugeja, “satire explores the truths that few admit but all know” (Bugeja, 2021). The power of satire's “inside joke” therefore lies in the shared knowledge of the performer and their audience (Schechter, 2021, pp. 151–52).4 This paper considers the comedic portrayal of museums in animation in light of the AAM's self-study. It takes a broad view of how these programs define museums and includes their references to living history parks, visitors' centers, historical societies, and archives that display artifacts. It also includes for-profit historical tourist attractions that sometimes fall outside of the professional definition of museums. In addition to physical sites, this study examines educational programs and other activities associated with museums including media presentations and living history. Then using data from the AAM study as a framework, it asks whether these episodes' gross exaggerations, irreverent dialog, and fantastic scenarios reveal American's often unspoken and deep-seated popular criticisms of these institutions, or if there is something more nuanced and benign at play. Although prime-time, adult-oriented cartoons originated with the Flintstones in 1960, this study focuses on the modern era of animation ushered in by the premiere of The Simpsons in 1989 (Booker, 2006, pp. xi-x, 1–3, 48, 69–70).5 Examples in this study come from 32 different episodes of 12 programs including Beavis and Butt-Head (MTV), Bob's Burgers (Fox), Family Guy (Fox), Futurama (Fox), King of the Hill (Fox), Looney Tunes (Warner Home Video), The Ren & Stimpy Show (Nickelodeon), Robot Chicken (Cartoon Network), The Simpsons (Fox), South Park (Comedy Central), SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon), and Taz-Mania (Fox Kids). They span a 32-year period from 1991 to 2022. All five network programs premiered on Fox Broadcasting Company. The remaining seven shows aired on subscription television or, in one case, home video. Many of the fictional towns and cities in these animated sitcoms have museums, providing numerous opportunities to see how television writers, producers, and directors have internalized and expressed public perceptions of these cultural institutions. Numerically, most of the museum portrayals come from The Simpsons which, at 35 seasons, is currently the longest-running scripted television program in the United States. The fictional town of Springfield boasts no less than 21 different museums. The sheer number of these sites and associated references can be attributed to the creative demands of the series' nearly 800 episodes which present an enormous number of situations, jokes, plotlines, and moments of satirical commentary (Sweatt & Gomes, 2014). Interestingly, none of these answers elicited an affirmative response from a majority of participants, which leaves significant areas of uncertainty that the television programs exploit for comedic effect (Wilkening, 2021, p. 12). While these responses do not necessarily lend themselves to a literal interpretation through visual media, it is possible to see some conceptual trends that are more easily identified in the programs. For example, the top three responses fall under the idea that museums are honest in their rigorous pursuit of knowledge. Responses 4, 5, 6, and 8 portray museums as non-political, institutions of museum as The response that museums are not at these in the of the “inside between sitcoms and their the and nuanced about museums. 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