Article title: From Barthes to Bart: The Simpsons vs.
Amadeus
Author: Justin Burton
In
1984, the movie Amadeus won 8 Academy awards including Best Picture, Best
Actor, and Best Director. It focuses on the last 10 years of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s
life from the eyes of contemporary composer Antonio Salieri. In the movie
Salieri just wants to be as talented and loved as Mozart. Salieri wants this so badly that the movie
opens with Salieri trying to confess that he was responsible for the death of Mozart
and the movie is thus launched as a narrative of his claim ultimately ending
with Salieri pushing a deathly ill Mozart to finish his own Requiem in an
effort to see how Mozart created his works.
Though a fantastic movie, it is widely known that is greatly
fictionalized.
Article summary:
Justin
Burton, an assistant professor of music at Rider University, takes on Amadeus’
fictional representation by matching it up against the Simpsons’ TV show parody
of the movie.
He does this by breaking down critical assessment of
the movie by the media and how the reviewers were all in favor of ignoring
historical fact to pump up what was a great movie.
Roger
Ebert noted that the movie’s disinterest in historical accuracy “is not a
vulgarization of Mozart, but a way of dramatizing that true geniuses rarely
take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them.” Basically saying that historical accuracy
must be sacrificed to expose a greater truth.
He
goes on to point how the mythical genius of Mozart is a vehicle for carrying
the inaccuracies as fact. From there he
goes into some rather DEEP analysis using Roland Barthes’ formula of how
creation of myth occurs.
In
the final Qtr of the article he finally turns to how the Simpson’s created
their own better mythology of the Amadeus myths by over caricaturizing the
caricatures of Amadeus.
He
relates how the characters blow up the Amadeus movie myth:
Bart/Mozart
takes the Amadeus/Mozart over the top by giving a show as more of a rock star (i.e.
playing the piano with his teeth, his posterior etc.) to over sell the rock
star persona Tom Hulce gave Mozart in Amadeus.
Homer/Leopold
as Mozart’s father is portrayed as shamelessly trying to cash in on his son’s
fame and popularity. Homer/Leopold even
scolds Bart/Mozart for not pushing his merchandise after a concert. In Amadeus, Leopold is shown to be trying to
work contracts for Wolfgang, and even comments that he should have a maid to
keep is home up.
Lisa/Salieri
is shown as desperately trying to outshine her brother and always seemingly
getting pushed aside as when her mother tells her “no one practices harder than
you, but it’s your brother who keeps us in lead-based face powder”. Amadeus gives us a similar notion of Salieri
as we see him asking God why he gave such immense talent to someone so
underserving as Mozart.
Article Analysis:
Burton
does a good job of breaking down the mythology of the movie. I feel for the ultimate goal of the article,
he delves way too deep into the minutiae of creating popular myth. In an
effort to build more foundation for the mythology he references books and
articles that really have nothing to do with the movie or TV show other than
they address some aspect of the ma Mozart.
He goes too far to demonstrate how other works about Mozart create their
own myths about the man. I found those
unneeded and somewhat distracting from the stated purpose of the article.
Agree/disagree:
I
very much agree with Mr. Burton on his analysis, though somewhat unwieldy, of
the Amadeus myth vs. the Simpson’s myth.
While I feel he went way into the weeds with his analysis of the
subject, he emerged on point even though he could have used a weed wacker. There is sufficient evidence within his
article to show how the creation of the fictional Mozart is bought into and
pushed forward by the media and film critics.
Importance of Article
Taking
this article at a view from a 30000 feet, I find it is important as a way to
identify when a work is put out and reviewers try to push it as a “new” truth
of a subject (though the writers and directors never claimed it to be). I think it highlights how parody can be used
to show the absurdity of a bastardization by turning that bastardization up to
11. Note the reference to “this is Spinal Tap” there - another parody of
artists portrayed in movies.
References:
Barton, Justin (2013).
From Barthes to Bart: The Simpsons vs. Amadeus.
The journal of popular culture. Vol 46, No. 3. pg 481-500
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