ARGENTINA:America's favourite dysfunctional family is causing trouble in South America, reports MONTE REELin Buenos Aires
IF HOMER Simpson and his family are planning any South American holidays in the near future, they might want to come up with a backup plan.
The television show The Simpsons is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon in many parts of the continent, but it also has become very good at exposing the region's rawest nerves, then clawing them sore.
In the same week that Venezuela's government threatened to punish a television station for exposing children to the show, a snippet of dialogue from a recent instalment is kicking up controversy in Argentina.
During the episode, Homer and his friends gathered at Moe's Tavern and grumbled about their choices of political candidates. The conversation seemed innocent enough, until Homer's buddy Carl Carlson opened his mouth.
"I'd really go for some kind of military dictator, like Juan Peron," Carl said, mentioning the general who was elected president by Argentines three times. "When he 'disappeared' you, you stayed disappeared." Carl's friend Lenny then delivered a coup de grace: "Plus, his wife was Madonna."
Most Argentines don't consider Peron a dictator, and they certainly don't blame him for the fact that up to 30,000 dissidents went missing during the country's "dirty war". Those disappearances are attributed to a military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983, after Peron's death.
"This type of programme causes great harm, because the disappearances are still an open wound here," said former congressman Lorenzo Pepe. "This is highly offensive to Argentines."
The reference to Madonna also riled Peronistas. Peron's second wife, Eva, is so beloved here that her ardent backers launched protests after the pop star was cast to portray her in the 1996 film Evita. "The part about Madonna - that was too much," Pepe said.
In much of South America, "Los Simpson" are even more popular than they are in the US. The Simpsons Movie broke box-office records in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia.
Despite the popularity, Venezuela has banned The Simpsons during the daytime as being unsuitable for children, replacing it with another programme presumably considered more edifying to the development of the country's youth: Baywatch Hawaii.
In Brazil the show inflamed mass anger when the Simpson family visited Rio de Janeiro during a 2002 episode.
The storyline featured Homer being kidnapped by a taxi driver. Then he and Bart were mugged by a gang of children. Bart, in his hotel room, watched a racy television show for children, called Teleboobies. On Copacabana beach, Bart was attacked by a monkey.
The current Argentine controversy touches upon the far more delicate issue of state- sponsored murder, however, and it comes at a time when some here are revisiting Peron's place in its painful past.
On Monday, as thousands here consulted YouTube to view the clip of the Simpsons episode, Isabel Peron - Juan Peron's third wife - appeared in a Spanish court to fight a request for her extradition to face charges of human rights abuses. She was Peron's vice-president and took over as president when her husband died in 1974. Prosecutors say that a government anti-communist squad during her presidency was responsible for 1,500 deaths or disappearances.
Joseph Page, the author of a biography of Juan Peron, said
that he believes it is unfair to
label Peron a dictator, much
less the architect of the disappearances.
"Argentines in general place an inordinate stock on how they are depicted abroad, and they're extremely sensitive about their image," said Page.
"But I think the controversy that erupted around the Brazil episode proves that the Simpsons are equal-opportunity offenders."
Indeed, that was a sentiment seconded by Al Jean, the executive producer of the Simpsons, when contacted about the controversy.
"At The Simpsons, we won't rest until we've aggravated every country on Earth," he said. - (LA Times-Washington Post)