Intelligence and The Simpsons

The Simpsons children, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, can be categorized (to an extent) as playing the roles of the ID, EGO and SUPEREGO (warning, this is a red herring), one of the few Freudian theories AP Psych teachers still deem appropriate to teach 16 year olds. The theory goes that our psyche is made up of three parts, the Id, Ego and Superego. The Id is our base desire, our libido, carnality, our instincts and primitive desires. It keeps us wanting, moving forward and is the driving force of most of our ambitions. The Superego is societal expectations, morals, values and all that comes with them (shame, anxiety, catholic guilt, etc.) It keeps us from getting into bar fights and makes us go towards the moral path rather than the one that gets us what we want all the time. The Ego between them is your conscious mind, the mind you control that makes decisions, filtering the two others together and acting realistically and in its best interest.

In this, Bart is commonly made the Id, he acts recklessly, emotionally and typically without thought, he’s the easy pick. Next gets tricky. Because many people fail to recognize Maggie as a character, she gets replaced in the trio by one of their parents. If Marge, she takes the Superego, oftentimes (especially in early seasons) worried more about how she and her family are seen than her family themselves at times, concerned with societal expectations and thoughts. In this case, Lisa is the ego, emotional and empathetic, but intelligent and socially aware. If Homer, he takes the ego, a dim but loving man (in the first 8 seasons anyway) who has to navigate between his impulse and rational, wanting to do what's right even when he goes about it the wrong way.

The problem with this analysis of the Simpsons kids (or family rather because, again, people don't respect Maggie) is that these are people. They have their own minds and hearts that make up their wants and needs and logic, they're not meant to fit into such a narrow use. I would propose instead, to look at the Simpsons children in terms of their intelligence.

I am not the first, by a long shot, to want to talk about how smart the Simpsons kids are. I am, however, awake at 4 in the morning and I have a lot of feelings about adult cartoons. So, let's talk about Howard Gardener's multiple types of intelligence (simplified of course, as I am a dunderhead.) Naturalist (nature smart), Musical (sound smart), Logical-Mathematical (number/reasoning smart), Existential (life smart), Interpersonal (people smart), Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart), Linguistic (word smart), Intra-personal (self smart), and Spatial (picture smart).

The first and easiest to see is Lisa, the classically smart. The prodigy. We know that she is well spoken, book smart, extremely musically talented and more than talented in STEM fields. So that's Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical and Musical intelligence, all of which are major forms of intelligence we praise in others, especially in children, a classic image of a gifted and talented child. On the other side, she lacks interpersonal skills, shown in her failure to connect with her peers and for all of her philosophizing and spiritual thinking, can still have a difficult time processing and tackling hard philosophical questions about the human condition, both of which lead to fits of melancholy and existential crisis. This isn't her fault of course, she's only eight, but it does show some of her limits and also this is a cartoon.

Now, see Bart. Typically, Bart is either pushed away from conversations about intelligence (read: everyone understands he’s a dumbass) or he’s given a hand waving ‘Street Smart’ which I find somewhat insulting. Street Smarts are not one thing, you see, it's a combination of traits and knowledge that makes one able to survive and thrive on the streets/in bad conditions. This is a combination of interpersonal skills, common sense and the ability to learn as you go and that’s exactly what Bart has! And that’s why I find it insulting, the people who label Bart with ‘street smarts’ do so to get him out of the way, they don't consider it to be important in it's own right.

Bart, in contrast to Lisa, has wildly impressive interpersonal skills, able to charm and manipulate both his peers and those multiple times his age with relative ease. Bart has a whole swarm of extra characters who huddle around him as their base, more lackeys than friends, and even his enemies find him charming and memorable, many of them working with Bart side by side with ease (see: Sideshow Bob, Nelson and Principal Skinner).

But it’s not like he’s just got people smarts so Lisa gets everything else, Bart is very notably athletically skilled, excelling at sports and physically demanding mischief, he’s a master strategist (his various pranks and schemes alone can take serious long form planning, knowledge of the people around him’s lives and thoughts, and an ability to really understand the world around him, cartoon logic and all, not to mention any amount of maths and sciences needed to pull them off) he's very aware of the things going on around him, and has shown an ability to really grasp mathematical, scientific and philosophical concepts that the people around him wouldn’t expect (typically when it suits him.)

And that’s the thing in the end, even when you account for wishy washy out of nowhere skills that he acquired because the plot says so, Bart is a genuinely intelligent young man. He had attention issues and is often written off due to them by his peers and teachers, but he’s genuinely smart. Rather than applying that to school work, he creates great feats of engineering and skill instead, applying his knowledge in a real world context. Bart Simpson is not stupid, and his intelligence shouldn’t be downgraded to ‘street smarts’, especially when he echos the stories of hundreds of neurodivergent children in real life.

Bart has been implied or outright stated to have ADHD in multiple episodes, though it’s usually played for laughs or not paid attention to at all, but his actions are very much recognizable. Children with autism and ADHD who show a special interest in reading or sciences are often seen as gifted and placed in gifted/talented classes to challenge them. The problem comes when the new ‘harder material’ has nothing to do with their specific interests that they spend all their time on ad when they fail they get treated like their not trying or are stupid. Even when they pass, that just raises the bar for them in the future, making it harder to reach out for help later on because everyone expects you to be able to do it.

As a young child Bart was already speaking well, problem solving and planning and getting into mischief that really should have been looked at more critically (see: him getting out of the house at 3-4 and driving the car into the kitchen wall. Dangerous and bad, yes, but still pretty difficult for a toddler.) But because he wasn’t doing what he was meant to do, he didn’t receive any praise. Instead, from as young as 2 years old, he got choked out. I would love to be able to crack a joke at this point, but the abuse and neglect that Bart gets from his parents from such a young age really does uncomfortably echo the abuse of real life neurodivergent children who don’t conform to what their parents want them to be.

To break away from the depressing shit, I will end with this: Bart Simpson is not stupid and it is disengenuous and wrong to boil his intelligence down to ‘street smarts’, especially when he is clearly and canonically neurodivergent. His experience echoes that of many children in the real world, in the worst way, and honestly, we should all treat Bart and kids like him with more respect. Also, don’t choke out your kids.