[S11E17] Bart To The Future
"Bart to the Future" is the seventeenth episode of the eleventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 19, 2000. In the episode, after their picnic in the park is cut short due to a mosquito infestation, the Simpsons stop by at an Indian casino. There, Bart is prevented from entering because he is 10 years old. He manages to sneak in but is caught by the guards and sent to the casino manager's office. The Native American manager shows Bart a vision of his future as a wannabe rock musician living with Ralph Wiggum, while Lisa has become the President of the United States and tries to get the country out of financial trouble. "Bart to the Future" was the second episode of The Simpsons to be set in the future, following "Lisa's Wedding."
[S11E17] Bart to the Future
The episode was directed by Michael Marcantel and written by Dan Greaney, who wanted to explore what Bart's life would end up like. Several designs were made by the animators for future Bart, but Greaney did not think they matched the personality of the character and had to give clearer instructions on how he wanted him to look.
The Simpsons drive to the park for a picnic but discover that it has been overrun by mosquitoes. While heading home, the family finds a Native American casino. Bart is turned away because he is 10 years old but is able to sneak in by hiding in ventriloquist Arthur Crandall's dummy case. During Crandall's performance at the casino, Bart bursts out of the case and gets caught by casino guards. He is sent to the casino manager's office, where the Native American manager shows him a vision of how his future will turn out if he does not change his ways.
Thirty years into the future, Bart is a 40-year-old beer-drinking slacker trying to launch his music career after dropping out of the DeVry Institute. He lives with his bandmate Ralph Wiggum in a beach cottage by the shore, where they are struggling to make ends meet and have resorted to mooching off Bart's parents and their neighbor Ned Flanders. The only gig Bart and Ralph can get is at a beach bar owned by Nelson Muntz, and even then, they are only paid in popcorn shrimp. The morning after their disastrous concert at Nelson's bar, Bart and Ralph find out that they have been evicted from their house.
Bart steps in at Lisa's meeting with the leaders and uses his skills at stalling debt collectors to save the day, promising the money will soon be repaid in full, pleasing Lisa. As a thank-you, Lisa promises Bart to "legalize it." After the vision is over, Bart promises that he will change; the manager then disappears. Lisa finds Bart and tells him that the family has been kicked out of the casino after Homer pushed a waitress and Marge lost $20,000. Bart tells Lisa about his vision of the future where he has a rock band and a moped, while downplaying Lisa's future presidency as "some government job".
Selman commented in an audio commentary for "Bart to the Future" that "the thing that really got the [Simpsons] writers excited about the episode was this very specific version of future Bart."[6] Greaney identified this version as "the guy who blames everyone else and tells everyone else that they used to be cool, that it's everyone else's fault that his life hasn't gone the way he wants it to go."[5] The Simpsons showrunner Mike Scully also noted that future Bart is the kind of person who is "always waiting for some big sort of cash payoff that he feels he's owed whether it be an insurance settlement, an inheritance, or something that's gonna come sooner or later."[7] Greaney said that everyone in the writing room recognized these traits from people they knew and therefore everyone contributed to the episode by suggesting lines for Bart to say and things for him to do.[5]
According to Greaney, the animators originally designed future Bart as "cool and fun" and made several designs where he was "slim, attractive, and hip."[5] Greaney did not think any of these designs went along with the personality he and the other writers had assigned to future Bart, so he told the animators to draw the character with belly fat, a ponytail, sags under his eyes, and one earring.[5] Scully said on the audio commentary that he thought the design of Bart looked "great", though he added that it was "slightly disturbing" to see the older versions of Homer and Marge in the episode, and joked that it is "a little bit sad to watch cartoon characters age."[7]
Greaney needed a setpiece for the episode that enabled him to get into a vision of the characters in the future, and The Simpsons writer George Meyer came up with the idea of the Indian casino.[5] When Homer and Bart first enter the casino, Homer tells Bart that "Although they seem strange to us, we must respect the ways of the Indian." He proceeds to greet everyone in the casino by saying "Hi-how-are-you?" in the rhythm of a stereotypical Native American chant. This joke was pitched by Tom Gammill, and there was a debate among the staff of the show about whether or not to include it in the episode as Native Americans could find it offensive. However, according to Scully, Dan Castellaneta (who voices Homer) "did [the joke] so funny when we were at the table-read so we decided to put it in and risk offending."[7]
In his 2006 book Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality, Jonathan Gray analyzed the many advertisement parodies featured in The Simpsons. He commented on "Bart to the Future", writing: "As if ads in children's toys or in churches are not enough, in 'Bart to the Future', an episode in which an Indian shaman at a casino treats Bart to a vision of his future, even his vision is interrupted when future-Bart says, 'I guess I am an embarrassment', and a ghost responds, 'You sure are. But, hey, there's an embarrassment of riches at the Caesar's Pow-Wow Indian Casino. You can bet on it!' Here [...] The Simpsons uses parody with great effect, not only to illustrate how annoyingly and disrespectfully ads infringe on any territory, but also to mock their logic and rhetoric."[15]
The episode heavily implies that real estate mogul Donald Trump became president, and caused a budget crisis that Lisa inherits. In 2015, news media cited the episode as a foreshadowing of Trump's future run for president;[16] the episode was produced during Trump's 2000 third-party run. Dan Greaney told The Hollywood Reporter in a 2016 interview that the thought of a Trump presidency at the time "just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane."[17] In an interview with TMZ in May 2016, Matt Groening said he thought it was unlikely that Donald Trump would become the president of the United States.[18]
The Simpsons are going to a park, but when they arrive, they find that mosquitos have gone crazy and have taken over. While driving back, they find an Indian casino and stop by. Bart tries to sneak in, but is caught by the casino's manager. To teach Bart a lesson, he gives Bart a glimpse of himself thirty years in the future.
Maggie (now 31) does not appear in this episode's future, though we see her baby daughter, named Maggie Junior. The DVD commentary mentions a deleted scene where we learn that she's an astronaut, which was shown on TV commercials advertising the episode, but not in the actual episode itself. It is included as an easter egg.
While visiting an Indian casino with his family, Bart encounters an Indian who foretells of his future. Bart learns that in the future he is a ne'er-do-well musician with Ralph Wiggum as a roommate. He goes to see Lisa to borrow money, but Lisa has her own problems, being the newly elected President of the United States and facing a tax crisis.
Willie Nelson is a country singer-songwriter with roots in Americana and folk rock music and a knack for storytelling. Nelson is also a recurring character within the Springfield universe. Yes, Nelson does play himself in the show, but not everything about the animated version remains accurate in terms of facts, history, and predictions for the future. In a Season 3 episode of The Simpsons, Willie Nelson swims across the English Channel diligently for his fans. Could Nelson swim across the English Channel in real life? Maybe. Will he? At 87 years old, probably not.
Now maybe you can just chalk it up to humanity being predictably ridiculous, or the fact that the show's been around forever, so the writers are bound to cover everything that's going to happen in the scope of past, present, and future history, but there are some seriously impressive social phenomenons that the show's got right on the nose.
What I want to know is why the writers of The Simpsons aren't using their future prediction powers for good. Or maybe there's a secret organization that's forcing them to deliver their message in cartoon-joke form, so no one takes it seriously? Illuminati.
In the clip, Lisa talks about Springfield only having 50 years left unless something is done to avert the damage of climate change. You can judge for yourself whether The Simpsons once again predicted the future by watching the clip on YouTube.
This wouldn't be the first time that The Simpsons have made a scarily accurate prediction. In S11E17: "Bart to the Future," the show made a joke about a dystopian future where Donald Trump was elected President. Just over 16 years later, it came to pass.
During a family outing to an Indian-owned casino, Bart sees a vision of his future courtesy of the wise Native American casino magnate. Flash forward thirty years: Bart is crashing on Ralph Wiggum's couch, trying his hardest to make it as a rock guitarist. His sister has just been elected the first straight woman President of the United States and when Bart gets evicted for not paying rent, he decides it's time to pay Lisa a little visit at her new home. Bart moves into the White House, which is already overrun by Homer and Marge and Maggie, Jr., Maggie's beautiful baby girl. As Lisa begins her Presidency, Bart makes a total nuisance of himself, interrupting press conferences to promote his demo tape, setting off the Secret Service with his Frisbee, and using an official Presidential helicopter to fly in Ralph Wiggum to hang out and drink beer. Lisa and her top advisor, Milhouse, decide to send Bart on a wild goose chase to get rid of him. But when Bart discovers the plot, he is hurt and offended. Returning to the White House, he finds Lisa in a critical meeting with other leaders of the free world, begging them not to collect the loans they gave to her financially strapped country. Bart, who is by now an expert at dodging creditors, helps Lisa fend off their demands and saves the day. Back in the present, Bart realizes that he can change his future if he tries and goes off with Lisa and tells her all about his vision. 041b061a72