Banksy Guest-Animates Nightmare-Inducing Intro for The Simpsons

This is what happens when you let the British Street artist who re-created images from Guantanamo Bay at Disneyland storyboard the intro to your series. Banksy's re-imagining of The Simpsons theme song goes for the throat. It's probably the sharpest, darkest satire the show has featured... maybe ever. It starts out with cute touches and more slapstick humor than usual, but things get serious after the family sits on the couch. In an imaginative nightmare-meets-satire sequence, the provocateur takes direct aim at outsourcing and working conditions for The Simpsons and 20th Century Fox itself. Many are understandably wondering, "How the hell did the network let this air?" Well to quote Homer Simpson, the network is "stupid... like a Fox!"

Pardon that pun, but seriously, can anyone remember the last time that people were talking about The Simpsons this much? I'm guessing Fox weighed the positive attention the show would receive against the number of people who would actually change any lifestyle habits based on the bit of satire and then came to the admittedly cynical conclusion that they stood only to gain. A NY Times interview with the show's executive producer confirmed that the sequence was approved by the network. And it worked. I certainly haven't been this interested in the show since they put Jim Jarmusch in an episode a few years ago. And really, this intro doesn't spit in the faces of viewers anywhere near as much that Ke$ha animation did.

Their decision to broadcast then brings up the question of whether a political artist can successfully attack massive media corporations while still using them as a means of wider exposure. Banksy got his message to millions, but Fox and their publicists are laughing all the way to the bank. Discuss!