‘The Simpsons’ predicted the rise of Kamala Harris – maybe. So why do cartoons have such political potency?

Animation has always retained its identity as a medium of protest, both shaping and shaped by the culture that produces it, writes Christopher Holliday

President Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons episode ‘Bart to the Future’, and vice president Kamala Harris on 20 January (Disney/Alex Wong/Getty)

When Kamala Harris took her oath to be sworn in as the first female vice president of the United States last Wednesday, it symbolised not just a victory for the visibility of women of colour in political office, but for those communities she represents. They now see themselves within the institutional structures of American domestic politics for the very first time. 

Yet for a pocket of highly media literate folks online, Vice President Harris’ appointment represented something else entirely. So striking were the parallels between Harris’ appearance at the inauguration ceremony and scenes from a largely forgettable episode of long-running animated sitcom The Simpsons from March 2000, that many commentators voiced their disbelief that Matt Groening’s cartoon creation had somehow predicted Harris’ arrival as VP.

The episode in question was “Bart to the Future”, where an adult Lisa Simpson becomes the first female US president. Gathering her staff in the Oval Office, President Simpson wears a purple blazer, high-collared rollneck and pearl necklace, an outfit that seemed to anticipate Harris’ own choice in jewellery and attire.

News outlets even claimed Harris had deliberately taken inspiration from Lisa’s clothing, while Yeardley Smith – who has voiced the character since its 1989 debut – tweeted: “I really wanna believe Kamala Harris chose her wardrobe yesterday as a subtle nod to Lisa Simpson.”

Despite being broadcast some two decades earlier, “Bart to the Future” represents one of a number of prophetic sequences that have recently defined The Simpsons as a highly predictive text. To further add to the mystique, President Simpson admits to her colleagues: “We’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump” – again confirming the programme’s enduring aptitude for predicting the future.

So what does it mean for popular animation to “do” politics? The lines drawn (quite literally) between Harris and The Simpsons suggest an enduring cultural fascination when politics and popular entertainment collide. Yet animated cartoons have enjoyed real creative latitude when it comes to potent political commentary, suggesting along the way its historical role, not as a medium for children, but instead as a creative mode of expression rooted in the very art (and act) of persuasion, with a fierce political bite.  

Post-9/11 television has seen frequent swipes at ultra-conservative political movements, particularly in the small-screen worlds of Family Guy and American Dad! creator Seth MacFarlane. Other television shows such as Archer, South Park and Bojack Horseman demonstrate mainstream cartooning’s fervent political commitment. But animation’s repeated turns to satirical content are equally part of its largely-forgotten history as a tool for patriotic propaganda that enabled multiple studios to contribute to the war effort.

Following the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks and the stationing of 500 US Army troops at their HQ in California, the Walt Disney studio were awarded a government contract to produce anti-Nazi propaganda shorts, including Stop that Tank! (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) and Education for Death (1943).  

Animation would quickly be enlisted into the war effort by those on all sides of the political spectrum. Hell-Bent for Election was a two-minute short made in 1944 to help re-elect Roosevelt for the Democratic party, while Roy Disney’s Ike for President (1952) commercial similarly championed Republican nominee Dwight D Eisenhower. Even Betty Boop and Olive Oyl were the subject of fictional presidential campaigns. 

In wartime Germany, too, anti-American cartoons included Raymond Jeannin’s Nimbus Libéré (1944). This sought to convince the French that they were better off under Nazi rule by depicting Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Donald Duck, Goofy and Popeye as members of the Allied Forces dropping “Made in USA” bombs over France. Later, filmmaker Lee Savage’s Mickey Mouse in Vietnam from 1969, a 16mm underground (and non-Disney sanctioned) film, would similarly align Mickey’s symbolic innocence with the bombastic violence of war.  

This unofficial borrowing of popular animated stars into narratives of war during moments of political conflict illustrates their ability to carry substantial political weight. Such meddling of cartoons in real-world politics, however, also draws attention to animation’s mediation of political drudgery via its creative allowances for exaggeration, distortion and simplification.  

These principles are, of course, foundational to the conventions of political caricature, a device upon which animated images have often relied. Yet animation sits on a knife edge. An iconoclastic medium of disruption it might be, but it is also the ultimate “fake news”, fundamentally artificial or cartoon-like in ways that perhaps dilute the power of the political claims it stakes.

From US government-funded propaganda shorts to the image of president Lisa Simpson – in part now realised by the newly incumbent Biden/Harris administration – animation has always retained its identity as a medium of protest, both shaping and shaped by the culture that produces it. A closer look at cartooning that does political “work” therefore reveals the extent to which popular culture matters, and that actions speak louder than words. Especially when they are drawn.

Dr Christopher Holliday teaches liberal arts and film studies at King’s College London