Warning: Contains spoilers for the following - The Black Hole (1979), Deliverance (1972), Escape From New York (1981), The Evil Dead (1981), Friday the 13th (1980), Willard (1971)
One year ago, I wrote a piece about strange and unsettling Simpsons endings, where I concluded that the entirety of Season 5 was pretty confounding and tacked it all on as a special bonus round. Amid that there was at least one episode, "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood" (1F06), that probably warranted closer examination than I then cared to give it. At the time, my sole acknowledgement of the episode's strange and unsettling ending came in lumping it in with a collection of others described as "very intricate movie parodies which may be lost on you if you haven't seen the films in question", although the more I consider it, the less and less justice I think that statement does in accurately defining just how a freakishly bizarre a route this episode ultimately travels. The central narrative involves Bart enlisting in the Junior Campers and going on a rafting trip with Homer; somewhere along the line the two of them get lost at sea along with Ned and Todd Flanders and uncover the opportunity, in typically unconventional Simpsons fashion, to reaffirm their bond as father and son. The final scene shows the outcome of a parallel narrative, in which special guest celebrity Ernest Borgnine is gathered around a campfire with the rest of the troop and leading them in an upbeat singsong of "Bingo", only for Borgnine to be mauled and potentially killed by an offscreen attacker immediately before we fade to black. I remember seeing the episode as a kid; to say that I was confused and weirded out by that ending would be an understatement. It wasn't just the implication that the guest celebrity got picked off in an extremely brutal manner, but the entire sequence leading up to the attack, in which the camera assumes the perspective of the unseen entity as it encircles the unwitting troop and closes in on Borgnine, all while making the most eerily ungodly breathing noises. Years later, I saw it again and, this time, picked up on Borgnine's line, "It sure is lucky we stumbled upon this old abandoned summer camp!" OH! So it was all an elaborate reference to Friday the 13th? Implying that the attacker would have been that franchise's main villain, Jason Voorhees? Well then, mystery solved.
Or maybe not. Recently, I saw Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981) for the first time, and one of my main takeaways was just how comparable the ending of that film was with the last few moments of "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood". The reference to the old abandoned summer camp would certainly appear to link the ending to Friday the 13th (and imply that the attacker is Voorhees), but that final shot, in which the camera lunges at the screaming Borgnine, would likewise appear to borrow heavily from the closing sequence of The Evil Dead, in which Bruce Campbell's character meets a similar fate (but survives, as per the sequel). It was an intriguing enough development to prompt me to reopen the case once again. If the ending is parodying multiple movies, then can we actually say definitively that it was Jason who did Borgnine in at the end? Wikipedia seems pretty confident that Jason is our culprit, but then we all know how Wikipedia can be (states the current summary in the episode's Wikipedia entry: "At the camp they start singing songs, but are soon attacked and seemingly killed by an unseen figure lurking in the woods (strongly implied to be Jason Voorhees)." What, the kids as well? Bloody hell, that would be a dark outcome). Actually, I think the ending makes a good call in leaving the attacker's identity to our imagination, with Borgnine's "old abandoned summer camp" line being the critical detail that's obviously intended to put us on high alert. Anyone with the vaguest knowledge of the horror genre knows that old abandoned summer camps are not places in which you want to linger, and why should they be? They're emblems of wrecked childhoods and lost innocence. And Jason was hardly unique among slasher antagonists in choosing a summer camp as his port of call (I hate to point out the obvious, but the killer of the original Friday the 13th film wasn't even Jason, but his mother). What's important is the insinuation that Borgnine, in his infinite wisdom, has led these unsuspecting children onto the scene of an archetypal slasher, and is now calling attention to their whereabouts with that godawful "Bingo" song. Still, I suppose what reinforces the suspicion that our assailant is Jason, above all other options, is the music that accompanies the sequence in question. It's all very "Ki Ki Ki Ma Ma Ma", isn't it?
Although let's back up the truck for just a second. Are we seriously suggesting that Jason Voorhees exists in the Simpsons universe? Or the Deadites, for that matter? Either way, I would say that's kind of a stretch outside of a Halloween episode. (It gets even more problematic when you consider that Friday the 13th exists as a work of fiction in the Simpsons universe; Bart mentions it in the first "Treehouse of Horror".) Is there perhaps a more plausible explanation we could find for what killed Borgnine out in the wilderness? Earlier in the episode Patty makes a remark about it being "cougar season" and those things not messing around, so perhaps that's our clue as to what has Borgnine in such a frightful fit at the end - he was stalked and eviscerated by a cougar with respiratory issues. I think that works; it's a lot more mundane than a homicidal maniac with a hockey mask and a machete, but still a pretty terrifying thing to have sneak up on you out in the dead of night. One of the surviving babies from Benji The Hunted grew up to be a Borgnine killer - now, that's some headcannon I can happily bite on.
No, what's really important is that Borgnine dies in the end, giving us the perfect punchline to a career-spanning gag about Borgnine and the tendency his characters have to snuff it before the running time is out. "He even dies in that Simpsons episode he's in!" It's something I'm constantly thinking about whenever I see Borgnine in a movie; that uneasy feeling you get straight off the bat that he's not going to make it. I mean, look at some of the gruesome fates that befall him elsewhere in his filmography. Willard? Rat chow. The Black Hole? Space wreckage. Escape From New York? Death by Kurt Russell's dangerous driving. "Come to think of it," I was bold enough to pose to a friend one day, "have you ever actually seen a movie in which Borgnine survives?" "Marty?" he offered. Oh. Well, I suppose that takes all the fun out of that game, then. Still, it's why I ultimately have to disagree with Wikipedia's assumption that the kids were also killed. The gag becomes considerably less funny if you lose the sensation that Borgnine in particular is being singled out. There's just something about Borgnine that makes him a fun guy to treat horribly. In fact, the chaps on the episode's DVD commentary seem to take special pride in just how ruthlessly they humiliated Borgnine throughout - not only does he wind up being attacked and presumably killed at the episode's climax, but he enters the story by exiting the bathroom and is constantly made to look a buffoon at every turning. Borgnine, for his part, was a good sport to go along with it all, securing himself one of the most memorable and hilarious turns by a guest celebrity on The Simpsons.
What makes the ending to "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood" so painfully disturbing (as well as fiendishly funny) is that it's more than just a random slasher parody tacked on for laughs, but rather an entirely logical punchline to the episode's main underlying theme, which has to do with a failed patriarchy. I think the real tip-offs here have less to do with where the characters end up than where they come from. In the end, it's perhaps not so important whether or not you've seen Friday the 13th or The Evil Dead. It helps immeasurably, however, if you understand that an earlier scene from the Borgnine subplot was referencing John Boorman's survival flick Deliverance (1972), which deals with a foursome of city slickers who escape to the Georgia wilderness for a weekend of white water rafting, only to end up battling for their lives when things go hideously wrong. While lost at sea, Homer laments that he didn't get on board one of the "smart rafts", assuming that the rest of the troop are having the time of their lives. We then cut briefly to Borgnine and the other campers who took the "correct" route and see that, actually, they're in an equally precarious situation, paddling their way down a gloomy-looking river as an assortment of shadowy figures whisper and stalk them from the surrounding trees. Which is already ominous enough, but what really pushes this into nightmare territory are the tell-tale twangs of a dueling banjo. OH!
"Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood" doesn't make its preoccupations clear from the start, but as the episode develops it becomes increasingly obvious that it's about Homer's failure to provide a positive model of masculinity for his son. Even early on, when Homer has only a minimal role in the narrative, we get ample hints of his negligent attitude and its potentially detrimental influence on Bart. Bart signs up to the Junior Campers in a state of heavy intoxication, brought about by family-friendly substance abuse in the form of an all-syrup squishee, and announces his plans to withdraw the following morning; Marge tries to persuade Bart to stick with his new obligations, but Homer contends that Bart is undergoing a crucial rite of passage, insisting that, "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals!" In a rare instance of self-awareness, Homer appears to immediately recognise the ridiculousness of his statement, for he adds, "Except the weasel." Still, he fails to grasp the deeper insight, that his distinctions between human and animal behavours are hazy and arbitrary at best. Certainly, Homer's own undignified and id-driven behaviours would appear to link him more to the animal kingdom than to the upstanding citizens we shortly encounter in their camper uniforms, and Bart later has fun reducing Homer to the status of a wild animal when he baits and traps him with floor pie as a practical joke.
Bart decides to give the Campers a fair shake when he realises that there are perks to being a member - namely, that he will be periodically excused from school tests to attend meetings. Still, his worst prejudices about the Campers are ostensibly confirmed when he discovers that the local troop receive instructions from the sensitive, feminised Ned Flanders, who teaches them how to craft makeshift bird feeders by smearing peanut butter onto pine cones. Then Bart learns that the Campers are allowed to handle pocket knives, and immediately changes his tune. Initially, Bart's interests lie in his lurid fascination with the brutal survival techniques mastered by the Campers, and he struggles with some of the regulations enforced on him (such as being required to read a confusing book about knife safety, only to obtain a rubber training knife and the rank of "Pussy Willow"). And yet, as the episode goes on and Bart becomes increasingly invested in the troop's activities, it becomes evident that the Campers are answering a much deeper need of his that isn't being fulfilled in his home life; that is, his yearning for a positive male role model. To the contrary, Homer seizes every opportunity to mock his son's new hobby, and he does so with the small-minded petulance of a jealous sibling, not a nurturing and supportive parent. By contrast, Bart's interactions with Ned become evermore genial and respectful. The Simpsons Movie (2007) would later revisit this exact same scenario, with with a major narrative thread involving Bart's increasing frustration with his boorish, infantile father and his gravitation toward Ned as a surrogate patriarch. Here, it's much more implicit - we see Bart adopting Ned's idiosyncratic vernacular when he responds to his salutations with "you know-dilly know it, Neddy." He later laughs at Ned's good-natured gag about "why they call them rapids and not slow-pids!" - much to the chagrin of Homer, who professes not to recognise his son.
The father-son rafting trip that drives the latter half of the episode is intended to reinforce male familial bonds and uphold certain masculine ideals as father and son combine to master the forces of nature together. In practice, the ritual immediately serves to open up wounds and expose parental voids in the children's lives, particularly for one boy, Warren, whose father is absent. Bart, meanwhile, is embarrassed at the thought of how the infantile Homer will measure up to the rest of the troop's fathers. Ned attempts to redress Warren's grievances by arranging for a special celebrity surrogate father to tag along on the trip, and it's here that Ernest Borgnine makes his grand entrance from the bathroom (this is explicitly against the wishes of Warren, who would sooner have his older brother accompany him). Although he is there to fill Warren's void, the episode effectively posits Borgnine as a counterpoint to the narrative's two prominent patriarchal figures, Ned and Homer, neither of whom are embodiments of traditional masculinity. Despite the plainly positive influence that his scout leadership has on Bart, the episode is ambiguous in its treatment of Ned, who is undermined as a "sissy" by the burly Borgnine. Ned clearly has a better sense of self-preservation than Homer, but his own skills prove severely limited when our heroes become lost at sea, for he seems to believe that there is a benevolence, or at the very least a logic to nature that will yield their salvation. This proves false, as exemplified by the trio of dolphins who swim all their way over to the raft to taunt the unfortunate humans about their seemingly inevitable fate, only to disappear immediately after.
It's at this point that we might consider the episode's evocation of Deliverance, which functions as more than just a shorthand for Borgnine's unenviable predicament. Rather, it subconsciously calls to mind our expectations for how a typical male-orientated adventure narrative should play out. If you squint, you can make out the parallels between the narrative trajectory of "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood" and that of Deliverance - in both cases, a foursome of characters become cut off from civilisation when a rafting trip goes awry and face the very real prospect of never making it back alive (note: of the four castaways in "Boy-Scoutz 'in The Hood", Todd is by far the most superfluous; he contributes nothing to the episode except to complain when Homer destroys a cassette Walkman he got for his birthday). Once again, I turn to our friend David Ingram, who in Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema identifies Deliverance as part of a cycle of films in which the wilderness becomes "a site for male protagonists to recover an essential, authentic masculinity and thereby to reassert the hegemony of the white male not only over non-human nature, but also over his ethnic, racial and gender subordinates." (p.36) Ingram notes that "Women continue to be excluded from, or marginalized within, these narratives of masculine adventure and self-fulfillment." This much applies to "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood", in which the female family members barely feature at all - Marge, Lisa, Maggie, Patty and Selma all appear but have very minimal roles within the episode, being restricted entirely to the sidelines and playing no active role in Bart and Homer's rescue, other than to press for help from the staggeringly inept local police force, who never even begin their search. Where "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood" diverges from more traditional voyages of masculine discovery is that, in this case, Mother Nature plainly doesn't give a fuck. The males get lost out at sea, but no opportunities to get touch with an essential masculinity present themselves; instead, they are left to stagnate, physically and emotionally, in a watery wasteland of complete inertia.
Ingram notes that Deliverance is not exactly a straightforward tale of masculine discovery, despite the prominent role played by "a primitive, regenerative violence" in securing the survival of its characters. (p.37) In fact, Deliverance is slyly subversive in its depiction of the fundamental failure of this regenerative violence to offer anything other than mere survival. The film portrays, in the words of Ingram, a state in which "the apocalypse has already happened, and mere survivalism is the only option left." Man will uncover his basic survival mechanisms if pushed to it, but Deliverance does not suggest that such discovery should be considered redemptive, or good for the soul. It is this lack of clear-cut vindication that I think tends to throw some people about the film. Some years back, I can recall reading an online review of Deliverance in which the author complained that the story is deceptively billed as a Man vs. Nature narrative, arguing that, "homosexual country hicks hardly constitute forces of nature!" That's all very hilarious, but in this case they constitute exactly that, and more. The hillbilly hunters who rape one of the foursome and later murder another act as agents for a wilderness that is being slowly devoured and disfigured beyond recognition by industrialisation, signified here by the impending construction of a hydro-electric dam that will leave the surrounding valley underwater. The four city slickers make the journey to the Cahulawassee River in the hopes of mastering the wilderness while there is still a wilderness to be mastered; they are driven by a misguided nostalgia for a masculinity that can be reaffirmed by a weekend excursion of "getting back to nature", and instead find themselves ready victims for a local community looking to vent their frustrations at the changing landscape and the knock-on threats to their own way of life. The protagonists are made to suffer for their hubris and condescension, both by the raging fury of the river itself, and by the brutality of the resident hillbillies. The confrontation likewise brings out the brutality and tribalism in the city slickers, who muster enough of their primal killer instinct to eliminate their attackers (although maybe not - the characters are not entirely sure if the last man they kill was actually involved). Superficially, they have "conquered" the wilderness, and traditional macho "heroics" have won the day, and yet the three survivors return to the city unfulfilled, fearful and visibly damaged, as indicated by the gruesome nightmare that persists in haunting one of the party, Ed (Jon Voight), in the story's epilogue. They make it back to civilisation in a strictly physical sense; spiritually and emotionally, they are still lost in the backwoods as the film closes, with no prospect of rescue or recovery. Hence, Deliverance is not a triumphant tale of masculine survival, but a cautionary tale for those who assume that the waning wilderness welcomes their pity, or their childish fantasies of personal fulfillment.
Nature is less forthcoming with its retribution in "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood". As we've previously acknowledged, the Simpsons universe has a tendency to express its fundamental callousness not with active brutality, but with a mocking indifference that's somehow even more scathing. The trio of dolphins who take the opportunity to taunt the doomed humans (no doubt bitter about the friends they lost to those tuna nets) are about as proactive as nature cares to get on this one. The episode's third act is a deliberately slow one, with very little actually happening and the characters barely budging an inch; they are left immobilised, waiting in vain for the rescue that will not be coming. At one point, Homer attempts to hook a fish by baiting it with the group's last remaining cheese doodle, but if you were expecting a dramatic battle between man and fish in the style of Ernest Hemingway (as already occurred in the Season 2 episode, "The War of The Simpsons"), you would be sorely disappointed; the fish instantly escapes with the doodle and the scene ends with Homer feebly attempting to coax if back to the raft as if he were calling to his pet cat. Here, nature barely has to lift a finger to show up man's ineptitude. The only opportunity the characters get to assert their masculinity in a traditional sense occurs through human intervention; a plane appears on the horizon and Homer seizes the chance to undermine Ned's leadership by refusing to let him commandeer the flare gun, on the grounds that, "This ain't one of your church picnic flare gun firings! This is the real thing!" This petty attempt at posturing ends in disaster, however, for Homer merely succeeds in bringing down the plane with the blast he fires; the pilot survives and is immediately picked up by a rescue team who apparently don't notice the group of emaciated castaways only metres away. In the absence of any active challenges from nature, the group are left to bicker uselessly among themselves; Homer's numerous poor decisions throughout the ordeal are visibly rooted in his aversion to being bested by the effeminate Ned, and yet his every attempt to assume the role of alpha male serves only to reveal his buffoonery or, deeper still, his stifling, childlike terror that they will not survive.
In the end, the primitive survival mechanism that saves the group comes not from regenerative violence or traditional heroics, but from Homer's tenacity in locating where in the vicinity there are hamburgers to be devoured. Salvation arrives through another symbol of industralisation and its exploitative regard for the natural world, coupled this time with the ludicrous banalities of modern consumerism - Krusty the Clown has erected one of his heinous fast food restaurants on an unmanned oil rig just out of sight of the raft, and Homer's astute ability to trail the smell of burgers cooking brings them back to civilisation, and to a mountain of greasy calories. Homer saves the day, although he does so with the scavenging instincts of a raccoon following its nose to the nearest freshly-filled trash can. It is another example of the kind of scenario described by Ingram in which the apocalypse has already happened and survivalism is the only option left, only in this case survivalism involves the adaptation of the human animal to a world that has been warped and pillaged to truly grotesque degrees by a consumerism gone mad with power (perhaps the greatest disruption to the potential romance of our heroes' adventure is the revelation that the group were never really "cut off" from the comforts of civilization, as there was a fast food restaurant only a mile or so away). Crucially, it is the crude, bestial qualities that previously made Homer such an embarrassment in Bart's eyes that have proven most useful; in place of having to embody a more authentic vision of manliness in order to earn his son's respect, Homer demonstrates that he's pretty much fine the way he is, and Bart accepts him as such. Homer ends up rebuffing Bart's assurances that he's proud to have him as father, for his interests lie purely in satisfying his overpowering appetite, and for once Bart seems happy to emulate his example. The final image of the main narrative shows Homer and Bart side by side, devouring the Krusty burgers with the same carnal voraciousness, thus reaffirming their bond as father and son.
Far from upholding traditional notions of masculinity, "Boy-Scoutz 'n The Hood" uses the parallel narrative with Borgnine and the fathers who take the "correct" route to casually mock such ideals. The fate that befalls Borgnine and his charges becomes something of a double-edged gag; on the one hand, it provides a direct contrast to the overwhelming passivity of Homer and Bart's predicament, hinting that a more dramatic and exciting narrative is happening elsewhere and the viewer is largely being made to sit out on it. This narrative contains hints of a more traditional showdown between man and wilderness, with a vengeful nature offering up the complete works - the vindictive hillbillies of Deliverance and, later, a raging grizzly bear, which Borgnine is unable to fend off due to Homer having stolen his knife. Here, the party get ample opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of the wilderness, and yet they fail at every turning; in fact, Borgnine only succeeds in leading them deeper and deeper into oblivion, until they come face-to-face with the greatest nightmare of all in the form of Jason Voorhees (or possibly a Deadite). Consider this much: there were plenty of other fathers when the trip began, but by the final scene the party has been reduced to just the kids and Borgnine, which raises questions as to what became of the other adults. Our dark, worm-filled gut reaction might be to suppose that they were killed by the hillbillies from earlier. I have to say that I don't buy it; if those kids had just witnessed their fathers being raped and murdered by a bunch of rogue hillbillies, I think they would be a heck of a lot more traumatised than they clearly are. They wouldn't be sitting around the campfire and singing "Bingo". More likely that they got separated from the kids and Borgnine, or that they left to look for help. Still, the episode leaves us with the undeniably troubling imagery of a severely depleted group and these unfortunate kids having to look to Borgnine as their sole caregiver. Borgnine may have dismissed Ned and Homer earlier as "the sissy and the bald guy", and yet they emerge from their brush with oblivion whereas he does not - Borgnine ends up embodying the very worst of a patriarchy exposed as hollow and ineffectual when faced with a genuine crisis, and his reward for that is to be obliterated by the horror genre's second most famous mama's boy (appropriate, since he already died at the hands of the genre's third most famous in Willard).
As to that problem I raised earlier as to how a character of Jason Voorhee's stature can possibly exist in the Simpsons universe, I'd say the answer to that is that Borgnine has led the children so far off course that he has effectively steered them away from the reality of the Simpsons and into an entirely different ballpark altogether. For this group, the apocalypse has also already happened, although they are unaware of just how drastically they have strayed beyond the border dividing a particularly punishing camping trip and the territory of nightmares made manifest. I would prefer to stand by what I said previously about only Borgnine getting the chop and the young campers presumably making it out okay. Still, the grim truth is that we never see any of these kids again (it's a shame, because I really feel for that Warren kid) - if they survived their encounter with Voorhees then odds are that they fell off the edge of the Earth shortly afterwards. Once you've completely departed the fabric of your own reality than you have nowhere to go but nihility.
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