I touched on this last time, but whenever people talk about the Simpson family's characterisation during their initial run as supporting bumpers in The Tracey Ullman Show, it's often stated that all of the family were basically the same except for Lisa, who was initially nothing more than a female version of Bart. I would dispute that to a point (for one thing, Homer wasn't quite the same character in the Ullman shorts either), although it's certainly the case that Lisa received very little character development over the course of the 48 original shorts. Back then, Bart was very much the dominant Simpson, and Lisa didn't have much of a purpose outside of being her brother's foil. The two siblings were either mutually bratty rivals or partners in getting their parents' hackles up. Lisa was as prone to misbehaving as her brother, and would occasionally spout dialogue that seems egregiously out of character for her now (the most obvious example occurring in the twenty-fourth short, "The Aquarium", where the ardent animal lover apparently advocates seeing captive marine life pitted against one another in fights to the death).
Lisa was named after one of Groening's own family (as were all of the Simpsons, sans Bart), but it's clear that Groening had no real vision for Lisa at the start. Right off the bat, he knew what kind of character he wanted Bart to be. Groening has cited two key inspirations for Bart - firstly, Eddie Haskell, the trouble-making teen portrayed by Ken Osmond in 1950s sitcom Leave It To Beaver, whom Groening as a child had desperately wished could be the main character of the show, and secondly, Groening's childhood disenchantment with the 1959 series Dennis the Menace, which failed spectacularly to satisfy the young Matt's longing for a series centred upon the kind of rabble-rousing kid he could relate to. With The Simpsons, Groening finally had the chance to make the cartoon of his dreams, and dammit, Bart was going to be the rebellious protagonist he always wanted but was repeatedly denied throughout his own childhood. Groening was clearly less interested in Lisa, who had "Middle Child" as her sole defining character trait during the initial production stages; in her autobiography My Life as A Ten Year Old Boy, Nancy Cartwright recounts how she was originally invited to audition for Lisa but gravitated toward Bart when she realised that Lisa offered nothing for her to work with (Yeardley Smith, meanwhile, was originally invited to audition for Bart, but got the gig as Lisa when she couldn't make her voice sound masculine enough).
I'll profess to having a great fondness for Lisa, who is my personal favourite out of the Simpsons clan (although I do think that Marge is a really great and underrated character, and she certainly merits her own appreciation post some time in the future). At what point did she go from being an ill-defined middle child to one of television's most celebrated and admired young intellectuals? I've previously observed that the major turning point in defining Lisa's character and making her feel wholly distinct from Bart came when they placed a saxophone in her hands and had her wail out the Moaning Lisa blues. That woodwind instrument, and the startling boldness with which Lisa played it, suggested so much about her character that had previously gone untouched upon. She was passionate, soulful, melancholic and a little misunderstood. She had a wisdom and a gusto that were beyond her years. She became a torchbearer for introverted kids the world over who preferred to keep their noses in books and felt perpetually as if they didn't fit in. For me, one of the most heartbreakingly relatable things Lisa has ever said occurs in the Season 2 episode, "Dancin' Homer" (an episode I otherwise find quite nondescript by Season 2 standards), when the family are about to make their ill-fated move to Capital City and Lisa remarks to a group of her peers, "I can't help but feel if we had gotten to know each other better, my leaving would actually have meant something." I don't think there's been a statement that's encapsulated my own childhood social life so succinctly. Sideshow Bob may be the Simpsons character for whom I feel the greatest affinity, but Lisa is the one who most deftly holds a mirror up to my own innermost malaise.
The saxophone may have given Lisa her much-needed boost in terms of branching off and securing her own personality, but one could argue that the really critical turning point occurred in the Ullman short "The Money Jar", a short which went some way toward proving that, even in the Ullman days, Lisa was slightly more than just a carbon copy of her brother. Here, Lisa demonstrates that she has enough of a moral compass to resist the heinous crime of stealing from her parents' money jar when Marge has expressly told her not to, a test which Bart predictably fails. At the start of the short, Bart and Lisa request an increase in their allowance, which Marge staunchly refuses. She then goes out and warns her children not to get any ideas about raiding the money jar in the kitchen - somewhat bizarrely, as neither child had mentioned the jar up until now, meaning that Marge is effectively tipping her children off as to where they can fill up their pockets with ill-gotten change, but perhaps it all makes sense in light of the eventual punchline. Lisa is the first to get lured by the temptations of the money jar (there's a pretty inventive shot in which we approach the jar from Lisa's perspective) but before she can dip her hand in is seized by a sudden, revelatory moment of enlightenment. "I wonder if this is wrong?" she asks. And that was it. The real Lisa was born, and The Simpsons would never be quite the same again.
Lisa may have developed a sense of moral awareness in time to avoid betraying her mother, but not to evade the accusing eyes of her younger sister, who is watching her from the kitchen doorway. Lisa retreats in shame, at which point Maggie is gripped by a momentary avaricious craving of her own, and...you know what, I don't get why Maggie would be tempted to steal money from the jar in the first place. I get that they're looking to establish a clear pattern here, so that it'll be even funnier when Bart caves in to his basest desires, but still, she's only a baby and as such has about as much use for money as does Snowball the cat.
Maggie resists, but surely none but the most naive viewers were holding out any hope that Bart would follow suit. Bart reveals himself to be completely amoral, as demonstrated when his shoulder angel appears, not to appeal to his sense of decency but to give him that final push into degeneracy. Bart raises the lid and discovers that his parents' private stash consists of one measly dollar, prompting him to groan and deliver the short's ironic punchline, "You can't even trust your own mother." Indeed. Either Marge is very protective of that single dollar, or she just trolled her son, knowing full well that he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to steal from the jar if the idea were planted in his head. Marge, you wily old trickster. I come away thinking that Lisa wasn't the only one to get a healthy dose of character development in this adventure.
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