"Closeted" is yet another Ullman short examining Bart's inbuilt aversion toward adult authority. This one, however, has the added twist that neither Simpsons parent appears directly in the short, but their presence is felt extensively, and uncomfortably, throughout thanks to the array of background art adorning the household walls. Bart hears Homer calling him and, assuming that he's being summoned for some spirit-crushing chores, runs off to find a convenient foxhole in which to lie low until the coast is clear. Except there's a running gag that, no matter where Bart runs, he is perpetually confronted by Homer and Marge's disapproving gaze, perfectly encapsulated in the series of static framed images positioned at every turning of the Simpsons' house. It's actually hilarious just how consistently, aggressively stern Homer and Marge appear in these pictures, to the point where you're compelled to question why anyone would want to plaster images of themselves scowling all up and down their corridors. Obviously, one way to read it is that they're manifestations of Bart's guilty conscience. But they also hark back to the slightly more surreal tone of the earlier Ullman shorts, which incorporated a number of bizarre background gags to reward the eagle-eyed - not least, the artwork in the Simpsons' house would exhibit an uncanny life all of their own and tell some surprisingly macabre tales.
The Simpsons lived in a stranger universe in those days, but this extensive collection of furious Homer and Marge imagery also ties in with the uneasy underlying feeling that pervades "Closeted", in which Bart is effectively treated as a pariah by his family. "Closeted" is an oddly disturbing Ullman short, not so much for the sense it conveys of an omnipresent parental disapproval, but rather its overwhelming sense of cosmic mockery; the feeling that if we step out of line or play loose with the rules, the universe and our loved ones alike will take only too much pleasure in turning on us. When Bart becomes trapped in the closet, his family do not help him in his hour of need, possibly as a deliberate means of punishing him for attempting to shirk his domestic responsibilities (although it would be a mite unfair to pick on Bart when Lisa pulls the exact same stunt). Only Maggie responds to Bart's pleas for help from inside the closet, and her ultimate reaction is to turn Bart's self-serving indolence back on him, when Bart naively implores Maggie to do what he would do if he was in her situation, whereupon she retreats to the living room and gives the television her undivided attention.
Bart pays a heavy price for his lack of responsibility. Not only does he have to endure the discomfort of being trapped in a dark closet, but by the time he gets the door loose again, having realised that the sensible thing would just to be to knuckle down and do his chores, it transpires that those prospective menial tasks were all just a false alarm anyway. Bart discovers that Homer has left him a note, informing him that the family have gone out for Frosty Chocolate Milkshakes and that he's sorry he was unable to find Bart. Bart looks out the window just in time to catch sight of his family driving away for the promised treats, and for his gaze to make contact with Maggie's as she peers at him tauntingly from the back of the car. Despite Maggie's obvious awareness, there is nothing to indicate that the family's abandonment of Bart was done out of spite, or as a knowing reaction to his sneaky attempt to avoid doing chores. Perhaps it is merely a case of fate dealing Bart a bum hand on this occasion. And yet, the adjacent pictures once again add their own layers of meaning to the ending.
On the left-hand side of the above shot, there is a picture of an unidentified individual whom I initially assumed to be some Simpsons relative we've never met (possibly one of those great uncles Homer will occasionally bring up whenever he has an inheritance to claim). On closer inspection, I was struck by how much of a resemblance he bears to the excessively shaven Bart in the short "Bart's Haircut", which had aired earlier on in The Tracey Ullman Show's second season, and was later referenced in the hit single, "Deep, Deep Trouble". In this short, Bart has his trademark spikes lopped off by an incompetent barber and returns home to face no shortage of ridicule from his schadenfreude-indulgent family (between "Bart's Haircut" and "Closeted", you get the sense that the rest of the Simpsons clan really loves to show Bart up). Thus, Bart's desolation at the end of "Closeted" is accompanied by a snapshot of himself at his most brutally humiliated. In the final shot, we see that to Bart's right, overlooking both Bart himself and the shaven Bart image, there is a picture of a troublingly jubilant Homer that stands in startling contrast to the considerably meaner-looking Homer and Marge images that have dominated the mise-en-scene up until now. Ultimately, it is adult authority that has the last laugh, as Bart slinks dejectedly past the leering eyes of his silently derisive father and conceals himself back inside the closet, having decided that he prefers the dark embrace of confinement to the smirking callousness of the world beyond.
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