The Simpsons is a well known American animated sitcom that uses and references many

similarities between emerging trends, historical perspectives, or a current event in the news

whether it’d be coincidence or intention. “The Telltale Head” is the eighth episode of The

Simpsons’ first season and in this episode, Bart decides to cut the head off of the statue in the

center of town to impress Dolph, Jimbo, and Kearney, who are three older kids that attend his

school. After Bart decides to cut the head off the statue, everyone in town started hating him,

even the three kids that he even tried to impress. Bart eventually confesses to his father Homer,

and they try to return the head back to the statue. They are met with an angry mob and Bart

confesses to his crimes, and the townspeople eventually forgive Bart and realize that Bart

removing the head from the statue brought the town closer together. The end of the episode

represents a functionalist theory and perspective based on the end of the episode.

Comte, Marx and Durkheim all have different perspectives and views on sociological

behaviors and based on these perspectives give different insight to how it affects our society

today. Comte has the perspective that societies should behave and develop based on three

evolutions of the mind through theological, metaphysical, and positivist stages. He believes that

science produced the highest form of knowledge, above all else. He argued that through

scientific knowledge based on fact and reason is the best way to solve problems. For example, in

this episode of The Simpsons, Comte would probably believe that there was a scientific reason to

Bart’s crimes based on moral principle. Since stealing the head of the statue counts as a crime of

theft and vandalism, the law against it can be justified as “thou shall not steal” and then since

theft contradicts a universal moral principle that we can drive through reason and later prove that

theft is detrimental to society using the scientific method. Karl Marx argues that conflict is a
necessity for society to function. Society should take an active role of changing itself through

conflict rather than just waiting for society to evolve without the reliance of society itself. In this

episode, the conflict is Bart producing an act of theft and vandalism. This conflict later showed

to cause a societal shift between the townspeople. Since Bart removed the head off of the statue

the townspeople suddenly became more active, got along, and grouped together against Bart

because of his crimes. This conflict allowed the townspeople to group together in a way that they

haven’t before so this shows an example of his conflict theory that Marx argued about. Finally,

Emile Durkheim argued that society should be held together by sharing similar values and

perspectives which, should grow overtime and develop. He believed that this was critical for a

society to thrive and create a functional society. In this episode, again Durkheim would probably

agree and believe that the mob of townspeople grouped together because they shared an equal

value of hatred and anger towards Bart due to his actions. The townspeople found solace within a

common idea of hatred that they grouped up and decided to separate their differences and act as

one. This shows how a society that is grouped up together with a similar value can be productive

and accomplish a goal or idea without any discrimination towards each other.

The paradigm that is displayed in this episode was a functionalist perspective. A

functionalist perspective is defined as all facets of society having functional properties. That

exemplifies this idea that how each part of society influences another part of society which

brings a balance within society. Bart's actions represents the Functionalist paradigm because

towards the end of the episode it brought the whole town together, unifying them and

strengthening the community as whole against Bart. Durkheim used the example of crime to
define functionalism. This is a clear example of Durkheim's ideas in action as well as an example

of conflict theory that Marx proclaims.