Futurama Purposefully Flipped A Slapstick Simpsons Trend
There are a lot of delightful running gags in "Futurama," but one that might've slipped by you is the constant reminders that Amy is a klutz. As one YouTuber's compilation video helpfully shows, Amy is constantly slipping on things, dropping important items, and banging her head. A particularly fun gross-out moment for me was when she bit into some sticky candy and it yanked out a couple of her teeth.
Amy's clumsiness is not a character flaw, exactly; it's just an extra layer to her, something to make her feel a little more three-dimensional even as the early seasons rarely gave her much focus. For "Futurama" creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, this character trait was a deliberate reversal of Homer's clumsiness (and his tendency to receive squeamish injuries) throughout "The Simpsons." That show constantly has Homer banging his head against things or slipping on a peanut, whereas Marge and Lisa are generally kept away from any such slapstick humor. In the DVD commentary for season 2's "XMas Story," Groening explained:
"There's a character trait of Amy's that she's very clumsy and physical things, bad things happen to her, like you just saw she spun off screen. And that came about — I just wanted to see, on 'The Simpsons' almost all of the physical mayhem happens to male characters; Bart or Homer or whoever, and female characters are left untouched. And so I wanted to see on 'Futurama' if we could actually use slapstick with female characters and amuse people."
Cohen chimed in saying, "Turns out we could!" and Groening remarked, "It makes the misogynists crazy."
The Simpsons has since addressed its violence-based gender divide
It's certainly true that, back in 2000 at least, "The Simpsons" had a strong hesitance to allow "physical mayhem" to wreak havoc on its female characters. Even in the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, Lisa was rarely the victim of whatever spooky thing was happening in the segment. Some of this is just the natural extension of socialized gender roles, where boys are expected to be more violent and physically reckless, and some of this is a reflection on the characters. Lisa is an indoor-kidd brainiac and Marge is the virtuous voice of reason, so it makes sense that they're not the ones falling down the Springfield Gorge.
"The Simpsons" has nevertheless addressed this problem in recent years, if you can call it a problem. In the post-classic era, they've allowed Lisa and Marge to be the cause of (and victim of) far more physical mayhem. From Marge recklessly driving into a demolition derby to Lisa getting murdered multiple times throughout "Treehouse of Horror XXXI," the latter years of the show have at least embraced the possibility that physical violence can be funny when it happens to women too. Is this progress? I can't tell. All we know is that when it comes to letting its female characters be victims of slapstick comedy, "Futurama" has always been ahead of the curve. Just ask Leela: