Story Hangover Thoughts: The Simpsons RE: Lisa's Ignored Potential

 While the roots of some sibling rivalries are made clear, others are more complex.

 Take The Simpsons episode when an IQ test made the family believe that Maggie could be smarter than Lisa. 

Homer and Marge could care less about their older daughter’s academic excellence, First Chair in the school band, College-level reading and multilingual skills, Homer even refused to let her attend a better school on a well-earned scholarship because he didn’t want to drive forty-five minutes every day, despite the fact that if they live that far from the school, Lisa would likely have taken a school bus. 

But when their younger daughter exhibits the slightest hint of intelligence, they buy her educational toys, quiz her with flashcards and do everything in their power to encourage her. And when an envious and jealous Lisa makes a clearly sarcastic comment during flashcard practice, they yell at her, saying she’s not being a good role model, resulting in Lisa shutting herself in her room in tears.

 Did they even consider that maybe she was acting out because they’d not only taken away her identity, but also rubbed it in her face? A significant part of Lisa’s self-esteem rests on her brainpower and she made it clear that she’d been having an identity crisis trying to find a new persona. 

Thank goodness the test administration’s security footage revealed that Lisa had been unintentionally giving her sister hints. I’m not saying I’m happy that Maggie is average or at least less intelligent than Lisa, but more so that the Simpson sisters have reconciled. 

If that had gone on the rest of their lives, Lisa would have grown up with a severe inferiority complex not to mention, strong resentment of both her sister and her parents for causing it. Season 16 says that Lisa takes Xanax and Zoloft for anxiety, so an identity crisis and lack of empathy from her family on top of that would be the final straw. That time Homer and Marge moved the kids to a better district is proof of this. Lisa was traumatized by the fact that the school’s higher standards got her a grade below her usual A’s. It wasn’t because of her intellect, it was because the kids from the better school had been studying at her level since kindergarten, so she was no longer the smartest kid in class. Good thing she and Bart went back to Springfield Elementary before report cards came out or we’d probably have seen a Lisa Simpson-style nervous breakdown. 

And it’s not just sisters who have issues. I can vouch on this as I have a brother, myself. 

What about the time Lisa was moved ahead a grade while Bart was moved back? The teacher thought since Bart was older and getting slightly better grades in her class that he would be a better student and thought Lisa was struggling, completely missing the point that she was moved ahead a grade because she needed a challenge. She was supposed to struggle a little, that’s how challenges work. 

She didn’t even consider that because Bart had been bumped down a grade, of course he’d remember the material from the previous year! He didn’t actually learn nor care what the answers were, he just memorized the answer keys. 

When Lisa, who is an A student, told the teacher that he’d confessed to this, she just raised Bart’s grade after telling a crying Lisa that nobody likes a tattletale. 

Luckily, Bart got moved back up to fourth grade (don’t ask), and Lisa chose to go back to second grade because she likes being a big fish in a small pond and probably because of her teacher’s attitude towards her, I hope Lisa gets another teacher next year. 

You’d think that the teacher would have read her new students’ transcripts. If she had, she’d have seen that Lisa is a much better student than her brother, and been more fair.

 Luckily that teacher hasn’t made any appearances as of late, so I’m guessing she left the profession. Hopefully she realized her mistake before her discouragement turned a child off school forever. 

She was still a better educator than the long-term substitute Lisa’s class once had. 

That woman was actually a decent teacher, but she hated Lisa. She gave her a B- on a report just because she could. And no, she wasn’t strict with grading. She gave Ralph Wiggum, the kid whose favorite color is peanut butter, an A on his report, which was a crayon drawing with his own name spelt wrong. (Yes, Ralph was dropped on his head as a baby). She also took away achievement points because Lisa was reading during free-play time. What kind of teacher gives a student detention for behaving themselves? And you know why she did this? Because she apparently believes the stereotype that blonde girls make their way through life based on looks instead of intelligence, and Lisa reminded her of her childhood tormentors. Just because someone looks like something doesn’t mean they act like it! They had to bring in Bart to get rid of her, which the school only allowed because Lisa is the only student keeping Springfield Elementary accredited as a school. 

The reason I care so much about Lisa is because I see myself in her. The term for a person who thinks like me is a “nonlinear genius”. I was actually much smarter than my classmates. I could read before I started preschool! In fact, my first word came from a book. And I actually retained the information. 

My point here is that Marge and Homer are feeding into a sibling rivalry between their older children by supporting Bart in a multitude of extracurricular activities to try and keep him under control while neglecting their overachieving daughter’s success which ironically, makes her strive even harder to be the best at anything and everything with a crippling fear of inferiority.

 An example of this is when Bart does things like destroy Lisa’s model horse collection along with the shelves they were on, the most discipline he got was Homer telling him and Lisa: “No horseplay” then cracking up at his pun before allowing them to continue fighting while he told Marge what he’d said.

 Or what about the time Marge got rid of the trophies she’d been giving Bart as participation awards for literally everything he did in an effort to boost his self-esteem, after hearing that they were bad for kids along with the awards Lisa had actually won?  Throwing out Lisa’s rewards for academic achievement and music is actually going to decrease her self-esteem. If a child feels like you don’t appreciate their efforts and achievements, they’re eventually going to stop trying because they feel like nobody cares. I mean, imagine never having your hard work and effort acknowledged by the people you love.