The Simpsons producer Al Jean has confirmed that Sideshow Bob will finally kill Bart Simpson in this year’s Treehouse of Horror episode, so that’ll be good, won’t it? I’ve always dreamt of seeing the beloved characters of my past slaughtered by a Kelsey Grammer-voiced bad guy. What next? Tinky Winky chucked off the Space Needle by Frasier Crane? Bodger from Bodger and Badger torn to mince by the Beast? Please, producers. Murder my childhood for clicks.
As an adult human who enjoys laughing, it’s hard to know what to make of this news, because The Simpsons isn’t for me any more. On one hand, it’s nice that people still care enough about the show that when, say, one of its voice actors walks out, it’s still headline news; on the other, learning they are going to kill off Bart – albeit briefly, as the Treehouse series is non-canonical – feels a bit like discovering a granddad you’d assumed was dead is still going, and when you go and visit him in the nursing home he just stares at you and does a bad Family Guy impression. Grandad, quietly spitting the word “giggedy” out through his teeth. One you once so loved doing something so cheap. I’m pouring one out for you, Simpsons series one through nine.
But the central tenet of this development is that Sideshow Bob will finally get his closure: finally throttle the boy who repeatedly put him in prison, who destroyed his life and his career, who made him stand repeatedly on some rakes. That Bob will do what we all, secretly, dream of doing: besting our nemesis.
There is something deeply human about developing a nemesis. It reflects a dark and ponderous side of our character that isn’t as culturally explored as, say, love, or indifference. Look at every Disney movie: there is always a baddy, a darkness to the light, a nemesis driving the hero on. We are all heroes in our own particular and boring three-act plays. We need that conflict to feel alive.
I remember my first nemesis like I remember my first crush. A mature student who took every single class I took at university, outperforming me every step of the way. Always putting his hand up. Always talking. Reading around the topic. Running for student president. Can you imagine? Can you imagine going to university and actively engaging? I couldn’t, and something about him rattled me: one of the most pleasant men I’ve ever met, about as offensive as a bread roll, something about him riled me. I wanted to watch him fail, to spiral into the sea. He was my nemesis, and somewhere – distantly – he still is. I don’t know why I hate him but I do.
A lot of people get squeamish about hate, but I think we are all capable of it, even if in obtuse and shaded ways. In Seinfeld – a show which, had it gone on 25 seasons, would be doing something similar now, Jerry being strangled to death by Newman and replaced by Ashton Kutcher – there’s a scene where George goes off on one because Kramer is going to fantasy camp. “Fantasy camp?” he says, Georgily. “His whole life is a fantasy camp. People should plunk down $2,000 to live like him for a week. Do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbours, and have sex without dating. That’s a fantasy camp!” If you don’t think you have the hot blood or the cojones to hate someone to the point of nemesis, consider instead this: do you have a Kramer? Do you have someone who slips gleefully down the hillside of life into a flowerbed, while you clamber up the mountain of reality with chapped hands and a cold heart? Then you have a nemesis: not one powered by hate, but by envy, by contrast and by spite.
We’re a very loving society right now – we like to declare that inanimate objects are our bae (“Ham is bae”; “’98-plate VW Lupo is bae”) – we speak in the internet hyperbole of insta-love and enthusiasm: that a video of a cat jumping off the window on to some curtains is the “best thing ever”, that a particularly moving promposal is “amazing”. I think we need to spin the lens. We need to turn around and hate a little better. Next time someone pushes into the queue for the self-service checkouts, declare them your nemesis. Next time someone does an all-office CC chain that turns into an endless, 50-message thread of bad jokes, declare internal war upon their person. And then, when you have that nemesis, you do what Sideshow Bob does to Bart: you best them, fighting to your last in the constant struggle of man v man, of nemesis v nemesis, of me v John from my English class. Go on, I believe in you. Crush your enemies into dust.
