The Itchy & Scratchy Show

For the Australian electronic music act, see Itch-E and Scratch-E.

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The title card of Itchy and Scratchy

The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a show-within-a-show of The Simpsons which usually appears as a segment of the fictional Krusty the Klown TV show, watched regularly by Bart and Lisa Simpson and other characters on the animated series. Itself an animated cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show depicts an anthropomorphic blue mouse, Itchy (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) who mutilates an anthropomorphic black cat, Scratchy (voiced by Harry Shearer).

Background

The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a parody of the violent animated cartoons that many American children were exposed to in their formative years. Matt Groening has named Tom and Jerry as a particular influence, and also Pixie and Dixie. David Silverman, a key director and producer for The Simpsons, states that the show is based on Herman and Katnip. While not usually as openly graphic or bloody as Itchy and Scratchy, these works depicted physical abuse between their characters with no long-term consequences (toons being indestructible); Itchy and Scratchy take this violence to its logical extreme, and it does not flinch from showing fair approximations of the real effects of violent behavior.

Also, Itchy and Scratchy could have been modeled after the comic Squeak the Mouse by Mattioli (1984) .

Itchy and Scratchy often play out an exaggerated form of the conflict in the surrounding episode (Groening: "Whatever the theme of that particular episode of The Simpsons is, there is some Itchy and Scratchy cartoon that obliquely relates to it). For example, when the Simpson children are taken into foster care, they watch an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon with a similar theme, and when Homer is recruited by NASA, he watches an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon which directly (and gruesomely) parodies the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien.

Itchy and Scratchy have occasionally been used to parody the work of famous directors specifically. One episode, Reservoir Cats is supposedly guest-directed by Quentin Tarantino and mocks Tarantino's films Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Another cartoon was "guest directed" by Oliver Stone and shows Itchy shooting Scratchy in a manner similar to Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, in reference to Stone's film JFK.

History within The Simpsons

Origins

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The Itchy & Scratchy Show writing staff, caricatures of the staff of The Simpsons, along with Roger Myers Jr., Krusty and the prototype Lindsey Naegle. As shown in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show".

According to the show, Chester J. Lampwick invented Itchy in September 3, 1919 and owns the rights to that character. Lampwick was also known as the "father of cartoon violence." Roger Meyers, Sr. (1890-1985) plagiarized Itchy and established Itchy and Scratchy Studios in 1921. Originally Itchy was called "Itchy the Lucky Mouse" (a parody of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit). He starred in his first cartoon made by Lampwick, "Manhattan Madness".

Scratchy starred in his first cartoon in 1928, entitled That Happy Cat. The film, which is about fourteen seconds of animation showing the cat whistling and tipping his hat, did very poorly. It is unknown who created Scratchy, or if he was plagiarized by Meyers Sr. in the same way that Itchy was.

Later that year, Itchy and Scratchy starred in their first cartoon together entitled "Steamboat Itchy" a parody of Disney's Steamboat Willie featuring Mickey Mouse.

"Past"

Since The Simpsons exists in a form of floating timeline, "past" refers to events that occurred before the course of the series.

Along with the cartoon shorts, Itchy and Scratchy were featured in a wartime radio series, at least two films - Pinitchio and Scratchtasia, (parodies of Pinocchio and Fantasia), and television commercials for Laramie Cigarettes (spoofing The Flintstones).

At one point, additional characters were added to the pair on a show titled Itchy & Scratchy and Friends Hour: Uncle Ant, Disgruntled Goat, Flatulent Fox, Ku Klux Klam, Rich Uncle Skeleton and Dinner Dog. These characters parodied the addition of superfluous, two-dimensional characters to TV shows in an effort to draw viewer interest.

"Present"

Since The Simpsons exists in a form of floating timeline, "present" refers to events that occurred during the course of the series.

Itchy and Scratchy Studios is currently run by Roger Meyers, Jr. (born 1956), the son of the cartoon's creator. Itchy and Scratchy Studios was bankrupted after being sued by Lampwick for $800 billion, but was saved after receiving a large cash settlement from the government over its use of Mr. ZIP.

The Itchy and Scratchy Show airs as a segment on the Krusty the Klown show, though it moved to the Gabbo show during the latter's short-lived run. The show underwent a non-violent retooling following a protest campaign led by Marge Simpson, but after Marge was later discredited, it returned to its original violent format. The show has spawned an Academy Award-winning film adaptation, amusement parks, and a musical.

The show is animated in South Korea, just like The Simpsons cartoon itself. June Bellamy (a takeoff on voice actress June Foray) voices both Itchy and Scratchy.

Poochie

In the episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", Poochie was a dog character added to the Itchy & Scratchy lineup. According to the show's plot, the producers believed the cartoons were getting stale, and needed a new character to reinvigorate the show, despite the objections of one of the show's writers, who "at the risk of sounding pretentious", felt that Itchy and Scratchy comprised "a dramaturgical dyad". Homer Simpson gets the job of voicing Poochie (Poochie's real voice is Dan Castellaneta), who is introduced in the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon The Beagle Has Landed. A product of marketing department thinking, Poochie was near-universally despised, and was killed off in his second appearance, despite Homer's objections.

Both plots were a reference to TV shows which added new characters purportedly to reinvigorate the show (often in the show's waning years and/or to replace stars who had either departed or grown up, if they were child actors). Famous examples include Scooby-Doo (when his nephew Scrappy-Doo was added); The Flintstones, who suddenly found themselves co-starring with The Great Gazoo; The Brady Bunch, when Cousin Oliver came to live with the Brady family, despite the fact that the Bradys had never before been visited by or even referred to any relatives at all in the previous four seasons; and Inspector Gadget when they added Corporal Capeman to the cast.

Quite often, these additions of superfluous characters are seen as jumping the shark moments; fans regard such changes as defining events in the decline of a TV show. This is itself satirized in the episode, with the mysterious addition of a new character, "Roy", to the Simpson family; Roy leaves the show at the end of the episode. In real life, this episode marked The Simpsons officially becoming the longest-running cartoon, so the writers celebrated this fact by writing an episode about cartoons jumping the shark.

Many fans of the show also saw Poochie's creation, depiction, and demise as a response to various criticisms of The Simpsons by its viewers. The focus group's desire for a show where its characters solve real-life problems, and simultaneous desire for a show with its characters "getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers" reflects the division between fans of earlier episodes of the series, which tended to focus on the family's relationships with each other, and fans of the later episodes, which tended to rely more heavily on sight gags, cameo appearances, and non-sequiturs. Other aspects of the episode also play up this argument, including Bart's declaration that the creators of Itchy and Scratchy are "giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free" and Lisa's closing lines about how Itchy and Scratchy’s viewers "should thank our lucky stars that they're still putting on a program of this caliber after so many years."

Despite being created for a single-episode appearance (and despite a legal document from Krusty stating that he would never reappear), Poochie has appeared in later episodes of The Simpsons, such as an Itchy & Scratchy episode (Tears of a Clone), was included in a Halloween Episode and was on a Krusty-Brand show T-shirt (as well as "Itchy-Poochie").

According to The Simpsons comic system, many spin-offs featuring Poochie were made before his debut on the show. Many of these spin-offs were simply badly-disguised rip-offs of other popular comics. A Poochie comic was called Astro-Poochie (a rip-off of Astro Boy) which shows Poochie resembling the anime character. Some small print on the top reads "here is another idea we had…"

Video games

A video game titled The Itchy and Scratchy Game was released for Sega Megadrive/Genesis, Game Gear, Super NES and Game Boy. Another game, Itchy and Scratchy in Miniature Golf, was released for Game Boy. A level of the SNES/Genesis game Bart's Nightmare also prominently features Itchy and Scratchy. In the PC-CD ROM game Virtual Springfield, several original Itchy & Scratchy shorts can be viewed. In The Simpsons Hit & Run, an original Itchy & Scratchy short can be viewed after all of the collectible cards in the game have been found. Recently, it was revealed that in the new video game The Simpsons Game Marge's section of the story focuses on Marge trying to ban the game Grand Theft Scratchy: Blood Island. The game is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. Also, the site for the Simpsons game has been set up to advertise Grand Theft Scratchy.

Film

The opening scene of The Simpsons Movie features an Itchy and Scratchy set. This is possibly the second modern day Itchy & Scratchy movie as season 4 had an episode entitled "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie"

See also

• List of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons
• Tom and Jerry (MGM)
• Tom and Jerry (Van Beuren)

External links

• Itchy & Scratchy episode guide
• Theme Song Lyrics
• Movie Lyrics
• [1] (The Itchy and Scratchy Theme Tune)
• clips and Itchy & Scratchy