Bill Oakley, a writer for The Simpsons, is unhappy with internet trolls using one of the show’s episodes he co-wrote for coronavirus memes.
In an episode from May 1993, “Marge in Chains,” a sick Japanese factory worker coughs into boxes used for juicers that wind up infecting people with “Osaka Flu” in Springfield, the fictional town where the show is centered.
With the spread of COVID-19 in recent months, internet trolls made memes from the show replacing “Osaka Flu” with “Coronavirus,” prompting a rebuke from Oakley.
The Simpsons have done it again ? #CoronaVirus pic.twitter.com/OHBnmU0KKL
— Jordan Coombe (@Jordan_Coombe) January 30, 2020
“I don’t like it being used for nefarious purposes,” Oakley told the Hollywood Reporter. “The idea that anyone misappropriates it to make coronavirus seem like an Asian plot is terrible. In terms of trying to place blame on Asia — I think that is gross.”
“It was meant to be absurd that someone could cough into a box and the virus would survive for six to eight weeks in the box,” he added. “It is cartoonish. We intentionally made it cartoonish because we wanted it to be silly and not scary, and not carry any of these bad associations along with it, which is why the virus itself was acting like a cartoon character and behaving in extremely unrealistic ways.”
The Simpsons, which has been on air since 1989, has gotten credit for “predicting” the future on multiple occasions, including Donald Trump becoming president. Some people also credit them with predicting the Ebola outbreak in 2014 as the virus was mentioned briefly 17 years earlier in an episode.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in China, a pandemic on Wednesday.
As of Monday morning, nearly 170,000 cases of the coronavirus have been reported around the world and more than 6,500 people have died. There were more than 3,770 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States and 69 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
