The Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror Presents: Not It" Sets a Poem at the Center of Its Parody
"Not It" reimagines Ben's "January Embers" poem as something both more and less successful.
This year, The Simpsons foregrounded a poem as its central plot device in a special “Treehouse of Horror” bonus episode. That’s right: in addition to their annual anthology episode of several short vignettes, Matt Groening and Co. went all in on Stephen King and devoted an entire half hour to a parody of It and It: Chapter Two, and a send-up of the famed “January Embers” poem is at its black little heart. It’s a Halloween gift for those of us who love poetry, pop culture, and all things spooky.
Tag! You’re It
For its It parody, The Simpsons casts Homer as Bill, Comic Book Guy as Ben, and Marge as Beverly. Moe and Carl stand in for Richie and Mike, respectively. The It characters of Eddie and Stanley are eliminated, so the Losers group in this episode has only five members. In a further departure from King’s work, it’s the “Bill” character who writes the poem for the “Beverly” character.
The “Ben” character sabotages the poem Bill writes by signing his own name to it in order to seduce Beverly. This raises the stakes of the love triangle and improves the story in some ways. Here, the poem functions as a successful tool of seduction as it does in It, but this time it’s so successful that Beverly decides to marry Ben because of it. Screenrant’s Cathal Gunning explains:
“Not IT” was able to marry Marge and the Comic Book Guy off when Comic Book Guy’s Bill stand-in took credit for a love poem that Homer’s Ben equivalent wrote for her. This was a twist on the original story of It, where Beverly assumed Bill wrote the poem and harbored a secret crush on him as a result, but where Bill never duplicitously took credit for writing the poem, and Beverly never married him. The Simpsons version of the story was more streamlined and had a clearer conflict since making Comic Book Guy the story’s villain gave viewers a reason to root for Homer.
This Is It
So let’s talk about the poem. It’s interesting! Homer’s poem is two stanzas of four lines each: mammoth compared to King’s original.
The first stanza of the “Not It” poem feels like a legitimate attempt at poetry and an obvious echo of “January Embers.” Instead of “winter fire,” we get “summer lightning.” Homer admires Marge’s arm instead of her hair, as she’s a great softball player. The second two lines offer a related image—the storm in which the lightning lives—and are similar to King’s poem, which restates the winter fire as “January embers.” Tossing in “bravery” as a second trait the speaker admires feels clunky (abstract nouns are the bane of good poetry), but still. This is halfway decent stuff.
But the second stanza is a gag: a silly, sophomoric, greeting card-esque send-up of bad poetry. It’s something you might find on a child’s valentine: the kind that comes on perforated sheets in a box designed to give to the whole second-grade class. It’s clichéd and general: the opposite of good poetry, which strives for originality and specificity.
Homer ruined his poem by adding that second stanza, and we’re supposed to laugh at the lines themselves and at the fact that Homer seems more delighted by having come up with the (worse) second stanza than the (better) first. As usual, Homer is incapable of doing anything right.
Easy Does It
Comic Book Guy finds the poem waiting in Marge’s bag, placed there secretly by Homer. “That romantic son of a bitch,” CBG quips. He evidently thinks the poem is wonderful enough that Marge will be wowed by it. He signs his name to it, and sure enough, when she reads it, Marge is deeply touched. It could be that she’s moved by the thought rather than the quality of the poem. She says, “I want my first love to be the boy who wrote those words.” CBG successfully passes off the poem as his own, and the two begin a relationship.
In the second half of the episode, which corresponds to It: Chapter Two, we learn that Marge and CBG are married. The poem is framed and hangs on the wall of their bedroom, and functions as the cornerstone of their relationship. The problem is that CBG has taken credit for Homer’s poem all these years and is too cowardly to set the record straight. Eventually, everything comes to light.
The poem is more successful as an important plot point in the parody than in the original novel and film adaptations of It but less successful as a poem itself. Beyond the plot device of the poem, it’s interesting to see a poem function as the linchpin of a relationship on a show like this. Poetry is powerful emotion distilled, and even The Simpsons recognizes its potential power to bring people together.
