Did Mad World Predated the Simpsons?

       This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the television series debut of The Simpsons.  Its a show that has made the world laughed tens times over and is still going strong even today.  It’s one of the ground breakers of not only television or animated cartoons but of comedies in general.  It is a sitcom that defied what a traditional sitcom should and could act like at the time.  The Simpsons had send up everything from movies, television, politics, religion, if its part of American culture than it would be most likely made fun of.

 Now you may be wondering what does It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has to do with this show?  Quite a bit to be honest.  I believe Mad World predicted The Simpsons imminent arrival, 26 years later.  While the film (even with its 3 + hours length) does not cover the same topical grounds that its successor eventually does with multiple success it does make vital headway for The Simpsons to follow.
      Both Mad World and The Simpsons started out resembling the American ideal of family and community.  Both of these comedies features hard working Americans who are just trying to live the American dream in their own way.  Some come from an upper to middle to low class background and most of them tries to be law abiding/morally standing citizens.  However when an obstacle or a chance to elevate their statuses much further they will do all they can to achieve their goals; even if it means doing things that is immoral or unlawfully to achieve their goals.  Now obviously Mad World tend to go broad with its humor while The Simpsons tends to vary.  However like I said in the beginning Mad World left some mighty shoes to fill that no one EXCEPT The Simpsons could fill as a comedy.
       Lets look at the cast of Mad World, it is still one of the biggest ensemble casts ever to put onscreen.  It not only featured comedians of the period, but also vaudeville performers, silent screen, and radio comedians; it really was a who’s who of comedy.  However look at how they are casted.  All of them has a unique presence / voice to have parts truly memorable whether they were the main or supporting cast.  One of the great things about The Simpsons is the fact that while the show has an hilarious main cast of characters ranging from

Homer Simpson and his family Krusty the Clown,

Montgomery Burns,

and Chief Wiggums

you also have an equal hilarious range of side characters who would pop up from time to time in an episode to get a quick laugh from pimple-faced kid,

 Captain McCallister,

Sideshow Mel,

Groundskeeper Willie,

and Hans Molesman.

This type of comedy casting was already done back in 1963!  Mad World has a great main ensemble cast that ranges from Milton Berle, Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, and Ethel Merman that is hilarious enough however the movie continues to build on top of the cast by adding other big named comedians in cameo roles to add even more hilarity.  Seriously if you put the cameos of Jack Benny,
Jerry Lewis,

and The Three Stooges

 in a Simpsons episode you wouldn’t tell the difference because they serve the same purpose in getting a quick laugh from the audience.  However the difference between the cameos and the minor characters from the show is the fact the minor characters are supposed to be ordinary citizens of a small town and the cameos are anything but ordinary. However Kramer wisely casts these big named comedians in ordinary, day to day living type of environments and occupations you almost miss them!  In this way the laughs are much more unplanned and it serves to move the plot along like The Simpsons clearly does in each episode.
       Even the main cast of Mad World sort of resembles the main characters of The Simpsons.

  Melville Crump is obviously Homer Simpson for both are temperamental dimwits who get into situations that they either cannot control or make it much worse than it actually is.

 Dingy is obviously Bart Simpson simply because they make Homer/Melville’s blood to boil...

 There is even a scene where Melville even tries to get physical with Dingy and Benjy, although those two scamper back into their car before he can take his coat off!

 Lennie is Groundskeeper Willie as both are working class schmoes who can be extremely volatile at times that seems to fit with the lovable and put up on truck driver.  As well as not being the bright of the bunch.  Again you can go on and on about how each character from Mad World resembles a Simpson character (particularly Russell and Principal Skinner as well as Emmeline and Lisa Simpson) but the main objective of this essay is to look into the humor of both and how the Simpsons was affected by the 1963 film.
       As stated before in the beginning both Simpsons and Mad World both start out as snapshots of Americana, possibly Americana that never really existed.  All of the main characters has 9 to 5 jobs, good wages, and a proper nucleus family to attend to on a 24/7 basis, and some live in a suburbia of some kind.  However that’s where the comparison of the two ends and the brand of humor that project from both properties begins and contrasts each other.

 In the book, Planet Simpson, author Chris Turner mentions ancestors to the show which entails Warner Bros. cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Flintstones, (All in the Family, M*A*S*H* and other ‘socially conscious’ sitcoms), (Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and other sketch comedies), as well as Late Night with David Letterman thrown into the mix (Turner 44).  Turner goes on to mention Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, (Second City and other improv tropes), SNL, Harvard Lampoon, National Lampoon, and National Lampoon’s Animal House thrown into good measure. (Turner 46)
      While IAMMMMW certainly wasn’t as edgy as some of the influences you can still feel some of the bite that would become more and more prominent in the world of Springfield.  Let’s look at the influences that Turner has mentioned in correlation to IAMMMMW.  We can certainly see Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes influence in IAMMMMW with madcap pacing, irreverent humor, a pantheon of famous character (or in the case of IAMMMMW, famous stars); as well as grown - up humor in cartoony packaging, sardonic wit and gleeful iconoclasm.  In Rocky and Bullwinkle we can see a dense writing rife with in - jokes and oddball asides, and stellar voice actors in IAMMMMW as well. (Turner 44)  As well as Bebop  - era stand up comedians in the 50s and 60s influence in IAMMMMW as well like Buddy Hackett who was kind of edgy comedian of his time. (Turner 46)
     The only thing missing from IAMMMMW is the self aware and self - referential meta humor you will see prevalent in Simpsons. However oddly there is a sense of social commentary and satire in IAMMMMW that laid some ground work for shows in the 70s to work upon much heavily like All In The Family that would give some edge to an animated show like The Simpsons with its theme of mass consumerism and constant greed. 
Also one can see even the seeds planted in IAMMMMW for the coming of Saturday Night Live and SCTV as both has deep reserves of hilarious minor characters; parodies of public figures and mass- media products (particular Mad World’s use of the Cocoa - Cola product placement in the first half of the film).  While the cameos in Mad World is not as showy or as fully fleshed it as the characters from SNL, SCTV, and The Simpsons one can laugh at the cameos of comedians of the day because there is a wink and a nudge from the audience who know them from the audience who know them from often works; once again this applies to the side characters of Springfield like the Duff Man, Disco Stu, Apu, and a host of others (Turner 46).
      Last but definitely not least, let’s look how both Simpsons and IAMMMMW structure their laughs. First world be the surface gags; much like the classic Warner Bros. cartoons, The Simpsons, and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is able to appeal to both adults and children and to appeal across geographic,ethnic, and political divisions - because both properties never lets its brains completely overwhelm its gut.  Both has sight gags aplenty. 

 Like The Simpsons the gags in Mad World is rarely as straight forward as merely vaudevillian pratfalls or stoogiean eye poke (even  though Milton Berle sneaks one in). (Turner 59) 

 One of the running jokes in Mad World is the fact that Hawthorne's jeep gets damaged and Kramer shows the wobbly wheels about to loose its stability in each time Hawthorne drives off until the climax of the first act when the jeep finally gives way and one of the wheel falls off and the jeep turns over.  Its a gag that started out as a one note gag into the tunnel you realize the damaged vehicle is a build up to a much elaborate sight gag.  Its like when Turner says when he is explaining the rake gag until Sideshow Bob in “Cape Feare” (Season 05, episode 02):

  “A simple, cliched joke has been dramatically, hilariously subverted by not subverting it at all.” (Turner 60) 
      Another method that both comedians use is the ‘Good joke, Better Joke principal.’  What this mean is the ironic juxtaposition, the inversion of expectation, the twisting and bending of long - standing cultural forms into clever new shapes - these are as central to the Simpsons and Mad World’s humor (Turner 65).  Chris Turner thus explains that the ‘Good Joke, Better Joke gag’ is when a gag sequence in which the first (more obvious, more expected) good joke is spun into another, or even several more (unexpected, incongruous) better jokes (Turner 66). 

 Take for instance in Mad World when Melville and Monica are in the plane with Ben Blue’s pilot and complains, “the cars are going faster than we are going!” (Which they literally are!) 

 The pilot says he can get it faster but it will take up a lot of gas and says Melville has to pay extra for the extra boost. 

 Just then Monica screams in horror in seeing a bug on the windshield to which
Melville violently reacts by breaking the glass, the wooden peg and finally the floor of the plane just to kill the bug and one of his foot tears a hole in the floor.

  Then (in the Roadshow version) he gets back up and tells Monica “everything is gonna be all right” by straightening the peg, which you hear aloud wooden creaking sound for a good chuckle.  In a example for The Simpsons  for this would be a scene in "Bart the Daredevil" (Episode 8, Season 2) where Homer accidentally skate boards over a gorge and falls into the depths below hitting everything in his path.

 More elaborate is the many sequences in Simpsons and Mad World is reiterated several different ways, reaching higher peaks each time.  In Mad World’s case Colonel Wilberforce (who is desperately trying to talk down Dingy and Benjy from the runaway plane) gets tangled from the wire of the microphone as he finds the perfect solution to get them down.

 He then sticks his head out of the tower trying to instruct them.  The plane flies past the tower and he falls out and is hanging in mid - air only to be supported by the controls. 

 In The Simpsons case in the episode, “Last Exit To Springfield”, Burns orders Smithers to being him some Depression - style strike breakers.  He gets what he asked: an office full of tired senior citizens, including Homer’s father, Abe, who launches into a meandering monologue that’s probably his finest comedic turn ever:

“We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere. (pensioners agree) Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah - the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. (Burns and Smithers sigh) They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...” (Turner 74)

This leads into the last element that Mad World and Simpsons has in common and that is its use of symphonic humor.  These can be brief humorous moments or can be a looping of a multilayered joke that transcends because its function was densely executed. (Turner 67 - 68)  In one of the most iconic moments in Mad World.  Dingy and Benjy’s fly right into a Cocoa Cola billboard. 

 Its a quick sight gag that not only uses this opportunity to gain a big laugh from the audience from this elaborate stunt but it also illustrates Dingy’s and Benjy’s plight; as well as making a biting commentary about mass product and consumerism and how actions will implode itself one day.  It also could be a clever way to gain advertisers from Cocoa  Cola as well as biting the hand that feed them.  An example for The Simpsons would be this scene from episode from Treehouse of Horror III (Episode 5, Season 4) where Homer is obviously doing a riff on Gremlins and is talking to the mystical Chinese man about the Krusty Clown doll being cursed.

     One of the major influences that has yet to be mentioned is the Canadian influence, had on the show as well as American satire.  From SCTV to The Kids in the Hall, Canadians is able to give ironic detachment in their satire.  This means they have the ability to criticize America more deeply and satirize it more than an American because Canadian’s much smaller investment in American sacred myths. (Turner 49)  Even though the script for Mad World was much more British influenced you can still see this ironic detachment in the way it pokes fun at American values such as Lennie argument about paying taxes to Harwthorne’s rant about the American marketing system and the roles of American masculine species.  Tony Hendra once defined satire in Going Too Far as he states that it ‘is defined as intellectual judo, in which the writer or performer takes on ideas and character of his target and then takes both to absurd lengths to destroy them.”  Satire only works, then, in so far as its subject matter is familiar, comprehensible, known realistic. (Turner 55) 
     The Simpsons has created a whole satirical universe, a place as vast and varied as mass culture has ever seen (Turner 55). Mad World is much the same as its slapstick driven satire about American’s insane urge toward greed is based in an realistic setting and have sight gags and comedic dialogue not too outlandish to take you out of the realistic environment that these characters fumble and bumble toward their destined goal.  It would be foolhardy and a major stretch to think that without this movie there would be no Simpsons.  While not a major influence, Mad World does contain a lot of elements we see in The Simpsons, (some stronger than others) in the future as well as other sitcoms to follow.  Mad World began a foundation on the big screen and the Simpsons just expanded upon it in a gigantic way on the small screen.  Why else would this movie be given a healthy homage to in a Simpsons episode called Homer the Vigilante (Episode 11, Season 5)