Disenchantment is the latest foray into animated comedy by Matt Groening, the mind behind The Simpsons and Futurama. It follows the adventures of Princess Tiabeanie – “Bean” – along with her companions Elfo the Elf, and her personal demon Luci – in the medieval fantasy world of Dreamland.

It shows off Groening’s adaptability in many ways, such as its serialization – its ongoing story, something he experimented with in Futurama, and enabled by modern streaming services – the intricacies of events were clearly plotted out well in advance.  The art, while classically Groening, likewise advances and adapts to the medium. Futurama employed computer graphics for their grander scifi set pieces, while Disenchantment adopts a water colour, “Medieval” feeling background palette. But despite these technical achievements, something about Disenchantment seems to fall flat. It’s not a bad series – there are jokes a plenty, and if you’ve enjoyed his Gen X cynicism thus far, you’re likely to enjoy his latest series. But it just doesn’t have the same sort of lasting emotional impact as The Simpsons or Futurama.

A great deal of commentary has tried to puzzle out why this is. Some have pointed out the inconsistencies of the characters, from episode to episode. Others have suggested that the self-centered nihilism of the protagonists might be at fault. But these criticisms don’t seem to get at the heart of the matter. The same charges could be laid at the feet of his other series’, but we’re willing to forgive them because The Simpsons and Futurama have soul.

No, the reason critics are harder on Disenchantment than on his earlier works is because of one fundamental misstep, which throws the entire enterprise off kilter. Disenchantment fails to understand the genre it is satirizing.

Part 1: Satire & Parody

To understand where Disenchantment went wrong, we need to consider Groening’s larger body of work – The Simpsons, Futurama, even Life in Hell, the pre-Internet Web Comic where you can see the incipient ideas which started all of them off. We need to look at them and ask what they are – where did that spark of magic come from? What is this “Hot Take” that Matt Groening provides, which allows him to recycle old tropes into something new?

Life in Hell started in 1977 as part of the underground comic scene. At the time comics were published in one of two major venues: monthly 30 page comic books aimed at children, and daily comic strips appearing in the newspaper’s funny pages. Both were restricted to a G rating, and newspaper comics in particular haven’t aged well. A sideways glance at the ubiquitous unfunnyness of Garfield will suffice.

The underground comic scene is something that rose in response to this, and like the early days of Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network, it was a mixed bag. Some greats like Fritz the Cat rose out of this odd, irreverent, indie scene, but most of it wasn’t noticeably distinct from the 3 panel gag comics appearing in Sensible Chuckle Magazine, aside from the mature content being depicted. Most of it was forgettable, and hard to locate in today’s world. Life in Hell is one of the exceptions – partly because of Groening’s later success, but also because the content was good. Inspired by his daily life struggling to make it in Los Angeles, the comic followed the 3 panel gag format, with some extreme existential angst thrown in for good measure. A typical comic would depict a couple going about a romantic day together, staring at clouds, going on a date, sharing an ice cream cone – only to finish off the last panel with one of them saying, “By the way, I hate you.”

Life in Hell was a dark work – probably Groening’s darkest – but even at this early stage we can see that he’s a satirist.

The difference between satire and parody is that the former riffs off of the conventions of the genre, while the latter holds up the genre itself to the harsh light of mockery. For example, compare the films Space Balls and Galaxy Quest. The former is a typical Mel Brooks parody of Star Wars, in that it puts on the outfit of a genre for the sake of making jokes, but it never really takes the genre seriously. Given that it’s Mel Brooks, it isn’t mean spirited by any stretch – Space Balls never says that you’re stupid for liking Star Wars – but neither does it respect the Space Opera’s meditation on good versus evil – in Space Balls lightsabres are just one more opportunity for a penis joke. Another example of such a parody would Blazing Saddles, a spoof of the Western genre, which ends with the characters accidentally crashing through the wall of the Hollywood sound stage where everything is being filmed and stumbling into a musical. Mel Brooks isn’t making a statement about the Western genre when he did this – he just thought it would be funny.

Galaxy Quest, on the other hand, takes its subject matter very seriously – which is the hallmark of satire. In it we see Tim Allen playing William Shatner: he’s an actor who was made famous by his role in a science fiction series, that certain fans take a little bit too seriously. This becomes quite literal when a group of aliens – mistaking Earth television for historical documents – abduct him and the rest of his co-stars to fight off an evil alien who’s invading their solar system.

Galaxy Quest pokes fun at all of this on the meta-level, with a loving touch that gently pokes Trekkies, without speaking down to them. It embraces all the tropes of Star Trek, such as the Away Mission gone awry, with both sincerity and self-awareness. It makes fun of science fiction, while also being an excellent science fiction film in its own right.

So what is it that Matt Groening does? Is Life in Hell parody or satire of the 3 panel comic strip?

For an example of parody, look at “Garfield without Garfield”, a comic strip which removes the titular cat from the panels, turning John Arbuckle into a lonely schizophrenic man who talks to himself and falls into random bouts of despair. Or the “Random Garfield Generator” which mixes up three random panels of the comic strip, and as often as not creates something as funny as the original, intentional comedy which Jim Davis created.

In contrasting these to Life in Hell, it becomes utterly clear that Groening’s comics are satirical in nature. He still follows the three-panel convention; a set up, and a punch line. A cast of recurring characters, with a consistent relationship to one another. The only difference between him and Jim Davis, is that with Davis you laugh at the third panel because the cat hates Mondays. With Groening you laugh because his character hates Mondays so much that he decided to kill himself.

It’s through this lens of satire that we should examine his other works.

Part 2: The Simpsons and Futurama: Cynicism Goes Mainstream

Comparing The Simpsons and Life in Hell creates an interesting contrast. The comic yells out that the world is a nihilistic void, devoid of meaning. The show, particularly the first few seasons, is annoyingly saccharine and moralistic – because it traded the comic’s explicit cynicism for subversion.

The Simpsons is a satire of the 80s sitcom, where a bunch of loveable characters had silly adventures, a lesson was learned at the end of each episode, and everything went back to normal just in time for next week. Wholesome family entertainment with all the depth of a Goofus and Gallant strip. Despite this, it received moral outcry when it first aired. Something about Groening’s sitcom seemed to undermine the genre as a whole. It wasn’t an outright parody and deconstruction like Bojack Horseman – but multiple elements worked to undermine the purity of other comedies of the time.

Instead of Father Knows Best, you had Homer, your everyman idiot. Instead of the beautiful, silly wife, you had Marge, whose naïve optimism and beehive hairdo created a subtle uncanny valley of a suburban mom. Bart and Lisa, likewise, were distinctly suboptimal – one through underachieving, the other through neurotic overachieving – and even the citizens of Springfield all seemed slightly off. All of the correct elements were in place for a sitcom – and yet, like their jarring yellow skin, there was just something off about the whole production. It was as if Groening took the concept of the sitcom, and replaced all of the G-rated, family friendly characters with these weird caricatures. Simultaneously more realistic and more cartoony than the Ken and Barbie characters on the rest of the networks. You want a nice, trite, moral lesson at the end of each episode? How about Mr Burns gives them a giant stone Olmec head as a reward for saving his life? How’s that as a lesson for ya’?

With Futurama Groening applied his satire to the central premise of all good science fiction: the question of, “If we posited some new technology, how would humanity adapt to it?”

Most people don’t realize this about science fiction – that the central premise isn’t rocket ships or laser guns – but rather, how does human society evolve in the face of technological challenges? Star Trek asked the question of how we could be 15^th century explorers in space, without falling into the exploitative arrogance of the past? Larry Niven explored the consequences of teleportation technology, and confrontations with fundamentally alien intelligences. Heinlein asked how we could retain our rugged individualism in the face of an integrated planetary political system. Matt Groening looked at all of this and asked, “Are you sure you’re asking the right question?”

Classic science fiction assumes a 20^th Century American mindset, whether dystopian or utopian, it assumed that the rugged individual of the Wild West was the thing to be. Most of the questions being posed could be simplified into one fundamental question: will this technology enslave us? Or will it free us? Matt Groening flipped this on its head by asking “What if it just makes us weirder?”

Set a millennium in the future, Futurama subtly establishes a number of extreme premises, but rather than being earth shattering in their implications, they’re just ‘normal’. Yes, Soylent Green is made from people – how does it taste? – it varies from person to person. The official bureaucracy embraces everything we hate about bureaucrats as a virtue. Suicide booths exist on every street corner. Bonded servitude is a regular occurrence. Hip Hop is considered classical music.

Groening took all of the shocking revelations of science fiction works from the past, put them into his show, and declared that they were all normal – because of course they’d be normal, if that’s what you’d grown up with. He took the wondrous and made it banal – and then took the banal and made it wondrous. At the heart of Futurama are the very human relationships between the main characters, despite the incomprehensible world which they inhabit. He satirizes the elements of many science fiction works, but ultimately he puts them back together into something which shows how humans can exist in a world which is radically alien from our own.

Part 3: Where Did Disenchant Go Wrong?

Life in Hell was a satire of three-panel comics, but it was still a three-panel comic. The Simpsons was a satire of an 80s sitcom, but it was still an 80s sitcom. Futurama was a satire of science fiction, but it was still science fiction. This brings us to Disenchantment – what is it attempting to satire? Is it a satire at all?

The most obvious satirical aspect is that of the fairy tale, in particular as realized by Disney Studios. The entire premise is a princess who wants to go on adventures accompanied by her animal companions, after all. More than that, it’s a satire of the entire fantasy genre. So what exactly is fantasy? And why is it always set in an imaginary European kingdom around 1400 A.D.?

To answer this question it would be useful to step back and examine one of the rare fantasy works that isn’t set in medieval Europe: Star Wars. In considering it as a work of fantasy, not science fiction, it should become immediately obvious what the core element of fantasy is: the eternal, uncomplicated battle between Good and Evil.

Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons – the Medieval mindset. To the Medieval mind questions of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, are not matters for solipsistic debate. They aren’t perspectives. They’re hard and fast realities, which are immediately discernable to the senses. There’s a Light Side to the Force, and a Dark Side, as shown by Darth Vader’s crimson lightsaber. The One Ring is golden and precious, but darkly foreboding and terrifying. The fantasy genre is morally simple, in the good sense; the narratives themselves aren’t simple (or at least they shouldn’t be), knowing how one should go about fighting evil is never easy, and it’s often difficult to figure out whose side a character is on – but the certitude that there is good, and there is evil, is not something that’s up for debate.

The problem with Disenchantment is that it has this core element of the fantasy genre, but it doesn’t take it seriously – and since it doesn’t take it seriously, it can’t properly satirize it.

Let’s look at three examples of how this show fails to capture the medieval mindset: the political, the religious, and the personal. First, the political. Early on it’s shown that King Zod – Bean’s father – is being politically undermined by a Freemason-esque conspiracy (complete with Eyes Wide Shut sex parties) led by his Seneschal Odval. This is played as a throwaway joke, and never dug into any further. This would be fine in a series like Futurama, where ultimately it doesn’t matter how the weird future government is run, but in a fantasy series the Divine Right of Kings is something that needs to be taken seriously.

Medieval life was very precarious; political wars of succession weren’t something you watched on television, they were physical battles which destroyed your business and livelihood. We might consider it a fiction today, but only by treating the social order as a divine mandate were medieval people able to have any faith in the future. A threat to the King was a threat to the very order of the universe! Now imagine if Disenchanted had embraced this concept; if it had really lived inside of its own genre. Instead of a throwaway joke, you have a situation rife with possibility. Maybe Odval was running this conspiracy at the King’s behest, since underground subversive sex cults are an inevitability in a medieval fantasy kingdom, and (to steal a line from Terry Pratchett’s Patrician) “If we’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized crime.” Or – maybe Bean gets wrapped up in the cult, and helps overthrow her incompetent father – only to see the social order crumble, forcing her to realize that even a bad King is better than no King at all.

Next we have the show’s religious anachronisms. Religion and its validity were of supreme importance to the medieval mind. There were endless debates at the time – are the priests holy enough? Are these sacraments valid? Does this King have divine blessing? That there was an order to the afterlife was taken as a given – but the earthly representatives were constantly put to the question. The show touches upon these aspects – the High Priestess mentions that they’re “trying out this new religion”, and the holiness of the exorcist is up for debate – but these questions are being asked in a modern sense, one where the Kingdom of Heaven is a cypher. The medieval mind would have asked these exact same questions, but from the perspective that Heaven is absolute, and it’s only the earthly representatives who fall short. Once again, we have modern-style throwaway jokes, rather than a deep dive into comedic possibility.

Finally we have the question of individual morality. Bean… is a terrible person. She’s spoiled, irresponsible, exploits the peasants for her own amusement, shirks responsibility, and constantly gives in to temptation. This is nothing new – many comedies involve terrible people – but this is supposed to be a medieval world where good and evil are ontological absolutes. Heck, her animal companion is a demon sent to tempt her fer cryin’ out loud! In a series like Archer or Bojack Horseman we see similarly selfish people, constantly hoist by their own petard, but because they take place in a modern setting the nature of the lesson being taught is different. In a fantasy series, your evil actions have symbolic consequences; your armour turns black, or you accidentally summon a dragon. In a modern setting, the consequences are the damage to your career and relationships. Nobody’s really good, nobody’s really evil, we’re all just trying to learn to exist with one another. The problem with Disenchantment is that it embraces this modern narrative, in a medieval setting.

The problem… is that it isn’t a satire. It’s a parody.

Part 4: How to Fix It

The difference between a parody and a satire is that on some level the satire takes itself seriously. Life in Hell always gave you a joke in the third panel. The Simpsons had a secret core of sentimentality. Futurama challenged your thinking – despite their comedy, they remained faithful to their genre. So how could Disenchantment do the same? How could it be medieval fantasy while also incorporating Groening’s hallmark satire?

Imagine this: what if Disenchantment took its own tropes seriously? What if the eternal fate of Bean’s soul were truly hanging in the balance? What if Luci actually was evil? What if Bean was receiving Luke Skywalker’s “Call to Adventure” as part of the hero’s journey, but each time it came for her she was drunk?

What if Elfo’s rebellion against his Elfin nature was an active ontological evil?

Think about that one for a minute. As things stand, Elfo views being a little bit rude, or a little bit shady, as a major moral compromise – and the joke is “Oh, Elfo, you’re so naïve and silly.” But what if it was played as truly malicious? What if Elfo were descending to levels of depraved evil, trying to lie and manipulate those around him for his own selfish ends, only he was so innocent that everyone saw through it and ignored it? An incredibly innocent character attempting to be an evil mastermind – but completely unaware that those around him were far more evil on their best day, than he is on his worst? Right now the show sort of does this… except when it doesn’t.

Or take the drama surrounding the exorcist. In the show he’s an antagonist for obvious reasons – but is he an antagonist because he’s good? Or an antagonist because he’s bad? The show seems to suggest he’s bad… because religion is bad? This is another huge missed opportunity. The medieval era saw multiple instances of over-zealous priest getting fire-happy with heretics, often to the point where the local nobility would have to assassinate them in the street. These individuals were often pious in their own right – and completely out of control. This does seem to be what they were going for with the exorcist, but because the show presumes modern solipsism – as to medieval absolutism – it doesn’t quite come off. What if Bean – out of purely selfish and evil motives – wound up being hailed as a great reformer of the church and saviour of the people by removing a corrupt exorcist? Or alternatively, what if he was a genuinely kind and decent person trying to save her soul, but she kept speaking to him as if he were a villainous protagonist? Another great opportunity for come-tragedy, missed because the holiness of the church isn’t included as part of the medieval landscape.

In the same way that Bojack winds up disrupting all of his relationships, what if Bean’s refusal to be the heroine seriously began imperilling all of Dreamland? What if everything really did matter, and it wasn’t the universe that was solipsistic, but only her? And if all of us in the audience – as amused as we were by her antics – secretly hoped she’d finally wake up and realize that she was the hero, and only by being a genuine person could the kingdom survive?

Imagine that, a modern series where the key is abandoning artifice and being genuine. How subversive would that be?

Can Disenchantment be fixed? …maybe. If it embraces the medieval structure of the universe – the Kingdom of God from an Hieronymus Bosch painting – and recognizes that Bean needs a redemption arc. In the meantime it’s still funny, but not all that it could be. Better than most things out there – but far from perfect.

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