7 Insanely Clever Simpsons Jokes That You Totally Missed
3. The Rashomon Effect (Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo)
The Tokyo episode is a bit of a hodge-podge of great bits, indifferent bits, and borderline culturally offensive bits, but there is a brilliant gag snuck in there under all the dodgy bits. Sat on the plane to Tokyo, Marge is trying to convince Homer that the Land of the Rising Sun will be a better destination than Jamaica. MARGE: Come on Homer, Japan will be fun! You liked Rashomon. HOMER: Thats not how I remember it. Now, Rashomon is, as Im sure youre aware, a seminal Japanese movie from 1950 in which a woodcutter discovers the body of a murdered samurai and attempts to piece together the truth of what happened to him. The story is told from four different perspectives - that of the bandit, the samurai (via a medium, obv), the samurais wife, and the woodcutter - and all four present very distinct, self-serving recollections of the same event. As such, the Rashomon effect is a reference to situations in which eyewitnesses of the same event give different accounts of it according to their own prejudices and motivations. So in that sense, Homer saying that he doesnt recall enjoying Rashomon like Marge says he did is an example of the Rashomon effect in action.
