Artistic subtlety: what happened to you, bro? Just when I think I’m consuming some under-explained metaphors, I open my clutched fists and 5 white doves fly out. Likewise with reference. Why does everyone assume the only person Westerners can identify is Harry Potter? We live in a world that revolves around big, blingy, easily understood iconography (probably because we wash everything down with Red Bull… It rots your brain). There remain few works of art that play with either of these notions. Hollywood doesn’t fund original screenplays anymore. Things are not looking up.

Thankfully, Matt Groening is a smartypants, and put out a really smart, subtle show — The Simpsons — in 1989, doing a really cool thing where he didn’t assume that all of his viewers were unsophisticated Cheetos-addicted dirtbags who lived in their mothers basement (although, I’m sure a good number of them were). It seems that Groening wanted to align his show with important visual culture.