Gourt Home::Gourt :: Chalkboard gag
The chalkboard gag is a running visual joke that occurs during the opening credits of many episodes of The Simpsons. In this gag, Bart Simpson is frowning while he writes a unique phrase on the chalkboard repeatedly; when the school bell rings, he immediately becomes glad, stops writing and runs out of the classroom. In just a matter of seconds you can see him jump with his skateboard trough the school door over the running-board and successfully land the trick and after that he skates down the street out of our sight. The phrase is usually in the form of an admonishment, implying that Bart has been assigned this task as punishment in detention for some misbehavior left partly to the viewer's imagination.
The chalkboard gags are usually written in upper case (with the exception of the word "eBay," in which Bart included a lower case "e".)
While running visual jokes in The Simpsons are rarely referred to by the content of the show itself, in the episode "Skinner's Sense of Snow", Bart says that he had written on the chalkboard so many times that his hands sound like a cement mixer.
Lisa has been punished with the chalkboard on the episode Lisa's Date with Density.
In the early days of the series, a chalkboard gag was used in almost every episode, but, as commercial time has increased, they have gradually disappeared. They are now shown as rarely as twice per season. The show's producers have said that they may soon disappear altogether. However, they seem to be making a comeback as there were eight blackboard gags during season 17 including three in a row during the last three episodes of the season.
Chalkboard gags outside The Simpsons
- This chalkboard gag appeared in a recent episode of South Park entitled Cartoon Wars Part II. It reads I Hate Family Guy.
- In a parody of the Simpsons intro on Histeria!, Loud Kiddington is shown writing I do not need a megaphone.
- In Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets, Mr. Krupp punishes George and Harold by making them spend two hours a day after school from now on filling the chalkboards with the following sentence: I will never do anything which angers my handsome and charming principal, Mr. Krupp, ever, ever again. (The boys manage to speed up the process by placing twelve chalk sticks in wooden poles.) At the end of the book, when George and Harold are made Principals for a Day, they make Mr. Krupp and the teachers (as well as the class tattletale Melvin Sneedly) write the following sentences on chalkboards:
- Ms. Ribble: I will stop being such a crab.
- Mr. Meaner: I will chill out.
- Ms. Anthrope: I will get a life.
- Melvin: I will not be a tattle-tale.
- Mr. Krupp: I will be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very nice to "George the Great" and "The Amazing Harold".
- Jason Fox of FoxTrot is sometimes shown having to do chalkboard punishments. One Sunday strip from 1994 has him using the school's computer to print the phrase I will not shoot paper clips in class and then taping it to the chalkboard (to which his teacher replies, "Jason, I meant write it by hand"). Another Sunday strip includes a For loop repeating the required phrase 500 times. This results in Jason's teacher becoming upset with him.
- In the pilot episode of Invader Zim, after a foodfight, Dib is forced to write on the chalkboard 100 times, "Zim is not an alien". If you look closely at the chalkboard, you can see other phrases such as "Zim is an alien", "Zim abducts livestock", and "My hand hurts."
See also
The Simpsons | Running gags | Film and television opening sequences
"Chalkboard gag"