Questions We Can Help You To Answer

Paper instructions:

Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, assumes some familiarity with a number of sources: Cape Feare and the world of The Simpsons, the 1991 film Cape Fear, and the style and content of the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. How does Washburn’s play address our own engagement with popular culture?

Write an essay in which you examine the kinds of popular culture that survive in the dystopia of Washburn’s play and how their purposes change or remain the same. For example, the “commercials” in Act II aren’t selling anything, and the opera in Act III lacks the screwball comedy of “Cape Feare.” In the “post-electric” world, what is the purpose of these entertainments? How does the passage of time from Act I affect the way that the people of this world understand the story?