This week I chose to explore the Finding Aid for the George Meyer Simpsons script files, which is held at Charles E. Young Research Library in UCLA’s Performing Arts Special Collections. The finding aid details the organization of the drafts of scripts for seasons two through six of The Simpsons penned by George Meyer, writer and producer of the longest running animated television series. The 78 boxes also contain script annotations and other story notes recorded by Meyer.
The records in this inventory have been gathered by archivists in the hopes of documenting all the bits and pieces of available, relevant, and recorded data that describe the initial visions behind the second to sixth seasons of The Simpsons. The finding aid describes the pieces of data, but without a narrative to string the data together, we are left without any sort of storyline to this history. Given an extensive biography of George Meyer in this finding aid, and seeing as though the collection documents the man who wrote the show more so than the show itself, one would be able to imagine a narrative of a Harvard graduate who found comfort in writing for comedy television shows, switching from show to show and building up a large network of people “in the business” until he finally landed a writer/producer spot on The Simpsons. While the documents themselves are neutral in their nature, their inclusion in this collection was deliberately decided as “relevant” by the scholars who added them to the collection in the first place. This bias, along with the potentially varying interpretations of the documents, could lead to different imagined narratives by viewers.
It would be difficult for someone who had no prior knowledge of the television show to come up with a narrative based solely on the records in this collection. First, the scripts are organized alphabetically in boxes based on script titles. This makes it much harder to chronicle any sort of linear timeline for a narrative. A sequential arrangement of files would also have provided insight into Meyer’s personal growth as a writer and comedian, since the collection attempts to describe him through his scripts in the first place. While the records do list the date that the documents were written, grouping the files according to a timeline rather than alphabetically would allow scholars an easier and more efficient way of searching and examining the collection. Second, the descriptions of files in this finding aid mostly consist of the title of the script, the date it was written, and the author(s) of the work. Without additional notes or categories of the files (i.e. types of comedy, pop-culture references, etc.), it is much harder to analyze the data.
Excellent blog post! I completely agree with your critique of the weaknesses of the finding aid. The finding aid struggles to construct a narrative that can be intuitively used and followed by the user. It’s current organization makes it difficult to interpret how George Meyer grew and developed throughout his screenwriting career. It would be better if the files were ordered sequentially, where information about his personal life was in parallel with written documents.
I agree with you that the alphabetical listing makes it difficult for a researcher to analyze George Meyer’s career chronologically. It also makes me wonder why the individuals in charge of this collection chose to order it alphabetically instead of by season and/or chronologically. Perhaps they felt this was the best way to group multiple versions of the same script close together. I do think that the analysis that you mention could still be performed if the researcher were to rearrange the data himself or herself.
You made a lot of very intuitive points. Though I didn’t write my piece on this, I can understand the frustrations in wanting to develop a narrative using this tool. Very solid read. Good work! Perhaps researchers or developers into this data set would work on that.