SOUTH BRONX — The Bronx has gotten "The Simpsons" treatment.
The borough's troubled past was lampooned by the irreverent show in its latest episode.
"The Man Who Came to Be Dinner," which aired Sunday, had the family take a trip to Dizzneeland — a parody of Disneyland — where Homer filled up on ketchup at a restaurant in front of a sign reading "Song of the South Bronx," a reference to the Disney movie "Song of the South."
The sign featured the famed 1960s photograph "Macombs Rd., Bronx," which shows an abandoned car on a city street, but with an animated rabbit — one of the main characters in "Song of the South"— cheerfully skipping across it.
"When I was doing the episode, I realized I wanted more signage to put jokes in the background. We had all this blank wall," said David Silverman, the episode's director.
"Because my experience is that Disneyland and Disney World, they always have signs everywhere."
The "Song of the South Bronx" image is meant to evoke a troubled neighborhood, only with a "happy-go-lucky rabbit hopping around," he said.
The sign, which Silverman said he believed was the first South Bronx gag of the series, is also meant as a reference to the controversial Cross Bronx Expressway, which Silverman described as a terrible development that helped to destroy the borough.
"It kind of has a little bit more underlying meaning for those of us who know the history of what it’s about," he said.
Douglas DiGiorno, a Bronx resident who manages borough comics shop The Lair, said he was a big fan of "The Simpsons" but had mixed feelings about the joke.
"I think it’s funny," he said, "but I also think it portrays The Bronx a little poorly since that photo is not a recent photo."
The picture would have been more accurate if it ran in an episode 15 or 20 years ago, he said, since the borough has gentrified since then.
John Fekner, an artist who has a studio in The Bronx and tweeted about the gag, agreed that it was outdated.
"It relies on the well-worn stereotype depiction of The Bronx from decades ago," he said in an email. "There are many people working very hard to move beyond those urban decay images."
The joke was not meant to be offensive or anything more than just a quick visual gag, according to Silverman.
"We put it in the background where nobody would notice," he said. "Except this is the age of the Internet. Somebody notices everything."
