The Simpsons , dthrip, zombie media, surrealist animation, metafiction, season 25
“D’oh! I Think I’m Dead”: Surrealism, Nihilism, and the ‘Dthrip’ Aesthetic in The Simpsons Season 25 the simpsons season 25 dthrip
By its 25th season, The Simpsons had long shed its reputation as a cutting-edge satire of the nuclear family, entering what many critics call the “zombie Simpsons” era. However, Season 25 (2013–2014) exhibits a recurring, under-analyzed narrative structure: the dthrip (death-trip). This paper argues that episodes such as “The War of Art” (S25E15), “Days of Future Future” (S25E18), and “Brick Like Me” (S25E20) deploy hallucinatory logic, unresolved mortality themes, and metafictional breakdowns not as failures, but as a deliberate aesthetic response to the show’s own cultural obsolescence. The dthrip becomes a tool for exploring what it means for a once-vital show to continue simulating life. The Simpsons , dthrip, zombie media, surrealist animation,