Must Watch: Banksy takes over The Simpsons title sequence

Street artist Banksy has turned director for a controversial new opening sequence of The Simpsons episode, MoneyBart, featuring an Asian sweatshop.

It is the first time a renowned artist has contributed to the storyboard, though famous faces are a regular feature of the long-running cartoon.

The intro sweeps through a graffitied Springfield, its signs and school sprayed with Banksy’s tag. Bart Simpson writes the lines “I must not write all over the walls” on the blackboard and walls of his classroom.

The credits then travel to a run-down factory with dozens of workers animating cells of the family and producing a variety of merchandise in horrific conditions; a tired panda pulls a cart of Bart Simpson dolls which have been stuffed with kitten fur, while a dolphin’s severed head licks boxes shut and a chained and starving unicorn punches holes in DVDs with its horn.

Banksy’s inspiration for the minute-long sweatshop sequence is said to have been reports of The Simpsons characters being animated in Seoul, South Korea.

The titles end with a forboding 20th Century Fox logo, heavily guarded with watchtowers, searchlights and a barbed wire fence. The show has mocked its network in the past.The secretive creation of the storyboard wasn’t without its problems – Banksy claims there were delays, disputes over broadcasting standards and even threats of a walk-out from the animation department.

Banksy, whose identity is unknown, has already paid tribute to The Simpsons in a New Orleans wall mural, featuring a Bart look-a-like writing “I must not copy what I see on the Simpsons” on the now famous classroom blackboard.

MoneyBart airs in the UK on 21 October and features Lisa coaching Bart’s baseball team to a string of surprising wins.

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