page_title: The Monkey Suit
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: The Monkey Suit / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of John Scopes taken one month before the Tennessee v. John T. Scopes Trial. From the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Rotated, cropped, and cleaned by Kaldari.
context_page_description: "The Monkey Suit" is the twenty-first episode of the seventeenth season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 14, 2006. In the episode, Ned Flanders is shocked after seeing a new display at the museum about evolution. Together with Reverend Lovejoy, he spreads the religious belief of creationism in Springfield, and at a later town meeting, teaching evolution is made illegal. As a result, Lisa decides to hold secret classes for people interested in evolution. However, she is quickly arrested and a trial against her is initiated.
  J. Stewart Burns wrote "The Monkey Suit", for which he received inspiration from the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. The episode features a few references to this legal case, as well as several references to popular culture. Many analysts have commented on the episode's treatment of the creation–evolution controversy, a dispute about the origin of humanity between those who support a creationist view based upon their religious beliefs, versus those who accept evolution, as supported by scientific evidence.
context_section_description: "The Monkey Suit" was written by J. Stewart Burns and directed by Raymond S. Persi as part of the seventeenth season of The Simpsons (2005–2006). Burns received inspiration for the episode from the Scopes Monkey Trial, a 1925 legal case in which high school science teacher John Scopes was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made teaching evolution unlawful. Clarice Drummond, the ACLU lawyer who represents Lisa, is a reference to the ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow who defended Scopes, while Wallace Brady is a reference to William Jennings Bryan, an attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial. American actor and Dallas star Larry Hagman guest starred in the episode as Wallace Brady, while American actress Melanie Griffith played herself as the narrator of an audio tour at the museum. Burns did research for "The Monkey Suit" by reading Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene and watching Inherit the Wind (a film based on the Scopes Monkey Trial). He also visited a natural history museum.
  The opening of the episode, in which Bart rushes to do everything he planned on doing during summer vacation, was originally written and animated for the season fourteen episode "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" (2003) but was cut. This episode came in short, and to fill in time, the sequence was added. Burns has said commented the episode "ended up being incredibly short because when you do an episode where there's really just one good side of an argument [creation vs. evolution], you don't fill out as much time as you need to." The opening sequence features a large number of allusions to popular culture, including references to The Natural (1984 film), Happy Days (television sitcom), and Men in Black (1997 film).
caption: A legal case involving high school science teacher John Scopes served as inspiration for the episode.
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