I have refrenced the Mogan Spurlock documentary and have found a useful BBC documentary on youtube about The Shows creator, about influences and creation of The Simpsons, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX4L1DGtdKU.

I have been working on getting more refrences and have started to look round for more newspaper articles in peritculer. I have also found the DVD commentarys to provide more quotes. I have also ordered more books from the Bristol libuary for the same reason.

Tomorow I am meeting with my tutor, and am going to ask a few questions about the structure of the essay and title page. I will also do my planning review after seeing her.

I have used the Guardian to help me with lots of my topics since they have a number of Simpsons articles. I found this a useful general analysis of pop culture and politics merging http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/video/2010/apr/01/observer-conversation-novels-politics. Which benefits the political part of my essay.

So far this weekend I have completed my first draft for the representation of politics and religon. Its a very rough first draft and will have to go through a lot more times to improve English of it. The Frost on Satire documentary turned out to be quite useful in given me a wider scope of langauge to use on the topic of satire. I may also have the opportunity to talk to a former Simpsons writer over the phone, but can not confirm this for sure yet.

Having done my first draft for some of  How Relgion is represented, I have noticed that this topic has potentially the most about it that I can write about. I may have to reconsider my structure so far since I can talk about Religon alot more than my other topics. This is mainly due to how popular it is in the show or the loads of articles written about the religious aspects of The Simpsons. Article I have found useful and may quote from are;
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2113- a very in depth look at the idea the Simpsons have soul, which goes perfectly with one of my points.

http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/articles/religion - this fan run website is also formative on this subject

http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/2008/09/D-Oh-Top-Ten-Plus-One-Religious-Episodes-on-The-Simpsons.aspx - this spirtual website gives it top 10 episodes with a brief paragraph about the meaning of each episode.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6872394/What-The-Simpsons-can-teach-us-about-life.html - is a British article which is useful in all aspects of my essay

I am now choosing to move on to the next part of my essay which focuses on religon. I have bought the Ebook  The Psychology of The Simpsons by Chris Logan and Alan S  Brown. Its perticularly good for the religon aspect. I have also been using the www.avclub.com for its in depth sophisticated reviews.

I have finished my first draft for the politics part of my essay. I will need to make it longer and add more refrences to what situations it represents in real world politics. I am also showing it to my tutor next week to see where I can improve. I have also put a bbc four documentary on record called 'Frost on Satire' its description is 'Sir David Frost presents an investigation into the power of political satire with the help of some of the funniest TV moments of the last 50 years.' After watching this I may add more information to my essay.

I have just started writing my first draft for the introduction and how politics is represented. I have found the Simpsons and Philosphy book very useful on this topic. I have also used the recent elections in part of my essay to make it as relevant as I can. This Blogger page I have found useful in showing key scenes and episodes to use http://michaels-rant.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/favorite-simpsons-political-quotes.html.

I have now began writing the basics for all my topics. Because with all the Simpson episodes theres so much material I have decided to use a few episodes and on charcter to use as case studys when writing each topic. I have also found a very helpful video on youtube of former showrunner and current producer of the Simpsons Mike Scully being iterviewed on student radio about satire which was very helpful, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8JNS2mL9Hs

After struggling to find much resources on how the human condition is represented in the Simpsons. I have choosen not to include it in my essay. I have also found that every episode of the Simpsons on dvd comes with a audio commentary in which the writers, producers, directors and all other parts of the creative team behind the simpsons talk about that perticular epiosde. I have found these really informative and useful in giving me what events or trends they were inspired by, how the the story was thought up of and public reaction to episodes.

After reading 'The Simpsons and Philosphy' book I have decided on my other topics to talk about. These include religon, media, politics and human condition. I will start a rough plan of each of there topics. I have also found this website http://www.nohomers.net/ , which is really helpful forum with knowledgable fans who answer questions.

This week BBC aired a documentary called 'What Sitcoms say about America' it was really helpful and I have taken note from it after watching it on iplayer. It talked mainly about how they relate to American politics an focused on The Simpsons representation of religion, and showed me there is enough material about religon in the show to use this as one of my topic areas.