Banksy directs “Simpsons” show intro

British street artist/prankster Banksy “directed” the intro to tonight’s episode of The Simpsons. It’s provocative, but the statement lacks potency because it was created by the same mass production infrastructure that he’s protesting. A reader on Gawker who goes by the handle “ReelMissing” stated this most eloquently:

“You don’t protest something by indulging in it. That’s the opposite of the point. Banksy was in part protesting Fox animation’s brutal treatment of its animators, but guess who animated the sequence? Fox animators did.

“It’s like killing a kitten and writing ‘ANIMAL CRUELTY IS WRONG’ next to the corpse in the dead animals’ blood. Maybe not on that scale of evil, but you get the point.”

UPDATE: The New York Times talks to Simpsons producer Al Jean about the Banksy intro.

UPDATE: Fox made a copyright claim and forced YouTube to remove the video from Banksy’s personal YouTube channel:

UPDATE: Credits for the sequence VIA:
Character layout by Greg Checketts, Manny DeGuzman, and Jeff Johnson
BG layout by John Liu
Effects animation by Brice Mallier
Timing by Larry Smith
Color design by Dima Malanitchev
Digital magic by Steve Mills
Storyboard by Luis Escobar
Designs by Eric Keyes, Ricky Manginsay, Kevin Moore, Debbie Peterson, Hugh MacDonald, and Jefferson Weekley
Animation by a buncha nameless Koreans