Guest blogger Bart Weiss is the director of the Video Association of Dallas and VideoFest.

Ahh, television – that medium that is so often so medium to poor, so often uninspiring, so corporate. But sometimes, brilliant stabs come out and give us hope.

Indeed, there is brilliant TV out there, but rarely do those shows attract lots of corporate support.

Robert Smigel tackled the issue with a short film he did for Saturday Night Live, which he showed here at the Dallas Video festival. The film, Conspiracy Theory Rock, is a rant on why corporate sponsorship of the media ruins television. It is truly amazing that it ever aired. It’s more effective than most overly long books about media literacy and power.

I got to thinking about it after watching this Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons, which originally aired in October. The opening features a dark vision of a sweatshop producing the show and its related merchandising toys, etc. If it reminds you of the work of Banksy, it’s because he designed it.

Only long standing shows like SNL and The Simpsons can pull back the curtain and get away with it.

In the Simpsons opening, which you can watch below, I love the depressed unicorn punching holes in the Simpsons DVDs as they are packaged. Next time you pick one up, think about the hole.