Everything about Homer Simpson totally explained
Homer Jay Simpson is a
fictional character in the
animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by
Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television in the
Tracey Ullman Show short "
Good Night". He is one of five members of the titular family and has become the most popular and influential character in the series. Homer embodies several
American working class stereotypes: he's crude, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, thoughtless and a borderline alcoholic. Despite the suburban
blue-collar routine of his life, he's had a number of remarkable experiences. He has occasionally displayed flashes of great intellect and fitness whenever the situation calls for it, and an integrity reflecting his own values, including a fierce devotion to and protectiveness of his family. Castellaneta describes him as "a dog trapped in a man's body. He's incredibly loyal—not entirely clean—but you gotta love him." He has inspired an entire line of merchandise and his catchphrase, the annoyed grunt "
D'oh!", is now included in the
Oxford English Dictionary.
Role in The Simpsons
Biography
Although
The Simpsons has a
floating timeline in which the characters
do not age, and the show is set in the current year, certain dates have been given although sometimes these dates are contradicted. Homer was raised on a farm by his parents,
Mona and
Abraham Simpson. In the mid-1960s, while Homer was between nine and twelve years of age, Mona went into hiding following a run-in with the law. Homer attended Springfield High School and in his final year in 1974, he fell in love with
Marge Bouvier. Marge became
pregnant with
Bart, while Homer was working at a
miniature golf course and the two were wed in a small wedding chapel across the state line. After that, Homer secured a job at the
Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Marge became pregnant with
Lisa and, soon after, the new couple bought
their first house. Homer took a job as a pin monkey in a bowling alley but, unfortunately for Homer, Marge became pregnant with Maggie shortly after he started his new job and, not being able to support his family, he went back to the nuclear plant. Although past episodes stated that Bart and Lisa were born in the 1980s, the
season nineteen episode "
That 90's Show" contradicted all this and revealed that Homer and Marge lived without any children in the early 1990s.
Homer's age has changed as the series moved on; he was thirty-six in the early episodes, thirty-eight in
season eight and forty in the
eighteenth season, although even in those seasons his age is inconsistent. Part of the reason his age was changed was that during
Bill Oakley and
Josh Weinstein's period as showrunners, they found that as they aged, Homer seemed older too, so they changed his age to 38.
Personality
Homer embodies several American
stereotypes of
working-class blue-collar men: he's crude, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, thoughtless and a borderline alcoholic. Homer is prone to emotional outbursts; he's very envious of his neighbors, the
Flanders family, and is easily enraged by
Bart and strangles him frequently, most often yelling "Why you little...!" beforehand. He shows no compunction about this, and doesn't attempt to hide his actions from people outside the family, even showing disregard for his son's well being in other ways, such as leaving Bart alone at a port. These actions can be attributed to Homer not realizing he's responsibilities. his alcohol problem, exposure to radioactive waste, repetitive cranial trauma, and a crayon lodged in the
frontal lobe of his brain. Homer's intelligence was said to jump fifty points when he'd the crayon removed, bringing him to an
IQ of 105, slightly above that of an average person, however he'd the crayon reinserted, lowering his IQ back to its original 55. The amount of Homer's brain which still functions is also questionable. At one point in the series, Homer apparently lost 5% of his brain after a
coma and lost 20% when a pipe fell on his head at the nuclear power plant. Homer often debates his own mind; moments like these are expressed in voiceover. Homer's brain has a dubious record of advice, either helping Homer make the right decisions or failing completely. It has even become completely frustrated and, through sound effects, walked out on him in the episode "
Brother from the Same Planet". In the episode "
When You Dish Upon a Star", Homer confessed to being illiterate, claiming to understand text by logos. He is also diabetic, as revealed in the episode 'That 90s Show'.
Character
Creation
Matt Groening first conceived Homer and the rest of the Simpson family in the lobby of
James L. Brooks' office. He had been called in to pitch a series of animated shorts, and had intended to present his
Life in Hell series. When he realized that animating
Life in Hell would require him to rescind publication rights for his life's work, Groening decided to go in another direction, hurriedly sketched out his version of a dysfunctional family and named the characters after members of his own family. Homer was named after Groening's father Homer Groening Homer's middle initial "J," which was revealed to stand for "Jay", was a "tribute" to
Bullwinkle J. Moose from
Rocky and Bullwinkle, a show Matt Groening loved as a child. Homer then made his debut with the rest of the Simpsons clan on
April 19,
1987 in the
Tracey Ullman short "
Good Night".
The whole family was designed so that they'd be recognizable in silhouette. The features of Homer's character design are generally not used in other characters, for example, in the later seasons, no characters besides Homer and
Lenny have a similar beard line. When Groening drew Homer, he put his initials into the character's hairline and ear: the hairline resembles an 'M', and the right ear resembled a 'G'. Groening decided that this would be too distracting though, and redesigned the ear to look normal. He still draws the ear as a 'G' when he draws pictures of Homer for fans. In some early episodes, Homer's hair was rounded rather than pointy because
Wes Archer felt it should be mixed up. Homer's hair is now consistently pointy. During the first three seasons, Homer's design for some close-up shots included small lines which were meant to be eyebrows. Matt Groening strongly disliked them and they were eventually dropped.
Character development
Homer's behavior has changed a number of times through the run of the series. In early seasons, Homer is concerned that his family is going to make him look bad. This was later changed so that he wouldn't care how he was perceived by other people. In the early seasons, he was portrayed as sweet and sincere, but later he became ruder and meaner. Fans have dubbed some later incarnations of the character "Jerkass Homer". When editing
The Simpsons Movie, several scenes were changed or otherwise toned down to make Homer more sympathetic. Homer has also become dumber over the years. Writers explain this wasn't done intentionally, but something that simply happened over the years because of a need to top previous jokes. In "
When You Dish Upon a Star", the writers had a scene where Homer admits that he can not read. This was debated amongst the writers because the joke would undo the previous times that viewers had seen Homer read, but eventually they decided to keep the joke because they found it humorous. The writers often had debates about how stupid Homer could be, one suggestion was "he can never forget his own name".
In 2005,
The Simpsons was adapted for Arabic television. Homer was renamed Omar Shamshoon and several staples of his character were changed: he drank "juice" instead of beer, didn't eat
bacon, didn't visit
Moe's Tavern The series didn't fare very well and only 34 of the 52 adapted episodes aired.
Voice
Homer's voice is performed by
Dan Castellaneta, who also voices several other characters, including Homer's father Abe. Castellaneta had been part of the regular cast of
The Tracey Ullman Show and had done some voice over work in
Chicago alongside his wife
Deb Lacusta. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta and fellow cast member
Julie Kavner to voice Homer and Marge rather than hire more actors. and couldn't sustain his Matthau impression for the 9-10 hour long recording sessions and had to find something easier. Castellaneta "dropped the voice down" and developed it into a more robust and humorous voice during the second and third season of the half-hour show, allowing Homer to cover a fuller range of emotions. To perform Homer's voice, Castellaneta lowers his chin to his chest such as the line "I am so smart, s-m-r-t" from the episode "
Homer Goes to College" which was a genuine mistake made by Castellaneta.
Up until 1998, Castellaneta was paid
$30,000 per episode and, following a pay dispute, he was paid $125,000 per episode until 2004. In 2004, there was another pay dispute and the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode. The issue was resolved a month later and Castellaneta now earns
$250,000 per episode.
Reception
Homer was placed second on
TV Guide's 2002 Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters, behind
Bugs Bunny; fifth on
Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, one of only four cartoon characters on that list, and British TV viewers voted him as the greatest TV character of all time. In 2007,
Entertainment Weekly placed Homer ninth on their list of the "50 Greatest TV icons". Homer has been described by the UK newspaper
The Sunday Times as the greatest comedic creation of modern time who wrote "Every age needs its great, consoling failure, its lovable, pretension-free mediocrity. And we've ours in Homer Simpson" and "Homer is good because, above all, he's capable of great love. When the chips are down, he always does the right thing by his children - he's never unfaithful in spite of several opportunities." Homer was also the runaway winner in a British poll that determined which fictional character people would like to see become the President of the United States.
Dan Castellaneta has won several awards for voicing Homer, including three
Primetime Emmy Awards for "
Outstanding Voice-Over Performance" in 1992 for "
Lisa's Pony"; 1993 for "
Mr. Plow" and 2004 for "
Today, I'm a Clown" although in this case it was for voicing "various characters" and not solely for Homer. In 2004, Castellaneta and
Julie Kavner (the voice of Marge) won a
Young Artist Award for "Most Popular Mom & Dad in a TV Series". In 2005, Homer and Marge were nominated for a
Teen Choice Award for "Choice TV Parental Units". Various episodes that heavily featured Homer have won Emmy Awards for
Outstanding Animated Program, including "
Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" in 1991, "
Lisa's Wedding" in 1995, "
Homer's Phobia" in 1997, "
Trash of the Titans" in 1998, "
HOMЯ" in 2001 and "
Three Gays of the Condo" in 2003. The book includes a chapter analyzing Homer's character from the perspective of
Aristotelian virtue ethics. In 2003,
Matt Groening revealed that his father, after whom Homer was named, was
Canadian, and said that this made Homer himself a Canadian. He was later made an honorary citizen of
Winnipeg,
Canada, because Homer Groening was believed to be from the
Manitoba capital, although some say he was actually born in
Saskatchewan.
In 2007, an image of Homer was painted next to the
hill figure, the
Cerne Abbas giant in
Dorset,
England as part of a promotion for
The Simpsons Movie. This caused outrage amongst local
neopagans who performed "rain magic" to try and get it washed away.
A five-year study of more than 2,000 middle-aged people in France found a possible link between weight and brain function, dubbed the "Homer Simpson syndrome". Results from a word memory test showed that people with a
BMI of 20 (considered to be a healthy level) remembered an average of nine out of 16 words. Meanwhile, people with a BMI of 30 (inside the obese range) remembered an average of just seven out of 16 words. without the apostrophe. The spoken word D'oh is a
trademark of
20th Century Fox. It is typically represented in the show's script as "(annoyed grunt)", and is so spelled out in the official titles of several episodes. Some episodes feature variations of the word such as "
Bart of Darkness", when Homer says "D'oheth"
When
Dan Castellaneta, the
voice of Homer, was first asked to voice the exclamation, he rendered it as a drawn out "d'ooooooh", inspired by
Jimmy Finlayson, the mustachioed
Scottish actor who appeared in 33
Laurel and Hardy films. Finlayson coined the term as a
minced oath to stand in for the word "
Damn!" The show's creator
Matt Groening felt that it would better suit the timing of animation if it were spoken faster so Castellaneta shortened it to a quick "D'oh!" The word was first used in the Ullman short "Punching Bag", and its first usage in the series was in "
Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".
Merchandising
Homer's inclusion in many Simpsons publications, toys, and other merchandise is evidence of his enduring popularity. A book written about Homer's personality and attributes has been published and is commercially available. Other merchandise includes dolls,
posters, figurines,
bobblehead dolls,
mugs,
alarm clocks and clothing such as
slippers,
T-shirts,
Baseball caps and
Boxer shorts. In 2004, Homer starred in a
Mastercard Priceless commercial that aired during
Super Bowl XXXVIII.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Homer Simpson'.
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