Homer Simpson

## Information

**Homer Jay Simpson** is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the American animated sitcom *The Simpsons*.[1] He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared, along with the rest of his family, in *The Tracey Ullman Show* short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Homer was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of producer James L. Brooks's office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based on his comic strip *Life in Hell* but instead decided to create a new set of characters. He named the character after his father, Homer Groening. After appearing for three seasons on *The Tracey Ullman Show*, the Simpson family got their own series on Fox, which debuted December 17, 1989.

He is the nominal foreman of the paternally eponymous family. He and his wife Marge have three children: Bart, Lisa and Maggie. As the family's provider, he works at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant as safety inspector. Homer embodies many American working class stereotypes: he is obese, immature, outspoken, aggressive, balding, lazy, ignorant, unprofessional, and fond of beer, junk food and watching television. However, he is fundamentally a good man and is staunchly protective of his family, especially when they need him the most. Despite the suburban blue-collar routine of his life, he has had a number of remarkable experiences, including going to space, climbing the tallest mountain in Springfield by himself, fighting former President George H. W. Bush, and winning a Grammy Award as a member of a barbershop quartet.

In the shorts and earlier episodes, Castellaneta voiced Homer with a loose impression of Walter Matthau; however, during the second and third seasons of the half-hour show, Homer's voice evolved to become more robust, to allow the expression of a fuller range of emotions. He has appeared in other media relating to *The Simpsons*—including video games, *The Simpsons Movie*, The Simpsons Ride, commercials, and comic books—and inspired an entire line of merchandise. His signature catchphrase, the annoyed grunt "D'oh!", has been included in *The New Oxford Dictionary of English* since 1998 and the *Oxford English Dictionary* since 2001.

Homer is one of the most influential characters in the history of television, and is widely considered to be an American cultural icon. The British newspaper *The Sunday Times* described him as "The greatest comic creation of [modern] time". He was named the greatest character "of the last 20 years" in 2010 by *Entertainment Weekly*, was ranked the second-greatest cartoon character by *TV Guide*, behind Bugs Bunny, and was voted the greatest television character of all time by Channel 4 viewers. For voicing Homer, Castellaneta has won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and a special-achievement Annie Award. In 2000, Homer and his family were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

## Role

Homer Jay Simpson is the bumbling husband of Marge, and father to Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson. He is the son of Mona and Abraham "Grampa" Simpson. Homer held over 188 different jobs in the first 400 episodes of *The Simpsons*. In most episodes, he works as the nuclear safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant (in Sector 7-G), a position which he has held since "Homer's Odyssey", the third episode of the series, despite the fact that he is totally unsuitable for it. At the nuclear plant, Homer is often ignored and completely forgotten by his boss Mr. Burns, and he constantly falls asleep and neglects his duties. Matt Groening has stated that he decided to have Homer work at the power plant because of the potential for Homer to wreak severe havoc. Each of his other jobs has lasted only one episode. In the first half of the series, the writers developed an explanation about how he got fired from the plant and was then rehired in every episode. In later episodes, he often began a new job on impulse, without any mention of his regular employment.

*The Simpsons* uses a floating timeline in which the characters never physically age, and, as such, the show is generally assumed to be always set in the current year. Nevertheless, in several episodes, events in Homer's life have been linked to specific time periods. "Mother Simpson" (season seven, 1995) depicts Homer's mother, Mona, as a radical who went into hiding in 1969 following a run-in with the law; "The Way We Was" (season two, 1991) shows Homer falling in love with Marge Bouvier as a senior at Springfield High School in 1974; and "I Married Marge" (season three, 1991) implies that Marge became pregnant with Bart in 1980. However, the episode "That '90s Show" (season 19, 2008) contradicted much of this backstory, portraying Homer and Marge as a twentysomething childless couple in the early 1990s. The episode "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars" (season 32, 2021) further contradicts this backstory, putting Homer's adolescence in the 1990s. Showrunner Matt Selman has explained that no version was the "official continuity." and that "they all kind of happened in their imaginary world, you know, and people can choose to love whichever version they love."

Due to the floating timeline, Homer's age has changed occasionally as the series developed; he was 34 in the early episodes, 36 in season four, 38 and 39 in season eight, and 40 in the eighteenth season, although even in those seasons his age is inconsistent. In the fourth season episode "Duffless", Homer's drivers license shows his birthdate of being May 12, 1956, which would have made him 36 years old at the time of the episode. During Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein's period as showrunners, they found that as they aged, Homer seemed to become older too, so they increased his age to 38. His height is 6' (1.83 m).

## Design

As currently depicted in the series, Homer's everyday clothing consists of a white shirt with short sleeves and open collar, blue pants, and gray shoes. He is overweight and bald, except for a fringe of hair around the back and sides of his head and two curling hairs on top, and his face always sports a growth of beard stubble that instantly regrows whenever he shaves. The entire Simpson family was designed so that they would be recognizable in silhouette. The family was crudely drawn because Groening had submitted basic sketches to the animators, assuming they would clean them up; instead, they just traced over his drawings. By coincidence or not, Homer's look bears a resemblance to the cartoon character Adamsson, created by Swedish cartoonist Oscar Jacobsson in 1920. Homer's physical features are generally not used in other characters; for example, in the later seasons, no characters other than Homer, Grampa Simpson, Lenny Leonard, and Krusty the Clown have a similar beard line. When Groening originally designed Homer, he put his initials into the character's hairline and ear: the hairline resembled an 'M', and the right ear resembled a 'G'. Groening decided that this would be too distracting and redesigned the ear to look normal. However, he still draws the ear as a 'G' when he draws pictures of Homer for fans. The basic shape of Homer's head is described by director Mark Kirkland as a tube-shaped coffee can with a salad bowl on top. During the shorts, the animators experimented with the way Homer would move his mouth when talking. At one point, his mouth would stretch out back "beyond his beardline"; but this was dropped when it got "out of control." In some early episodes, Homer's hair was rounded rather than sharply pointed because animation director Wes Archer felt it should look disheveled. Homer's hair evolved to be consistently pointed. During the first three seasons, Homer's design for some close-up shots included small lines which were meant to be eyebrows. Groening strongly disliked them and they were eventually dropped.

In the season seven (1995) episode "Treehouse of Horror VI", Homer was computer-animated into a three-dimensional character for the first time for the "Homer3" segment of the episode. The computer animation directors at Pacific Data Images worked hard not to "reinvent the character". In the final minute of the segment, the 3D Homer ends up in a real world, live-action Los Angeles. The scene was directed by David Mirkin and was the first time a *Simpsons* character had been in the real world in the series. Because "Lisa's Wedding" (season six, 1995) is set fifteen years in the future, Homer's design was altered to make him older in the episode. He is heavier; one of the hairs on top of his head was removed; and an extra line was placed under the eye. A similar design has been used in subsequent flashforwards.