Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is the protagonist of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons.[1] He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared, along with the rest of the Simpsons, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Homer was created by the 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 created 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 Simpsons received their own series on Fox, which debuted on December 17, 1989.
This article is about the cartoon character. For the novel character, see The Day of the Locust.Homer Simpson
- "Good Night"
- The Tracey Ullman Show
- April 19, 1987
Matt Groening
Homer Jay Simpson
Safety inspector
- Abraham Simpson (father)
- Mona Simpson (mother) [a]
- Herbert Powell (half-brother)
- Abbey (half-sister)
- Bart Simpson (son)
- Lisa Simpson (daughter)
- Maggie Simpson (daughter)
- Orville Simpson
(grandfather) [a] - Yuma Simpson
(grandmother) [a] - Cyrus Simpson (uncle)
742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, United States
American
Homer is the patriarch of the Simpson 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 a safety inspector. Homer embodies many American working class stereotypes: he is obese, balding, immature, outspoken, aggressive, lazy, ignorant, unprofessional, and fond of beer, junk food, and 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 several 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 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 and 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. 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 in The Simpsons
Homer Jay Simpson is the bumbling husband of Marge, and father to Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson.[2] He is the son of Mona and Abraham "Grampa" Simpson. Homer held over 188 different jobs in the first 400 episodes of The Simpsons.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]
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.[2] "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;[7] "The Way We Was" (season two, 1991) shows Homer falling in love with Marge Bouvier as a senior at Springfield High School in 1974;[8] and "I Married Marge" (season three, 1991) implies that Marge became pregnant with Bart in 1980.[9] 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.[10] 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."[11]
Due to the floating timeline, Homer's age has changed occasionally as the series developed; he was 34 in the early episodes,[8] 36 in season four,[12] 38 and 39 in season eight,[13] and 40 in the eighteenth season,[14] although even in those seasons his age is inconsistent.[2] In the fourth season episode "Duffless", Homer's drivers license shows his birthdate of being May 12, 1956,[15] 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. According to The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family and Simpsons World: The Ultimate Episode Guide: Seasons 1–20, books written by The Simpsons' creator, Matt Groening, Homer is 36.[16][17] Homer's height is 6' (1.83 m),[18] and his weight is between 239 and 260 lbs (108–120 kg).[16][17]
Character
Creation
Naming the characters after members of his own family, Groening named Homer after his father, who himself had been named after the ancient Greek poet of the same name.[19][20][21] Very little else of Homer's character was based on him, and to prove that the meaning behind Homer's name was not significant, Groening later named his own son Homer.[22][23] According to Groening, "Homer originated with my goal to both amuse my real father, and just annoy him a little bit. My father was an athletic, creative, intelligent filmmaker and writer, and the only thing he had in common with Homer was a love of donuts."[24] Although Groening has stated in several interviews that Homer was named after his father, he also claimed in several 1990 interviews that a character called precisely Homer Simpson in the 1939 Nathanael West novel The Day of the Locust as well as in the eponymous 1975 movie, was the inspiration.[2][25][26] In 2012 he clarified, "I took that name from a minor character in the novel The Day of the Locust... Since Homer was my father's name, and I thought Simpson was a funny name in that it had the word “simp” in it, which is short for “simpleton”—I just went with it."[27] Homer's middle initial "J", which stands for "Jay",[28][29] is a "tribute" to animated characters such as Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, who got their middle initial from Jay Ward.[30]
Homer made his debut with the rest of the Simpson family on April 19, 1987, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night".[31] In 1989, the shorts were adapted into The Simpsons, a half-hour series airing on the Fox Broadcasting Company. Homer and the Simpson family remained the main characters on this new show.[32]
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.
