Homer's Phobia
Encyclopedia
"Homer's Phobia" is the fifteenth episode of the eighth season
of the American animated television series The Simpsons
. It first aired on the Fox network
in the United States on February 16, 1997. In the episode, Homer
dissociates himself from new family friend John after discovering that John is gay
. Homer fears that John will have a negative influence on his son Bart
and decides to ensure Bart's heterosexuality by taking him hunting.
It was the first episode written by Ron Hauge
and was directed by Mike B. Anderson
. George Meyer
pitched "Bart the homo" as an initial idea for an episode while show runner
s Bill Oakley
and Josh Weinstein
were planning an episode involving Lisa
"discovering the joys of campy
things". Oakley and Weinstein combined the two ideas and they eventually became "Homer's Phobia". Fox censors originally found the episode unsuitable for broadcast because of its controversial subject matter, but this decision was reversed after a turnover in the Fox staff. Filmmaker John Waters
guest-starred, providing the voice of the new character, John.
"Homer's Phobia" was the show's first episode to revolve entirely around gay
themes and received a positive critical response both for its humor and anti-homophobia
message. It won four awards, including an Emmy Award
for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less)
and a GLAAD Media Award
for "Outstanding TV – Individual Episode".
s shop, hoping that it will purchase one of the family's heirlooms. Homer meets John, the antiques dealer, who explains that much of the merchandise is there because of its camp
value. Bart
and Lisa
are impressed with John, and Homer invites him to the Simpsons' house to see the campy items that the family owns. The next morning, Homer tells Marge
that he likes John and suggests they invite him and "his wife" over. Marge hints repeatedly to an oblivious Homer that John is gay
, and when Homer finally understands, he is horrified. Homer's attitude towards John changes completely, and he turns against him, refusing to join his tour of Springfield
. The rest of the family joins John and has a good time, but Homer is upset with the family upon their return. The rest of the Simpson family continue to enjoy John's company, especially Bart, who starts wearing Hawaiian shirts
and dancing in a woman's wig
. This makes Homer uneasy, and he begins to fear Bart is gay.
Homer endeavors to make Bart more masculine by forcing him to look at a cigarette
billboard
featuring scantily clad women in hopes Bart will be attracted to girls, but instead Bart gets the urge to smoke "anything slim." Homer then escorts him to see a steel mill
to see hard work. However, much to his surprise and dismay, the entire workforce is gay, and during breaks, The Anvil, a gay disco, appears. A desperate Homer insists on taking Bart deer hunting
with Moe
and Barney
. When they cannot find any deer, they decide instead to go to "Santa's Village" and shoot the reindeer
in the corral, despite a tearful Bart being reluctant to do so. This backfires when the reindeer attack them. John, with the help of Lisa and Marge, uses a Japanese Santa Claus
robot to scare off the reindeer and save the hunting party. Homer accepts John, more or less, and tells Bart, who is still unaware of his father's concerns, that any way he lives his life is fine with him. After Lisa informs Bart that Homer thinks he is gay, Bart is stunned. The episode ends with everyone driving off in John's car.
Just before the end credits a dedication to the steelworkers of America is shown, reading "Keep reaching for that rainbow
!"
The original concept for the episode came from a few lines of show ideas written by George Meyer
. One of them read "Bart the homo", and Ron Hauge
was selected to write the episode, with the story stemming from that line. The idea of using filmmaker John Waters
as a guest star had been around for a while. Many of the staff were fans of his work, and showrunners Bill Oakley
and Josh Weinstein
had planned to use him in an episode called "Lisa and Camp", which revolved around Lisa "discovering the joys of campy things". Their idea was combined with Meyer's and it became this episode. The episode was originally titled "Bart Goes to Camp", but was renamed because the joke was too oblique. Mike B. Anderson
directed the episode, telling The Gold Coast Bulletin
: "When I read the script I was enthralled, not only because of the visual possibilities, but also because the story felt very solid. It was engaging and surprising and I really put heart into that episode."
Waters accepted his invitation to be a guest star instantly, stating that if it was good enough for the actress Elizabeth Taylor
, who appeared in the season four episodes "Lisa's First Word
" and "Krusty Gets Kancelled
", it was good enough for him. He joked, however, about a negative reaction if his character would be made to look like fitness personality Richard Simmons
. John's design was based largely on Waters' own appearance; for animation reasons, Waters moustache was changed from straight to curvy, so that it did not look like a mistake. As thanks for his performance, the show's staff sent Waters an animation cel
from the episode which he now has hanging in his office.
According to Oakley, the Fox
censor
objected to "Homer's Phobia" being aired. The normal procedure is for an episode's script to be sent to the censor and then faxed back with a list of lines and words that should be substituted. However this episode came back with two pages of notes about almost every single line in the show. The censors stated that they did not like the use of the word "gay
", or the discussion of homosexuality at all, and closed with a paragraph which stated that "the topic and substance of this episode are unacceptable for broadcast
". Usually the censor notes are ignored as the offending lines and problems are dealt with after the episode has been animated. In this case the entire episode was deemed a problem, so it could not be solved in this way. The staff asked Waters if he thought the gay community would find the episode offensive. Homer's use of the word "fag" to insult John was his only problem, so the writers changed it to "queer
". The censor problems ultimately came to nothing as when the episode came back from animation in South Korea, the then-Fox president had just been fired and replaced, with the censors being replaced as well. The new censors sent back merely one line: "acceptable for broadcast".
The "gay steel mill" scene was written by Steve Tompkins
. He first pitched that Homer and Bart would encounter longshoremen
, but it was too much work to animate the lading
of ships, so a steel mill was used instead. Tompkins also wrote a different third act for the episode which was never produced. Instead of Homer, Bart, Barney and Moe going deer hunting and ending up at "Santa's Village" they would go back to the steel mill. There, Homer would attempt to prove his heterosexuality by having a human tractor pulling
contest with some of the steel mill workers. It was decided that it "didn't really service the story" and was dropped.
" by C+C Music Factory
is played twice during the episode: first as the steel mill transforms into a disco, and second over the closing credits. Homer's record collection includes music by The New Christy Minstrels and The Wedding of Lynda Bird Johnson, the albums Loony Luau and Ballad of the Green Berets
by Staff Sgt.
Barry Sadler
. The song that John picks out and he and Homer dance to is "I Love the Nightlife" by Alicia Bridges
, and the song that Bart dances to is Cher
's version of "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)
" by Betty Everett
. When John is introduced there is a plastic pink flamingo lying in the background, a reference to John Waters's film Pink Flamingos
. Items in John's store include several buttons endorsing Presidential candidates Richard Nixon
, Dan Quayle
and Bob Dole
as well as an issue of TV Guide
owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
which features the titular characters from the sitcom Laverne & Shirley
on the cover.
In its original American broadcast, "Homer's Phobia" finished tied for 47th place in the weekly ratings for the week of February 10–16, 1997 with a Nielsen rating of 8.7. It was the fourth highest rated show on the Fox Network that week. The episode won the Emmy
for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less)
in 1997. Mike Anderson won the Annie Award
for Best Individual Achievement: Directing in a TV Production, and the WAC Award for Best Director for Primetime Series at the 1998 World Animation Celebration. Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
called it "a shining example of how to bring intelligent, fair and funny representations of our community onto television" and awarded it the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV - Individual Episode. Several of the episode's animation cels were selected for display at the Silver K Gallery in Melbourne, Australia in 2001.
themes. The series made several references to homosexuality before the episode aired. In the 1990 episode "Simpson and Delilah
", the character Karl (voiced by Harvey Fierstein
) kisses Homer, while the recurring character Waylon Smithers
is often shown to be in love with his boss, Montgomery Burns
, initially suggestively and since then more overtly. However, "Homer's Phobia" was the first episode to revolve entirely around homosexual themes. Two later episodes that explored LGBT issues were "Three Gays of the Condo
" and "There's Something About Marrying
".
When the episode aired, the production team received "very few" complaints about its content, with most of the response being positive. Alan Frutkin gave the episode a positive write-up in the LGBT-interest magazine The Advocate
, calling it "vintage Simpsons." Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood stated in their book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, that: "Only The Simpsons could do this so tongue-in-cheek that nobody could get in a tizzy about it. Very good indeed." In the book Leaving Springfield
, Matthew Henry praised the episode's critiquing of "the most common misconception about homosexuality: namely that gayness is somehow contagious", as well as its other themes. Catharine Lumby of the University of Sydney
cited the episode as an example of good satire as it "managed to explore a lot of [homosexual] issues in quite a deep way [...] without being overtly political" which she claimed, along with the episode's humor, made its anti-homophobia message more successful than that of other gay-themed shows like Queer as Folk. In his review of The Simpsons - The Complete Eighth Season DVD, Todd Gilchrist said that "Homer's Phobia" "certainly qualifies as one of the all-time greatest episodes."
It was placed fifth on Entertainment Weekly
s top 25 The Simpsons episode list. In 2003, USA Today
published a top 10 chosen by the webmaster of The Simpsons Archive
, which had this episode listed in tenth place, and it was again placed tenth on AskMen.com's "Top 10: Simpsons Episodes" list. IGN.com
ranked John Waters's performance as the ninth best guest appearance in the show's history, with TV Guide
naming him the third best film related guest star. In a 2008 article, Entertainment Weekly named Waters as one of the sixteen best Simpsons guest stars. John Patterson of The Guardian
wrote that Waters' appearance "felt to me like a summit meeting between the most influential pop-culture figures of the last 25 years."
In 2002, Off the Telly writers Steve Williams and Ian Jones named "Homer's Phobia" one of the five worst episodes of The Simpsons, stating that it "leaves such a nasty taste in the mouth", as Homer is "quite simply a bastard" throughout the course of the episode. The pair concluded by saying "this is a side of the show we'd not seen before, nor particularly wanted to see." In June 2003, Igor Smykov sued the Russian television channel REN TV on claims that The Simpsons, along with Family Guy
, were "morally degenerate and promoted drugs, violence and homosexuality." As evidence, "Homer's Phobia" was shown to the judge to prove that The Simpsons promoted homosexuality, and thus should not be aired again on the channel. The case was thrown out after one day.
The Simpsons (season 8)
The Simpsons eighth season originally aired between October 27, 1996 and May 18, 1997, beginning with "Treehouse of Horror VII". The show runners for the eighth production season were Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. The aired season contained two episodes which were hold-over episodes from season...
of the American animated television series The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
. It first aired on the Fox network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
in the United States on February 16, 1997. In the episode, Homer
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
dissociates himself from new family friend John after discovering that John is gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
. Homer fears that John will have a negative influence on his son Bart
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
and decides to ensure Bart's heterosexuality by taking him hunting.
It was the first episode written by Ron Hauge
Ron Hauge
Ron Hauge is an American television writer and executive producer. In his earlier career Hauge was a contributor to National Lampoon. After this he wrote for Seinfeld, In Living Color, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and a short lived reincarnation of The Carol Burnett Show...
and was directed by Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson, sometimes credited as Mikel B. Anderson, is a television director who works on The Simpsons and has directed numerous episodes of the show, and was animated in "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as cadet Anderson. While a college student, he directed the live action feature films...
. George Meyer
George Meyer
George A. Meyer is an American producer and writer. Raised in Tucson, Arizona in a Roman Catholic family, Meyer attended Harvard University. There, after becoming president of the Harvard Lampoon, he graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry. Abandoning plans to attend medical school, Meyer...
pitched "Bart the homo" as an initial idea for an episode while show runner
Show runner
Showrunner is a term of art originating in the United States and Canadian television industry referring to the person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television seriesalthough such persons generally are credited as an executive producer...
s Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Oakley and Josh Weinstein became best friends and writing partners at high school; Oakley then attended Harvard University and was Vice President of the Harvard Lampoon...
and Josh Weinstein
Josh Weinstein
Josh Weinstein is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Weinstein and Bill Oakley became best friends and writing partners at St. Albans High School; Weinstein then attended Stanford University and was editor-in-chief of the...
were planning an episode involving Lisa
Lisa Simpson
Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...
"discovering the joys of campy
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
things". Oakley and Weinstein combined the two ideas and they eventually became "Homer's Phobia". Fox censors originally found the episode unsuitable for broadcast because of its controversial subject matter, but this decision was reversed after a turnover in the Fox staff. Filmmaker John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
guest-starred, providing the voice of the new character, John.
"Homer's Phobia" was the show's first episode to revolve entirely around gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
themes and received a positive critical response both for its humor and anti-homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
message. It won four awards, including an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less)
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming less than One Hour)
The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program is a Creative Arts Emmy Award which is given annually to an animated series which is judged to have been the best...
and a GLAAD Media Award
GLAAD Media Awards
The GLAAD Media Award is an accolade bestowed by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to recognize and honor various branches of the media for their outstanding representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives...
for "Outstanding TV – Individual Episode".
Plot
Needing money to pay for the gas repair bill, the Simpson family visits "Cockamamie's", an offbeat collectibleCollectible
A collectable or collectible is any object regarded as being of value or interest to a collector . There are numerous types of collectables and terms to denote those types. An antique is a collectable that is old...
s shop, hoping that it will purchase one of the family's heirlooms. Homer meets John, the antiques dealer, who explains that much of the merchandise is there because of its camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
value. Bart
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
and Lisa
Lisa Simpson
Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...
are impressed with John, and Homer invites him to the Simpsons' house to see the campy items that the family owns. The next morning, Homer tells Marge
Marge Simpson
Marjorie "Marge" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the eponymous family. She is voiced by actress Julie Kavner and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
that he likes John and suggests they invite him and "his wife" over. Marge hints repeatedly to an oblivious Homer that John is gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, and when Homer finally understands, he is horrified. Homer's attitude towards John changes completely, and he turns against him, refusing to join his tour of Springfield
Springfield (The Simpsons)
Springfield is the fictional town in which the American animated sitcom The Simpsons is set. A mid-sized town in an undetermined state of the United States, Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. The geography of the town and its...
. The rest of the family joins John and has a good time, but Homer is upset with the family upon their return. The rest of the Simpson family continue to enjoy John's company, especially Bart, who starts wearing Hawaiian shirts
Aloha shirt
The Aloha shirt commonly referred to as a Hawaiian shirt is a style of dress shirt originating in Hawaii. It is currently the premier textile export of the Hawaii manufacturing industry. The shirts are printed, mostly short-sleeved, and collared. They usually have buttons, sometimes as a complete...
and dancing in a woman's wig
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...
. This makes Homer uneasy, and he begins to fear Bart is gay.
Homer endeavors to make Bart more masculine by forcing him to look at a cigarette
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
billboard
Billboard (advertising)
A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure , typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers...
featuring scantily clad women in hopes Bart will be attracted to girls, but instead Bart gets the urge to smoke "anything slim." Homer then escorts him to see a steel mill
Steel mill
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel.Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It is produced in a two-stage process. First, iron ore is reduced or smelted with coke and limestone in a blast furnace, producing molten iron which is either cast into pig iron or...
to see hard work. However, much to his surprise and dismay, the entire workforce is gay, and during breaks, The Anvil, a gay disco, appears. A desperate Homer insists on taking Bart deer hunting
Deer hunting
Deer hunting is survival hunting or sport hunting, harvesting deer, dating back to tens of thousands of years ago. Which occurred though out Europe Asia and North America There are numerous types of deer throughout the world that are hunted.- New Zealand :...
with Moe
Moe Szyslak
Momar / Morris "Moe" Szyslak is a fictional character in the American animated television series, The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria and first appeared in the series premiere episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"...
and Barney
Barney Gumble
Barnard "Barney" Gumble is a fictional character on the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. The character is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared in the series premiere episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire". He is the town drunk and Homer Simpson's best friend. His capacity for...
. When they cannot find any deer, they decide instead to go to "Santa's Village" and shoot the reindeer
Reindeer
The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...
in the corral, despite a tearful Bart being reluctant to do so. This backfires when the reindeer attack them. John, with the help of Lisa and Marge, uses a Japanese Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
robot to scare off the reindeer and save the hunting party. Homer accepts John, more or less, and tells Bart, who is still unaware of his father's concerns, that any way he lives his life is fine with him. After Lisa informs Bart that Homer thinks he is gay, Bart is stunned. The episode ends with everyone driving off in John's car.
Just before the end credits a dedication to the steelworkers of America is shown, reading "Keep reaching for that rainbow
Rainbow flag (LGBT movement)
The rainbow flag, sometimes pride flag, LGBT pride flag or gay pride flag, is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride and LGBT social movements in use since the 1970s. The colours reflect the diversity of the LGBT community, and the flag is often used as a symbol of gay pride in...
!"
Production
George Meyer
George A. Meyer is an American producer and writer. Raised in Tucson, Arizona in a Roman Catholic family, Meyer attended Harvard University. There, after becoming president of the Harvard Lampoon, he graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry. Abandoning plans to attend medical school, Meyer...
. One of them read "Bart the homo", and Ron Hauge
Ron Hauge
Ron Hauge is an American television writer and executive producer. In his earlier career Hauge was a contributor to National Lampoon. After this he wrote for Seinfeld, In Living Color, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and a short lived reincarnation of The Carol Burnett Show...
was selected to write the episode, with the story stemming from that line. The idea of using filmmaker John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
as a guest star had been around for a while. Many of the staff were fans of his work, and showrunners Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Oakley and Josh Weinstein became best friends and writing partners at high school; Oakley then attended Harvard University and was Vice President of the Harvard Lampoon...
and Josh Weinstein
Josh Weinstein
Josh Weinstein is an American television writer and producer, known for his work on the animated comedy series The Simpsons. Weinstein and Bill Oakley became best friends and writing partners at St. Albans High School; Weinstein then attended Stanford University and was editor-in-chief of the...
had planned to use him in an episode called "Lisa and Camp", which revolved around Lisa "discovering the joys of campy things". Their idea was combined with Meyer's and it became this episode. The episode was originally titled "Bart Goes to Camp", but was renamed because the joke was too oblique. Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson
Mike B. Anderson, sometimes credited as Mikel B. Anderson, is a television director who works on The Simpsons and has directed numerous episodes of the show, and was animated in "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as cadet Anderson. While a college student, he directed the live action feature films...
directed the episode, telling The Gold Coast Bulletin
The Gold Coast Bulletin
The Gold Coast Bulletin is a daily newspaper serving Australia's Gold Coast region.It is published as The Gold Coast Bulletin on weekdays and the Weekend Bulletin at weekends....
: "When I read the script I was enthralled, not only because of the visual possibilities, but also because the story felt very solid. It was engaging and surprising and I really put heart into that episode."
Waters accepted his invitation to be a guest star instantly, stating that if it was good enough for the actress Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...
, who appeared in the season four episodes "Lisa's First Word
Lisa's First Word
"Lisa's First Word" is the tenth episode of The Simpsons fourth season. It was first broadcast on Fox in the United States on December 3, 1992. In the episode, as the Simpson family gathers around Maggie and tries to encourage her to say her first word, Marge reminisces and tells the story of...
" and "Krusty Gets Kancelled
Krusty Gets Kancelled
"Krusty Gets Kancelled" is the twenty-second and final episode of The Simpsons fourth season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 13, 1993. In the episode, a new show featuring a puppet named Gabbo premieres in Springfield and competes with Krusty the Clown's show...
", it was good enough for him. He joked, however, about a negative reaction if his character would be made to look like fitness personality Richard Simmons
Richard Simmons
Milton Teagle Simmons , known professionally as Richard Simmons, is an American fitness personality who promotes weight-loss programs, most famously through his Sweatin' to the Oldies line of aerobics videos and DVDs and is known for his eccentric, outgoing and frequently flamboyant personality...
. John's design was based largely on Waters' own appearance; for animation reasons, Waters moustache was changed from straight to curvy, so that it did not look like a mistake. As thanks for his performance, the show's staff sent Waters an animation cel
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
from the episode which he now has hanging in his office.
According to Oakley, the Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
censor
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
objected to "Homer's Phobia" being aired. The normal procedure is for an episode's script to be sent to the censor and then faxed back with a list of lines and words that should be substituted. However this episode came back with two pages of notes about almost every single line in the show. The censors stated that they did not like the use of the word "gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
", or the discussion of homosexuality at all, and closed with a paragraph which stated that "the topic and substance of this episode are unacceptable for broadcast
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
". Usually the censor notes are ignored as the offending lines and problems are dealt with after the episode has been animated. In this case the entire episode was deemed a problem, so it could not be solved in this way. The staff asked Waters if he thought the gay community would find the episode offensive. Homer's use of the word "fag" to insult John was his only problem, so the writers changed it to "queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
". The censor problems ultimately came to nothing as when the episode came back from animation in South Korea, the then-Fox president had just been fired and replaced, with the censors being replaced as well. The new censors sent back merely one line: "acceptable for broadcast".
The "gay steel mill" scene was written by Steve Tompkins
Steve Tompkins
Steve Tompkins is an American television writer. He attended Harvard University and wrote for the Harvard Lampoon; he graduated in 1988. He has worked on such television shows such as The Critic, In Living Color, Entourage, Bernie Mac and The Knights of Prosperity...
. He first pitched that Homer and Bart would encounter longshoremen
Stevedore
Stevedore, dockworker, docker, dock labourer, wharfie and longshoreman can have various waterfront-related meanings concerning loading and unloading ships, according to place and country....
, but it was too much work to animate the lading
Cargo
Cargo is goods or produce transported, generally for commercial gain, by ship, aircraft, train, van or truck. In modern times, containers are used in most intermodal long-haul cargo transport.-Marine:...
of ships, so a steel mill was used instead. Tompkins also wrote a different third act for the episode which was never produced. Instead of Homer, Bart, Barney and Moe going deer hunting and ending up at "Santa's Village" they would go back to the steel mill. There, Homer would attempt to prove his heterosexuality by having a human tractor pulling
Tractor pulling
Truck and Tractor pulling, also known as power pulling, is a motorsport competition, popular in America, Europe , Australia and Brazil, which requires modified tractors to pull a heavy sledge along a 35ft. wide and length of 100 metre or 300ft+ track, with the winner being the tractor that pulls...
contest with some of the steel mill workers. It was decided that it "didn't really service the story" and was dropped.
Cultural references
The episode features numerous cultural references. The song "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
"Gonna Make You Sweat " was C+C Music Factory's first hit. It was released in late 1990 in many countries and achieved a great success in U.S., Austria, Germany and Switzerland where it reached number one on the charts....
" by C+C Music Factory
C+C Music Factory
C+C Music Factory is a dance-pop and hip hop group formed in 1989 by David Cole and Robert Clivillés which stopped recording 1996, following Cole's death...
is played twice during the episode: first as the steel mill transforms into a disco, and second over the closing credits. Homer's record collection includes music by The New Christy Minstrels and The Wedding of Lynda Bird Johnson, the albums Loony Luau and Ballad of the Green Berets
Ballad of the Green Berets
"The Ballad Of The Green Berets" is a patriotic song in the ballad style about the Green Berets, an elite special force in the U.S. Army. It is one of the very few songs of the 1960s to cast the military in a positive light, yet it became a major hit, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard charts for five...
by Staff Sgt.
Staff Sergeant
Staff sergeant is a rank of non-commissioned officer used in several countries.The origin of the name is that they were part of the staff of a British army regiment and paid at that level rather than as a member of a battalion or company.-Australia:...
Barry Sadler
Barry Sadler
Barry Sadler was an American soldier, author and musician. Sadler served as a Green Beret medic with the rank of Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War...
. The song that John picks out and he and Homer dance to is "I Love the Nightlife" by Alicia Bridges
Alicia Bridges
Alicia Bridges is an American singer who co-wrote and performed her international hit "I Love the Nightlife " in 1978.-Early years:...
, and the song that Bart dances to is Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
's version of "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)
The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)
"The Shoop Shoop Song " is a song written by Rudy Clark. The song was made a hit when recorded by Betty Everett, who hit #1 on the Cashbox magazine R&B charts with it in 1964...
" by Betty Everett
Betty Everett
Betty Everett was an African-American soul singer and pianist, best known for her biggest hit single, the million-selling "The Shoop Shoop Song ".-Early career:...
. When John is introduced there is a plastic pink flamingo lying in the background, a reference to John Waters's film Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive black comedy film written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by John Waters. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy and thus became one of the most notorious cult films ever made. It made an underground star...
. Items in John's store include several buttons endorsing Presidential candidates Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle served as the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving with President George H. W. Bush . He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana....
and Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...
as well as an issue of TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...
which features the titular characters from the sitcom Laverne & Shirley
Laverne & Shirley
Laverne & Shirley is an American television situation comedy that ran on ABC from January 26, 1976, to May 10, 1983...
on the cover.
Ratings and awards
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less)
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming less than One Hour)
The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program is a Creative Arts Emmy Award which is given annually to an animated series which is judged to have been the best...
in 1997. Mike Anderson won the Annie Award
Annie Award
The Annie Awards have been presented by the Los Angeles, California branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972...
for Best Individual Achievement: Directing in a TV Production, and the WAC Award for Best Director for Primetime Series at the 1998 World Animation Celebration. Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is a non-governmental media monitoring organization which promotes the image of LGBT people in the media...
called it "a shining example of how to bring intelligent, fair and funny representations of our community onto television" and awarded it the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV - Individual Episode. Several of the episode's animation cels were selected for display at the Silver K Gallery in Melbourne, Australia in 2001.
Critical reviews and analysis
"Homer's Phobia" has been cited as a significant part of The Simpsons exploration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
themes. The series made several references to homosexuality before the episode aired. In the 1990 episode "Simpson and Delilah
Simpson and Delilah
"Simpson and Delilah" is the second episode of The Simpsons second season and first aired on October 18, 1990. Homer uses the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant medical insurance plan to buy Dimoxinil, a miracle hair growth formula. Homer grows hair, and is given a promotion at work which allows him...
", the character Karl (voiced by Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is a U.S. actor and playwright, noted for the early distinction of winning Tony Awards for both writing and originating the lead role in his long-running play Torch Song Trilogy, about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family, as well as writing the...
) kisses Homer, while the recurring character Waylon Smithers
Waylon Smithers
Waylon Smithers, Jr., usually referred to as Smithers, is a recurring fictional character in the animated series The Simpsons, who is voiced by Harry Shearer. Smithers first appeared in the episode "Homer's Odyssey", although he could be heard in the series premiere "Simpsons Roasting on an Open...
is often shown to be in love with his boss, Montgomery Burns
Montgomery Burns
Charles Montgomery "Monty" Burns, usually referred to as Mr. Burns, is a recurring fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons, who is voiced by Harry Shearer and previously Christopher Collins. Burns is the evil owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and is Homer...
, initially suggestively and since then more overtly. However, "Homer's Phobia" was the first episode to revolve entirely around homosexual themes. Two later episodes that explored LGBT issues were "Three Gays of the Condo
Three Gays of the Condo
"Three Gays of the Condo" is the seventeenth episode in the fourteenth season of The Simpsons and aired April 13, 2003.-Plot:Marge brings an "Oprah's Puzzle Club" jigsaw puzzle to the Simpson Family Wednesdays, for everyone to work on except for Grampa and Maggie, as the box clearly reads for ages...
" and "There's Something About Marrying
There's Something About Marrying
"There's Something About Marrying" is the tenth episode of the sixteenth season of The Simpsons. In the episode, Springfield legalizes same-sex marriage to increase tourism. After becoming a minister, Homer starts to wed people to make money. Meanwhile, Marge's sister Patty comes out as gay and...
".
When the episode aired, the production team received "very few" complaints about its content, with most of the response being positive. Alan Frutkin gave the episode a positive write-up in the LGBT-interest magazine The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
, calling it "vintage Simpsons." Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood stated in their book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, that: "Only The Simpsons could do this so tongue-in-cheek that nobody could get in a tizzy about it. Very good indeed." In the book Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield
Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture is a non-fiction compilation work analyzing the effect of the television program The Simpsons on society, edited by John Alberti. The book was published in 2004 by Wayne State University Press...
, Matthew Henry praised the episode's critiquing of "the most common misconception about homosexuality: namely that gayness is somehow contagious", as well as its other themes. Catharine Lumby of the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
cited the episode as an example of good satire as it "managed to explore a lot of [homosexual] issues in quite a deep way [...] without being overtly political" which she claimed, along with the episode's humor, made its anti-homophobia message more successful than that of other gay-themed shows like Queer as Folk. In his review of The Simpsons - The Complete Eighth Season DVD, Todd Gilchrist said that "Homer's Phobia" "certainly qualifies as one of the all-time greatest episodes."
It was placed fifth on Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
s top 25 The Simpsons episode list. In 2003, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
published a top 10 chosen by the webmaster of The Simpsons Archive
The Simpsons Archive
The Simpsons Archive, better known as snpp.com or simply SNPP , is a Simpsons fan site that has been online since 1994...
, which had this episode listed in tenth place, and it was again placed tenth on AskMen.com's "Top 10: Simpsons Episodes" list. IGN.com
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
ranked John Waters's performance as the ninth best guest appearance in the show's history, with TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
naming him the third best film related guest star. In a 2008 article, Entertainment Weekly named Waters as one of the sixteen best Simpsons guest stars. John Patterson of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
wrote that Waters' appearance "felt to me like a summit meeting between the most influential pop-culture figures of the last 25 years."
In 2002, Off the Telly writers Steve Williams and Ian Jones named "Homer's Phobia" one of the five worst episodes of The Simpsons, stating that it "leaves such a nasty taste in the mouth", as Homer is "quite simply a bastard" throughout the course of the episode. The pair concluded by saying "this is a side of the show we'd not seen before, nor particularly wanted to see." In June 2003, Igor Smykov sued the Russian television channel REN TV on claims that The Simpsons, along with Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
, were "morally degenerate and promoted drugs, violence and homosexuality." As evidence, "Homer's Phobia" was shown to the judge to prove that The Simpsons promoted homosexuality, and thus should not be aired again on the channel. The case was thrown out after one day.
External links
- "Homer's Phobia" at The Simpsons.com