Bart is Now Homer: Reflections on The Simpsons Binge
Watching The Simpsons from start to finish, in typical Netflix-style, allowed a sobering reflection on the way the series has changed. Then I realized: Bart is now Homer.
To clarify, I’m going to be talking about the differences in the series pre-2005 and post-2005, more or less. Really, it is the difference between the digital age and how life was back in the 90s. So there is not a hard and fast date, but that is roughly the time period I’d like my readers to keep in mind. Remember dial-up. Remember trying to send your first text message. Remember how you had to destroy your computer to download a copy of an Evanescence song (and it took 9 hours to download).
And now think of today.
Take Bart at the inception of the series: 10 years old, living in the early 90s, with a skateboard and a bus driver into the glam rock and grunge scene, and without a cell phone to call his father when he leaves him alone after soccer practice (Season 4, Episode 14). In this episode, Bart stews in the rain. His anger grows. And boils. and boils. Homer, none the wiser, watches TV without a second thought. There are no Google Calendar reminders to tell him to “Pick Up Bart.”
Modern episodes have a far faster pace. At first it jarred me — Different acts shift into gear with a jolt. Homer has an affair, but it is a dream within a dream (within a dream?). The realism has completely vanished. I watched the most recent episodes while trying to impose upon them the pace and the personality traits of the Simpsons I grew up with.
And then I realized: Bart (present-day) can’t be Bart (90s Bart). If he was 10 in 1989, he would be about 38 years old now. This means Bart went through his own grunge phase, maybe cried when Kurt Cobain died, got a couple of tattoos, grew weed in his closet, grew up and had his own family.
And now he’s Homer’s age.
Homer Simpson, at the start of the series, was dim-witted but still a responsible adult. He was the kind of parent who said “boys will be boys” to most of his son’s antics (unfairly, as Lisa gets no such treatment, and perhaps that is why she always has to be good), but buckled down hard and forbade Bart to see The Itchy and Scratchy Movie when he feared for his son’s future (Season 4, Episode 6).
This is not the same father I saw in “Much Apu About Something” (Season 27, Episode 12). In this episode, Homer lets Bart destroy a local business just because Apu cannot handle how his customer base has changed (healthier food, a ‘younger’ crowd).
That’s not something Homer the Father would do. That is something Bart as a Father would do.
When you see flashbacks of Homer as a young boy, he is good-hearted, hungry (as a baby, he stole a slice of pizza), innocent, but dim-witted — Much like the original Homer at the start of the series. Homer, as an only child, is used to being the center of attention, and never had to compete with a sibling. His self-centered nature is irritating but genuine — He does not intend to hurt others with his carelessness.
But since birth, Bart has had a mean streak to him. He has had trouble knowing right from wrong, and only seems to show a softer side when a family member is in pain (usually Lisa, for whom he has always had a weakness). He’s had to compete with Lisa and Maggie for attention, and was clearly very jealous when Lisa was born. As such, Bart’s need for attention is more calculated and planned than Homer’s.
Once I accepted this — That modern-day Homer is actually a grown-up version of Bart — the series became more palatable. I was able to appreciate the newer episodes for what they were. Bart, as an adult, is an irresponsible father.
Then, if the modern Homer is a grown-up version of Bart, who is Bart now? Modern Bart has a lot less shame than the original. 1990s Bart loves to make his father mad, but would not humiliate him publicly with a web series cartoon like “Angry Dad.” Remember how heartbroken Bart was when Homer couldn’t play a game of “Capture the Flag?” At a picnic, Homer tricks the kids to score a winning point . . . only to fall down, drunk and tired. Unable to move, Homer rolls around as the neighborhood kids throw eggs at him.
Modern-day Bart would record this on his phone and post it to YouTube. But in this episode (Season 9, Episode 23), Bart looks down. He is ashamed of his father. Homer, even in his drunken stupor, recognizes Bart’s shame and vows to be a more fit role model.
Otto now is still into the same music he was back then, but it’s not new anymore. It’s retro. At the start of the series, Otto was into bands that were popular at the time. But you wouldn’t catch Otto dead at a “Maroon 5” concert. Most of Otto’s favorite artists are dead or washed up. By staying the same, even his character has changed — He’s not modern anymore, he’s deliberately and decidedly un-modern. He might even be considered a hipster with those giant headphones. He’s a wannabe who wasn’t even born when his favorite bands came out.
Now, Bart is far more of a sociopath, and he has a father who does not have the good intentions as the Homer of the past did. Few cartoons have had to straddle the time period before and after smart phones the way The Simpsons have. King of the Hill did, a little bit, and their story lines similarly began to change in this direction. Luckily for KOTH, Hank Hill was a figure who was naturally resistant to change, so his household changed very slowly, and they managed to stretch that out in a believable manner until the show’s end. The Simpsons are a family that thrives off drastic change, and so the writers had to accommodate the Internet faster instead of slower.
The Simpsons has done what it had to do — Change Homer to be more like Bart, since enough time has passed for Bart to have grown up, and turn Bart into an even more exaggerated version of a “bad” child.
And I think I’m (sort of) okay with that.
