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"Homer's Phobia"

Episode Information Showrunner: [[{{{showrunner}}}]]

Homer's Phobia is the fifteenth episode of Season 8 and aired on February 16, 1997. The episode was written by Ron Hauge and directed by Mike B. Anderson. John Waters guest stars as John.

A shop owner befriends the Simpson family, but after discovering he is a homosexual Homer fears Bart will emulate him.

Plot

After one of Bart's pranks causes the gas pipe to explode, the Simpsons have to find a way to pay the expensive gas bill. They try to use their retirement fund, but when Homer carries it outside, it falls through the ground due to its weight. This causes Marge to want to pawn in her grandmother's priceless Civil War doll. When they try pawning it in, one of the clerks at the store, named John, informs them that the "priceless" doll, is a Liquor Lad whiskey bottle from the 70's. But despite that, the Simpsons find John witty and invite him over to their house.

At their house, he seems to enjoy kid things like Itchy & Scratchy. Then, he and Homer dance to a record, where he calls Homer "the living end". The next morning Homer tells Marge about how much he likes John. Marge tells him that not only does he probably not have a wife and most likely doesn't go out with women, but that John is homosexual, causing Homer to go into a homophobic state. Marge tells Homer that although he has these tendencies, she still likes him, and he has invited the family for a drive, but Homer refuses to go. When they get back from their enjoyed car ride, Bart shows Homer a zapper gun John gave which Homer remembers being shown before.

Later that day, Bart passes by wearing a Hawaiian shirt and tells him that it "came out of the closet". At dinner, Marge has store bought cupcakes for everyone. Chocolate and pink icing. Homer gets even more concerned when Bart picks a pink one. In bed, Marge knows that there is something worrying Homer. He tells her that Bart is becoming gay, which Marge does not believe. The next day, Homer finds Bart dancing to tropical music while wearing a wig. Homer finds John in the kitchen with Marge and some cactus candy, and tells him that he is making Bart gay, and that he's going to try to fix him.

Homer then drops Bart off near a billboard with two women advertising Laramie cigarettes. He comes back two hours later and Bart tells him that he wants a slim cigarette. He then takes Bart to a steel mill to make Bart more man like. But when they enter, the miller turns out to be gay. Homer goes to Moe's Tavern and talks to Barney and Moe about this. They suggest that Bart goes out hunting with Homer. He grabs Bart out of John's pawn shop, and he takes him hunting with Barney and Moe. They wait in the woods for hours with not one sight of a deer, so they call it a night. Homer is depressed that wasn't able to change Bart, but Moe drives them to Santa's Village. Back at the Simpsons' house, John wonders where Homer and Bart went, and Lisa tells him that they went hunting, but John knows that the only deer around in the Winter are reindeer. The group smashes through the gate and find some reindeer. Homer turns around and expect to see dead reindeer when he looks back again. He hears a shot, but Bart, reluctant of shooting, fired plainly. This causes the deer to go nuts, and they try to attack the group. Barney and Moe hide under the food and water troughs, while Homer and Bart are surrounded by the angry reindeer. Homer sacrifices himself by holding Bart above his head while he is tenderized by the rein deer until a small little robot Santa Claus scares them away. This was apparently good timing of John who was controlling the robot all along and knew that they would be scared off by their "cruel master" Santa Claus. Homer now realizes that gays are not sissies after one of them (John) has saved his life. And Bart now realizes that Homer thought he was gay.

Before the credits role, the episode is dedicated to all the steel workers of America, still reaching for that rainbow.

Theme

"Homer's Phobia" is a significant part of The Simpsons' exploration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) themes. The series made several references to homosexuality before the episode aired.^[1] 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 and more overtly.^[2] 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".^[3]

Production

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.^[4] The idea of using John Waters as a guest star had been around for a while. 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".^[5] Their idea was combined with Meyer's and it became this episode. The episode was originally entitled "Bart Goes to Camp", but was renamed because the joke was too oblique.^[4]

John Waters accepted his invitation to be a guest star instantly, stating that if it was good enough for 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 Richard Simmons.^[6] 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.^[7]

According to commentary on the eighth season DVD, 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.^[5] 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".^[8] 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".^[5]

The "gay steel mill" scene was written by Steve Tompkins. He first pitched that they would be longshoremen, but it was too much work to animate the lading of ships, so a steel mill was used instead.^[9] Tompkins also wrote a different third act for the episode, which was not used in the final cut. 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.^[10]

Reception

The episode won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less) in 1997.^[11] Mike Anderson won the Annie Award for Best Individual Achievement: Directing in a TV Production,^[12] and the WAC Award for Best Director for Primetime Series at the 1998 World Animation Celebration.^[13] 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";^[14] and awarded it the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV - Individual Episode.^[15]

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.^[16] 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."^[17] John Alberti praised the episode's critiquing of "the most common misconception about homosexuality: namely that gayness is somehow contagious", as well as its other themes.^[15] 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."^[18] When the episode aired, the production team received "very few" complaints about its content, with most of the response being positive.^[10] It was placed fifth on Entertainment Weekly's top 25 The Simpsons episode list.^[19] In 2003, USA Today published a top 10 chosen by the webmaster of The Simpsons Archive, which had this episode listed in tenth place.^[20] It was again placed tenth on AskMen.com's "Top 10: Simpsons Episodes" list,^[21] with The Screen Directory placing it fifth on their list.^[22] IGN.com ranked John Waters's performance as the ninth best guest appearance in the show's history,^[23] with TV Guide naming him the third best film related guest star.^[24] In a 2008 article, Entertainment Weekly named Waters as one of the sixteen best Simpsons guest stars.^[25]

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."^[26] 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.^[27]

References