The Simpsons (kind of) responds to claims that Homer will stop choking Bart
Homer hasn't choked Bart in years, but he is apparently choking Bart right at his moment
Aux News The Simpsons
Earlier this week, the internet collectively noticed that Homer hasn’t choked Bart for a while on The Simpsons, with the revelation being prompted by a line in the most recent episode where Homer said that he doesn’t strangle Bart anymore because “times have changed.” It reads like a one-off joke in context, but then people who have stuck with the show in recent years pointed out that Homer hasn’t actually choked Bart onscreen for years—seemingly indicating that, yes, he won’t be doing it anymore.
But today, The Simpsons’ executive producers passed along a response to Variety in the form of a doodle by creator Matt Groening. The image features Bart holding up a phone that says “Simpsons: No more strangling,” while Homer strangles him and says “Why you little clickbaiting!!” The producers also included a note: “Homer Simpsons was unavailable for comment as he was busy strangling Bart.”
So that… doesn’t really explain anything? Does it mean Homer will still be choking Bart? Does it mean Homer never stopped choking Bart? Because we know that’s not true. Also, what does Homer think “clickbaiting” is? Is he saying that Bart wrote the news articles about the strangling? Is he saying that it was a lie to suggest that The Simpsons would stop Homer from choking bart? Because he hasn’t done it in years and he said on the show that he wasn’t going to do it anymore, so saying “Homer hasn’t choked Bart in years and he said he’s not going to do it anymore” seems like a safe assumption to make.
All we know is that Homer may or may not choke Bart again in the future, that Principal Skinner is actually a no-good street punk named Armin Tamzarian, and that the cash register says NRA4EVER when Maggie gets scanned as a nod to Groening’s radical right-wing politics.
26 Comments
Too late: I grew up with Homer strangling Bart and, since I am someone who always does what cartoons show me, I now strangle every child I run across.
“I now strangle every child I run across.”
That’s not what Homer did, though.
I can sympathize; I accidentally killed a childhood friend by “hilariously” dropping an anvil on him. I expected him to walk like an accordion for a few minutes and then be fine, the way Looney Tunes worked.
No jury in the world would convict you for that, dude!
Mm… maybe Texas.
Warning: close-range shotgun blasts to the face may result in injury.
You much have used an off brand anvil and not a properly licensed Acme brand anvil, I have done it several times and it worked as expected each time. I also once threw someone off a roof and the hovered in mid air for a good bit of time before looking down and thus falling to the ground in a large dust cloud. Now painting a tunnel on a wall does NOT in fact work as advertised, ask me know I know.
That’s on them for looking down. If they hadn’t, then they wouldn’t have fallen.
Presumably while doing so you talked JUST…LIKE…THIS!
Are you available for babysitting?
I’ll remind the kids to do the dishes!
‘”I’ll remind the kids to do the dishes!
I remember this movie, they shot the dishes
To be fair once you’ve run across a child, strangling them is the merciful option
I keep putting out poison with birdseed on it hoping to catch a roadrunner but these fucking anvils keep falling on my head.
I grew up on Wile E. Coyote cartoons, and I refuse to drive across the Southwest for similar reasons.
That’s just smart. No way to tell if that’s a real tunnel or just a painted on one until your car is an accordion.
Congratulations on using the correct verb. It always bothered me that Homer’s choking of Bart was described as “strangling,” which means* choking to death.*By a very narrow and pedantic definition, which is the best kind.****Yes, I am bored and have nothing better to do.
Last week’s Halloween episode brought back the strangling bit. I’m not going to spoil it, but with the show’s lead time, it’s unlikely meant as a commentary on this recent “controversy”.
So that… doesn’t really explain anything? Does it mean Homer will still be choking Bart? Does it mean Homer never stopped choking Bart? Because we know that’s not true. Also, what does Homer think “clickbaiting” is? Is he saying that Bart wrote the news articles about the strangling? Is he saying that it was a lie to suggest that The Simpsons would stop Homer from choking bart?For crying out loud, was it really necessary for Barsanti to devote an entire paragraph to the fact that he doesn’t understand how jokes work, because he takes everything way too literally? This kind of shit is exactly why this site should consider hring an editor.
Tight bowtie my ass.
I always saw the strangulation as the set up and the joke was what happened afterwards. Like in the episode when Bart had a pet snake. Home strangled Bart, but then the snake strangled Homer. Or in the episode when Homer was throwing Marge an appreciation dinner, and Homer strangled Bart, but then gave a toast for everyone to raise their wine box, including Bart having a wine box while still being strangled to cheer for Marge. After a two plus decade of being strangled with a variety of results, “stopping” now doesn’t really make a difference. Just like Apu. He will be missed, but you have 20 plus years of him in memoriam. Oh yeah, the Halloween episode where Homer was cursed by the gypsy woman, he strangles Bart but then Bart’s neck just stretches into a noodle neck. There was the episode when Homer was drunk off Snake rice wine and went through a drunken fantasy based on Studio Ghibli’s films where he tries to strangle snail Bart, but his hands then turn into bird wings and Bart enjoys it as a massage. Fond memories.
Homer-ized Kirk Van Houten strangled Homer-ized Milhouse just last week in the Treehouse of Horrors episode.
Right at his moment of what?
That doodle is absolutely not by Matt Groening – his drawings do not actually resemble the characters as they’ve evolved and been refined, he draws much looser and more like the very early Tracy Ullman Show shorts. But he has a very nifty legal stipulation that his signature appears on all public Simpsons artwork whether he drew it or not.
It was a one-off joke, and for some reason, the media content machine picked up ‘Homer says he won’t strangle Bart anymore’ and ran with it as if it were a press release from 20th Century Fox. It reached the point where the Prevent Child Abuse Association put out a statement praising the show for their decision.Then, one week later during the Treehouse of Horror episode, a story where all of Springfield turns into versions of Homer includes a joke where one of them strangles their son (I think it was Chief Wiggum Homer strangling Ralph, I can’t remember). The line was never meant as a canonical promise that Homer would never strangle Bart again. At best it was a wink to ‘hey, we realize that times have changed and you can’t do that today’ – except there was in fact a strangling scene in the very next episode. It just got swept up in the media coverage because for some reason we now treat TV shows like real things that actually happen.