Here's a 2-hour long supercut of every LGBTQ joke made on The Simpsons
Aux Features American television series
The Simpsons has always had queer characters, but it’s fair to say that it didn’t always treat its LGBTQ characters in the best way–to say the least. They were either mocked by other characters for being queer or had their sexual orientation treated ambiguously. Lest we forget, it took a whopping sixteen seasons for Patty to officially come out. But now we can see how much the show actually changed its approach on queer characters throughout its three-decade run. Drew Mackie, who hosts the podcast Gayest Episode Ever on LGBTQ-focused episodes of classic sitcoms, made a video documenting every single LGBTQ joke across 31 seasons of the animated series.
The 2-hour long video begins showing the very first Smithers gay joke and goes on to chronicle the bad (lots of awful trans jokes) before finally getting to the good. But it takes nearly 20 seasons for the jokes to stop framing gayness as a joke in and of itself and begin presenting queer relationships just as they would any other character’s. One episode that Mackie added commentary to on the video and has discussed on Gayest Episode Ever is “Livin’ La Pura Vida” from season 31. Patty and her new girlfriend Evelyn (voiced by Fortune Feimster) join Homer and Marge on vacation, but the trip makes Patty realize that Evelyn is a Homer.
Here’s what Mackie wrote about what he found through making this supercut:
The show has had different eras in which LGBT humor functions differently. Again, that might seem obvious, but to me it was interesting to see how the show tracked societal attitudes toward LGBT people: from occasional references in early seasons because gay content was still taboo on broadcast TV to sometimes the majority of a given season having at least one LGBT joke per episode. As of the posting of this video, it’s rarer for an episode to make a one-off LGBT joke, either because it’s become more normalized for the people who make the show or because gay jokes are just told less often, generally speaking. It is worth pointing out, however, that the two most recent seasons of the show contain four separate episodes that a viewer might consider queer episodes: “Mad About the Toy,” “Werking Mom,” “Marge the Lumberjill” and “Livin’ La Pura Vida.” That’s a lot, and the LGBT humor featured in these episodes is more central to the plot—they’re tied to an LGBT character who’s part of the story.
He also points out that, as the video shows, The Simpsons has made some progress with its gay characters as of late—particularly in Smithers and Patty’s storylines—but there’s still a lot of improvement to be made in its portrayal of trans characters.
Regarding the T in LGBT, there’s a lot more that can be improved. The show may have progressed with how it uses gay and lesbian characters—Smithers and Patty in particular—but it hasn’t done much to represent transgender characters. Gayest Episode Ever looks forward to bringing more guests in for future episodes to discuss how successful the show’s attempts at trans jokes have been.
But one thing definitely hasn’t changed in 31 seasons: Smithers absolutely deserves better than Burns.
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92 Comments
People who did this deserve a medal just for this.All that “aaaaand at number 5 is a personal favourite of mine” commentary stuff is nails on chalkboard.
It doesn’t matter if a joke is racist, sexist, off-color or offensive in any way, as long as it is funny. To wit, I give you the world funniest rape joke I created.Knock, Knock.Who’s there?Interrupting rapist.Interrupting rapi….*squish
Today, we’re going to do a Tier List of Simpsons gay jokes. So… … … uh… in this case D is clearly offensive while S will stand for spectacularly empowering and funny. Before we start, as you like and subscribe, a little bit about my history with the show.
you’re not typing this slowly enouuggghhh… so, many of you may be surprised by my list, and i really want to hear what you guys have to say, so be sure to comment down below.
It doesn’t matter if a joke is racist, sexist, off-color or offensive in any way, as long as it is funny. To wit, I give you the world funniest rape joke I created.Knock, Knock.Who’s there?Interrupting rapist.Interrupting rapi….*squish
What a fucking awful time to be alive.
I mean… you could fix that.
I’m trying. But we are a world of miserable, angry scolds and there’s more of them than there are of me.
Right? Fucking gay people not wanting to be treated as a punchline. Don’t they know how upset that makes you?
I mean I haven’t watched in years, but this was one of my all-time favorite Smithers jokes and I’m still not sure how they got it by the censor…
This one always makes me chuckle. It’s funny because it’s true. It works on so many levels!
This show got away with so much. Remember the episode where Homer got raped by a panda?
No, but I remember the one where Homer got raped by Marge.
Remember when Marge was essentially raped by a German man impersonating Homer?
Oh, she knew what was going on there.
“reeking of panda-love”
Yeah, didn’t really “get away with it” there.
This reminds me of the other classic Burns/Smithers conversation:Burns: So, another Friday is upon us, what’ll you be doing Smithers? Something gay no doubt.Smithers: Wha… What?Burns: You know, light-hearted, fancy-free. Mothers, lock up your daughters… Smithers is on the town!Smithers: Hahaha, exactly, sir.
You should…probably ignore that.
That Gay President in 2084 has aged very truthfully, cause I’m pretty sure there’s 73 million people who would NOT go for that.
Someone did this for Friends (which has since been taken down), and even as a Friends superfan, woof. It’s like that bit in The Office where Jim admits his jokes on Dwight don’t sound as funny when they’re read one after another. One of the creators being gay doesn’t make “How’s the dancing? Gay yet?” etc any more palatable.As with the characterization with Apu, I find this video fascinating just as a tracker of Simpsons navigating comedic landscapes over multiple generations of general culture. Like SNL, hanging around for 30+ years means constantly shifting and readjusting where your joke targets are and how to approach them (imagine/remember the stuff you could get away with in the decades preceding the Simpsons’ debut). In a way, the show being around long past its creative powers is like Forrest Gump and Jenny constantly hitting every signpost of culture through their generations.
I distinctly remember how everyone was falling all over themselves to praise the casting of a cisgender woman as Chandler’s trans father, saying it was this edgy, daring move that would hopefully be repeated a lot more.
I remember the director Trans America doing that also. Practically beaming when he said, “We wanted to cast a woman because trans women don’t look like men in dresses.” Like, you were so close to getting it right.
A classic:
Well, they should have a fire exit.
Enjoy your deathtrap, ladies!
Making Patty gay always rubbed me the wrong way. Earlier she was just celibate, suggesting asexuality. But that quickly vanished when they needed another gay character.
It’s a little like Jughead in Riverdale, who also wasn’t allowed to be ace. You can be gay or bi (which generally also mean gay) but you have to want to fuck someone. Not wanting to fuck is unacceptable for TV.
I’ve said this before in the context of Apu, but I still maintain that if The Simpsons had ended after 10-13 seasons, it’d be remembered as an all-time-greatest sitcom that was “of its time” in places.Because it’s still going, it gets held to current standards, because it’s a current show; even while it clings to some problematic elements from its glory days.Instead of dying a hero, it lived long enough to become the villain 😛
I don’t know if that’s true. People judge older content by today’s standards all the time. It stupidly dug its heels in on the Apu controversy, but they’re starting to use POC exclusively to voice characters of color, but I think the show has done a lot to change over the years (this supercut would agree).
If they’ve become a villain, it’s simply because they’ve lived too long.
I don’t really see this write up, the comments here, or the statement of the person who made this video indicating anyone thinks they are the villain. It seems like we all have an understanding that THIRTY YEARS means a show is going to change and evolve, and this just shows that.
I know it slides in somewhere on the offensive scale, but dammit, the Gay Steel Workers of America scene makes me laugh every time.“We work hard, we play hard…”
Everybody dance now!
That whole episode is great, but the steel mill just slays:“Hot stuff, comin’ through!”“There’s a spark in your hair!”“Ooh, get it, get it!”“Oh, be nice!”“Keep reaching for that rainbow!”
“Well, it’s been two hours. How do you feel?”
“I dunno. I kinda want a cigarette.”
“That’s a good start, let’s get you a pack. What’s your brand?”
“ANYTHING Slim!”
I still giggle a bit at “Is it all right to come out now, Mr. Gay Man, sir?”
I can’t help but laugh at the line, “Dad, why did you bring me to a gay steel mill?”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
That episode, You Only Move Twice, and Marge vs the Monorail have to be my top three of all-time. I feel like Homer’s Phobia works because it’s, well, Homer’s phobia that’s the butt of the jokes. But then, I’m a straight white dude so I’m not exactly the person who should be declaring whether it treats the subject matter well or not.
You should leave that to the yellow dudes!
Matt Baume from Culture Cruise did an episode on “Homer’s Phobia” explaining its importance for when it came out.
Ah! Yes, I remember watching that video. Really good stuff.
I dunno, it feels like sometimes there’s too much pearl clutching from younger members of the LGBTQI+ community, I find it really hard to be offended by the gay jokes in The Simpsons.But I grew up gay in the 80s, I had more immediate things to be offended by.
It’s a dated show, which isn’t all that remarkable for a 30 year old sitcom. I wouldn’t be surprised if my kids find it boring, the way I always found episodes of the Dick Van Dyke show. On the other hand it’s also very funny, so maybe my kids will enjoy it, the way other people enjoy episodes of the Dick Van Dyke show.
didn’t you once author a buzzfeed quiz where you insinuated there were no queer men
IIRC Bean from Disenchantment is the first explicitly queer character to lead a Matt Groening show (she’s bisexual), so we’re getting somewhere.
It was also pretty amazing that the fact that the relationship is between two women is never once treated as any kind of issue. Replace Mora with a male character and literally not one word of the script would have to change.
I’ve enjoyed that show far more than I thought I would. At first the concept just seemed frivilous but they’ve taken it really interesting places.
More of this sort of analysis, please.
I never saw the Harvey Fierstein/Carl episode until I got the DVDs, and I had by that point seen every golden era episode multiple times, which leads me to believe with reasonable certainty that my Ohio Fox station pulled that episode from the syndication rotation due to Carl’s gay coding (and that man-on-man kiss).
Remember the days of network pre-emptions? Late in the Must See TV-era, I noticed that whenever NBC had a particularly “scandalous” episode in their lineup (e.g., it’s Sweeps week, and Will is actually going to kiss the special guest star on Will & Grace,) the Charlotte affiliate would suddenly throw an episode of their feel-good human interest series “The Carolina Traveler” into primetime. This week, we’ll be meeting a family in Manteo operating the oldest Bed and Breakfast on the coast, talking to a man in Rockingham who’s working to preserve the town’s stock car history, and visiting a 100-year-old diner in Hot Springs for an authentic Appalachian breakfast.
And we definitely WON’T be seeing ANYBODY kiss Patrick Dempsey!
When David Letterman was on hiatus for his heart surgery and Drew Barrymore was one of the fill-in guest hosts, she discussed the time that she flashed Dave on-air, and when they started playing the clip, my local affiliate cut to a commercial and then cut right back to the episode. They didn’t even play the full commercial, just ten seconds or so to cover the footage of Drew dancing on Dave’s desk.
When I worked for a public access TV station we used to keep a tape of public service announcements cued up just in case.
Smithers: *takes future injection*
I LOVE BOOBIES!
Indeed. Somehow the writers should have known 30 years ago what is now considered offensive, but then was not. Shame on them.
It WAS considered offensive then. The only thing that has changed in 30 years is that people to whom the offense was directed at have a stronger voice in society now and so more people are willing to take them seriously when they express their offense. Apu didn’t suddenly become offensive to Indian people in 2017, where as before he wasn’t. He was always offensive, it’s just now more people listen when Indian people say he’s offensive. It’s the same with the gay jokes. They didn’t just magically become offensive, they were always offensive. It’s just that before, straight people didn’t care because straight people didn’t care what gay people thought.
THANK YOU
Plenty of people knew in the year 2000 that mocking stereotypes of minorities was an asshole thing to do. So yes, shame on them.
JFC what a lazy shit take.
I’m usually not one for supercuts, but this one is very well done. And god, some of these don’t age well but others are so so funny. Some are both!I’ve also been listening to Weird Al’s discography, and there are several trans jokes that have not held up at all.
I really worry that even Al could get canceled one day. I don’t want it to happen, but he has a lot of ableist jokes, even more recently.
I don’t think Al’s going to have a problem. Even in his most recent album he used the word “spastic,” then apologized for not realizing it’s an ableist term, and then the world moved on.
I think it was the shortened version of it, actually, which is offensive in the same way an adjective to describe an individual’s developmental delay (which I don’t use, either, because it’s all become offensive now) became the truncated R word, which was always a slur found mostly on North American playgrounds and in Boston. I think there’s an essentialist quality to it. There’s a difference between describing a symptom or condition someone is living with and summing them up as being their symptom or disease.
No, in Word Crimes he uses the full word, to rhyme with “sarcastic.” Although I do know that we used the shortened version in New Hampshire, too. I even had a buddy that went by that as his nickname.
He’s got a few little person jokes in there that go over like a lead balloon these days, too. Doesn’t he not play songs that punch down like that live anymore? I feel like I heard that somewhere, and he’s such a super nice guy that it would be a little strange if he hasn’t addressed his pre-widespread-social-justice-awareness straight white and nerdy comedy blinders, because not that “everybody’s doing it” is an excuse, but man, there’s been a lot of that over the years from otherwise decent left-leaning ally comedians. And unless you’re working at about the same level as Mel Brooks — and sometimes even if you are Mel Brooks — not very much of it doesn’t fall flat on its face, even if it still makes us laugh.For instance, I’m pretty sure “SUPPLIES!” from “UHF” is offensive or on the “highly questionable” side of borderline at the least, but I think it’s still the funniest joke Al’s ever done and to this day I crack up whenever it randomly pops into my head.That bit at least gets decency points for being so, so incredibly stupid while being so perfectly crafted. Which in my mind is one of the three ways an offensive joke by well-intentioned comedians can land acceptably: be stupid and virtuosic like “Airplane!” or offend as a political act like “Blazing Saddles” or just go so bonkers over the top with it that the offensiveness itself becomes the art form like “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
“He’s got a few little person jokes in there that go over like a lead balloon these days, too. Doesn’t he not play songs that punch down like that live anymore?”
Hey! What were we just talking about?!
It helps that Kuni (though a total cartoon) doesn’t have a stereotyped l/r swap accent, he has no problem with “red snapper,” and that it comes late in the film after we’ve already been introduced to him plenty. But mostly it’s great because it’s just perfect comedic timing.
Wow, it took an hour to get to the ‘Public transportation is for jerks and lesbians’ bit! This is thorough.
Wow, things got ROUGH around the turn of the century. Feels like that was kind of indicative of culture as a whole during that era, where the idea that homosexuality wasn’t a taboo subject anymore and there was a growing tolerance among the public meant that writers could let rip with the stereotyping and double down on the gay panic stuff, right?
Also, shame on me for laughing at the clip from “Yokel Chords” that starts with an egregious Asian stereotype and ends with a joke about how Homer has written “I am gay” word balloons next to the portraits on every dollar in his wallet.
I think a lot of 00s culture stemmed from or had a foot in a backlash to the original (now very quaint and inefficient-seeming) 90s wave of “political correctness”. I’m expecting something very similar to come along by the end of this decade, but we’ll see.
It’s the not so turn-of-the-century stuff that surprises me. The main gay characters on Modern Family are well-rounded, but I don’t think they’ve had a gay friend who wasn’t an over-the-top cartoon character of a gay person. Even as a joke – and I get that Nathan Lane, who plays one of them, is a gay man – I don’t get how, “Let’s have them all be catty about fashion and interior decorating” even makes it past the writers room. It may not be homophobic, but it’s lazy af.
“it’s lazy af.”
Forget it Jake. It’s sitcom writing.
Some of these are stretches. Like, is Itchy dancing with Scratchy really a gay joke? The joke was that the show had become bland and harmless and them ballroom dancing was an example of that.
I had the same thought. Itchy and Scratchy are basically genderless characters (outside of the episode where they were turned into girls, an episode which acknowledged that they hadn’t really been “boys” before), and the joke of them dancing together isn’t about sexuality, it’s about the fact that watching cartoon characters ballroom dancing isn’t funny or entertaining.
George Herriman made the definitive statement I say: cartoon mice are family men, cartoon cats are completely genderfluid sprites.
Same. Like the school bus scene- It’s embarrassing for cool Bart to be friends with the vastly unpopular Martin, but it’s retroactively a gay joke now? What are we doing?
More recent ones are just references to characters who are gay. There are a bunch of scenes from an episode where Homer is palling around with Patty’s girlfriend. It’s an interesting contrast to see how they’ve gone from Homer freaking out about John being gay to being friends with a lesbian without sexuality even getting mentioned. But it’s hardly an “LGBT joke”.
“It’s an interesting contrast to see how they’ve gone from Homer freaking out about John being gay to being friends with a lesbian without sexuality even getting mentioned.”
It is also, unfortunately, how a lot of men actually feel.
I had a good laugh at Homer’s angry reaction to “Were that cat and mouse dancing?! Because IF THEY WERE…” because it just plays as “Homer refuses to accept cats and mice as anything but stereotypical enemies.”That said, it’s not difficult to see an unspoken bit about gender roles/stereotypes there that makes it read as a gag about homophobia (That’s my English degree speaking/trying to make itself useful.)
So a show that’s been on the air for 32 years has evolved along with the society it is depicting. Got it.
The golden age Simpsons were bad on this front, Zombie Simpsons got better. So the more correct the show became the worse it got.
I don’t know, there are a lot of instances of “No gay joke is made here, but they could have so we’re counting it. And padding our video with comments about it.”
“Damn it we need this video longer if we’re gonna get picked up by all the clickbait sites! Find me some more clips, I don’t care how far you have to stretch!”
I feel like ‘full length feature film’ is far too long for a Youtube video.Although this seems like it might have more merit than the ‘take longer to explain why I hated this movie than the movie’s actual runtime’ videos.
This is a pretty fun way to watch The Simpsons. What other types of jokes warrant a supercut?
There’s one on YouTube that’s about I think 15 minutes of just “Homer’s brain” jokes. I think that was a good choice, although limited to one character.Maybe a supercut of all the times someone randomly freaks out during an otherwise serious serious occasion. Like the person jumping through the window when the PTA disbands, or the guy in Marge’s police academy class who screams, “FORGET ABOUT THE BADGE! WHEN DO WE GET THE FREAKIN’ GUNS?!” There’s probably enough of those to fill about half an hour.
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your youtube channel.
Must every show shoehorn in a trans character?
Back when the Simpsons was good
Is Harvey Fierstein playing Karl a gay joke? He’s literally playing himself and it’s glorious.God I love Karl.
Burns is filthy rich, has no family, is very old and very frail: Smithers knows what he’s doing, let him be.
As you can see, the “real deal” with Waylon Smithers is that he’s Mr. Burns’ assistant. He’s in his early forties, is unmarried, and currently resides in Springfield. Thanks for writing!
What’s interesting to me is that the queer jokes are not a straight trajectory (no pun intended); they’re lazy, then they get better, then they get worse, then really bad, then get better, but never really good. It’s a journey