Cop3// the importance of 'Homers Phobia'

The Simpsons is the longest running American sitcom as well as animated series, it's first episode broadcasting in America in 1989. The series is created by Matt Groening and the series itself has featured a number of social and political topics, as well as episodes featuring a very tongue and cheek  comment on pop culture. The Simpsons has featured LGBT themes since its first season and continues to include represent LGBT people both in characters, themes and episode storylines.

For my research I've been looking into arguably one of the most well known episodes of The Simpsons; Episode 168 'Homers Phobia'. This episode was the first to focus entirely on a LGBT storyline. The episode focuses on homophobia, and in The Simpsons traditional style, deals with the issue in a light hearted way without portraying any aggressive under tones. The episode also features film directing and writing, and gay idol John Waters as a leading characters voice actor 'John' ; the episode even manages to slip in a reference to his musical film 'HairSpray' with Bart cross dressing and dancing in a massive 60s wig.  The praise the episode received for its pro-equal rights was ground breaking for animated works, both from the LGBT communities, views and critics.

The episode focuses on Homers paranoia about a homosexual man turning his son, Bart, gay - which at the time was relevant (and still is) homophobic paranoia that homosexuals turned children gay. Homer finds out a new friend of the family (john) is homosexual. At first he refuses to have anything to do with John but then begins to fear his son Bart is being influences by John and fears his son will be encouraged to be gay. Homer then begins to try and influence his sons identity, by making Bart stare at sexualized women and takes him hunting, in order to kill something. In the end Homer realises how ridiculous he's been acting both towards John and Bart. There's also a moment where Bart is told Homer has been acting strange with him because he thinks he's gay and there's a moment of possible realisation of identity for Bart, set to the song 'Everybody dance now'. The most iconic scene features Homer accidentally taking Bart to a Gay steels mill, which Homer calls his 'nightmare'. Homer also calls the homosexuals there 'sick' and their response is 'oh be nice'.

This episode is important because it portrays homosexuality as something that isn't just effeminate body language and hyper sexual - but an identity. It also portrays homophobia as ignorance, through Homers character - and as veiwers, what's funny about the episode isn't the gay jokes but rather how ridiculous Homer is being because of his paranoia about gay men.

CoP3// Planning Interviews

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In order to develop something to live along side my essay, that focuses on LGBT, I'm planning on conducing interviews with members of the LGBT community. A few weeks back I posted a digital poster online on LGBT group pages on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter to advertise for interviewees. The response I got from people who had seen my poster was massive and every response was positive about being involved. After a week or so I set out an email about interviewing information to the Email addresses of the interviewees, offering a digital interview as well as a face-to-face one. I'm going to be conducing the interviews over Skype and Google Hang-Outs and I'm focusing on asking these 5 questions; 

1. What do you identify as?

2. When did you realise you were this identity?

3. When did you first become open about your identity?

4. What responses did you have from becoming open about your identity? 

5. How do you feel about how your identity is represented in media?

I want to focus my questions on the individuals own experience and their opinions on how their experience has been/is going to be. I also want to avoid questions focusing on how poorly represented LGBT is in general, because I'm already fully aware of that - but from personal and research. I want these interviews are all about the individuals within the community and their stories.  

I'm planning on starting interviews this Monday on the 21st and giving myself a week to get all of them done.