dolls featuring Bart flood the stores, and Krusty focuses his entire show around Bart and his magical phrase for a few weeks. Then, all of a sudden, the line loses its charm. Bart instantly goes from celebrity to washed-up, and he realizes the fleeting nature of fame. The producers of “The Simpsons” obviously realized that the same thing would have happened to the show if they had not made an adjustment. As a result, the focus of the show shifted from Bart to Homer around the fourth season, and writers began developing the characters of the residents of Springfield. Bart was recently listed as one of the twenty most important cultural figures of the twentieth century by Time magazine, but an analysis of the program reveals that Homer has been the true sustaining force. The creator of “The Simpsons,” Matt Groening, stated that his original intention was for the Simpsons to be a TV family superficially similar to those of his ‘60s childhood, only one you could feel superior to. The essence of Homer’s appeal lies in the latter portion of that statement. He is the ultimate, typical bumbling TV father. He concocts wild schemes that the viewer knows will fail miserably, and the audience takes pleasure in watching as he stumbles his way into inevitable disaster. As hard as he tries, Homer is simply not very bright, and the viewers can sympathize with him and feel good about themselves. In a way, Homer is living out the fantasies of the average Joe. He sleeps his way through work, repeatedly, inexplicably keeping his job despite massive mistakes. He drinks beer and goes bowling seemingly every night, and comes home to a loving wife and family with a hot meal on the table. Whenever he gets the urge to go after something new, he ignores any possible consequences and goes for it. Because he has the same dreams that the viewers have, the audience relates to him and, in a way, envies him. The view...
