“There’s a line in ‘Othello’ about a drinker. ‘Now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast.’ That pretty well covers it.” Barney Gumble, “A Star Is Burns” (Season 6, Episode 18)
The thank-you cards from my birthday in 1996 featured a hand-drawn image of Homer Simpson, waving. I was eight years old, and already infatuated with “The Simpsons.” Every Sunday throughout my childhood, I would leave my grandmother’s house by 7 p.m. to watch the newest episode back at home. On the Sundays that I stayed past 7 p.m., I would watch it at her house, cross-legged, sitting on a fine rug. The television was almost certainly older than I was, and the Gracie Films soundbite, from the end production credits, is forever engraved in my memory.
As I grew older, my relationship to “The Simpsons” changed. Back then, Fox affiliate stations scheduled episodes back-to-back. As a 12 year old, I remember spending hours each day watching the show, in turn watched over by two Barney Gumble figurines in my room.
A decade later, binging episodes was largely supplanted by binging beers. The show that captivated me throughout childhood also spoke to my adult life, and paralleled my blooming relationship with alcohol. I remember playing The Simpsons Arcade Game in the taproom after shifts at the brewery where I worked, or stumbling back from late nights overseas to watch a dubbed episode in a foreign language.
It’s not surprising that my life has evolved in step with the show. “The Simpsons” is now in its 32nd season, and is both the longest-running American sitcom and animated series on television. Even now, it feels routinely relevant, whether in its depictions of the dysfunctional nuclear family or its consistently prophetic read on current events. It is satirical, and politically aware, but also broadly relatable.
But for all its uncanny prescience and staying power, “The Simpsons” also has its blind spots and anachronisms. Comedian Hari Kondabolu’s documentary, “The Problem With Apu,” for instance, is a notable critique on the representation of the Indian character, Apu. As Neil Affleck, an animator and director of the show for 20 years, says, “The world has evolved, but ‘The Simpsons’ hasn’t.”
That might be particularly true in the way that it depicts drinking. For me, the show was most formative when teaching about bar culture. Since my family didn’t drink when I was growing up, Moe’s was my first watering hole. The fictional pub was probably my first exposure to beer. And I was a regular. There every Sunday. Or at times, every evening.
I’m not the only beer industry professional who was an obsessive “Simpsons” viewer as a kid, and who formed ideas about how drinking worked from the show’s example. Em Sauter of Pints and Panels, a comic about beer education, was so fond of the Gracie Films jingle that the pianist at her wedding played it to conclude the reception. Her wedding cake, too, was a “Simpsons” reference.
“Beer wasn’t part of my childhood at all, but there were two bars in my hometown growing up that were essentially like Moe’s,” says Sauter. “They reminded me of what I would think of if I think of Moe’s. Smoking inside. Stained. Not really a place for kids. It is a respite for certain people, for good or for bad.” As an Advanced Cicerone, Sauter jokes that she knows now that Moe Szyslak, the salty bartender and owner of Moe’s Tavern, definitely doesn’t clean his draft lines. “It’s that kind of bar,” she laughs.
Members of the Springfield community, mostly men, frequent Moe’s. It’s used as a recurring setting and plot device throughout episodes. On occasion, the space is inhabited by an array of guests, but the customer base rarely changes from the regular cast of barflys.
“Beer in the ’90s is like a dad’s place. Moe’s was a dad’s place,” says Sauter. “Bar culture in the ’90s [was] a very male-oriented space, with macro brands, not having to be nice, and a ‘this is where I hide from my family’ attitude.” A character like Duffman—the exaggerated corporate mascot for the show’s Duff Beer brand, who contemporary viewers might note embodies a form of toxic masculinity—is of a time when, Sauter remembers, “Commercials from the Super Bowl [showed] a man picking a beer over his girlfriend.”
Aside from the lack of diversity in the space, alcohol abuse at Moe’s is a recurring theme. “Drinking is a really terrible vice that a lot of characters have,” Sauter says. “It doesn’t show drinking in a favorable light, and when I look at Moe’s, it is where this vice can be achieved. Everyone has those bars in their towns for the most part. In my head, those places were dank and dark growing up, but I’ve grown to love a good dive bar.”
I, too, love a good dive bar. I think of dives as a reliable constant in my life—the same way I can rely on laughing aloud when rewatching an old episode of “The Simpsons.” I find comfort in those bars that have been a little overlooked, are a bit rough around the edges—the kind that only take cash. The kind that share more than a passing resemblance to Moe’s.
While attending graduate school for cartooning, Sauter lived above a bar. On her patronage, she says, “You would go every day, similar to how Homer goes to Moe’s,” admitting that she began feeling a bit uncomfortable after realizing she had become a regular, and that the bartender knew her name and order.
“They don’t really tackle moderation,” Sauter says. “It is not something that is discussed in that show.”
Mark Sljukic, a former beer account manager and industry professional, is also a longtime “Simpsons” fan—the kind who would marathon seasons with his college roommate, analyzing episodes with an eye to his own dream of comedic writing. As he notes, the centrality of bar culture to “The Simpsons” is no accident: Sam Simon, a producer of the show, was also a writer and producer on the first three seasons of “Cheers.” “The episode, ‘Flaming Moe’s,’ is pretty much an homage to ‘Cheers,’” he says, stressing the importance of the bar as a narrative device.
For all the moments in the show that allude to barside camaraderie, the centrality of the bar as a social space often plays out in negative ways. In “The Springfield Files” (Season 8, Episode 10), Homer overindulges and walks home after failing a breathalyzer test, leading to the opening of a larger tale. Frequently, characters drink too much and go one step further by operating vehicles under the influence. The episode “Duffless” (Season 4, Episode 16) is a culmination of many of these factors, and depicts blatant sexist advertising, the beer industry’s neglect for health consequences, and ends with Homer getting a DUI.
Of these negative portrayals of alcohol, Sljukic says, “The single most troubling one is drunk driving. There is a lot of glorification of drunk driving.” Funnily enough, “Duffless” ends with Homer extending his sobriety and spending the evening with Marge Simpson, riding off into the sunset on a bicycle singing, “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.” It may be the first representation of a Sober October or Dry January—or at least a prolonged period of sobriety—for Homer.
But that moment was a rare outlier. “One of the common tropes is Marge being completely mortified by Homer’s behavior when he’s drunk,” says Sljukic. “That’s usually the crux of the conflict in the episode. Then, Homer goes through some form of redemption.” Homer’s behavior, his tendency to value his bar family over his real family, can be seen in many instances. In “Fear of Flying” (Season 6, Episode 11), Marge asks her husband, “What if you pretended that this couch were a bar? Then you could spend more nights at home with us.”
For Sljukic, Homer’s behavior normalized the drinking habits of many of the adults in his life as a young viewer. “For a lot of kids that grow up around alcoholism, they are forced to grow up quicker. These writers will disarm you,” he says, noting their ability to blend the serious and the humorous, as in “A Star Is Burns” (Season 6, Episode 18). In that episode, the award-winning entry for the town’s film festival is a poignant, black-and-white short capturing Barney’s alcoholism—closing with the tagline, “Don’t cry for me, I’m already dead.” The grand prize for the fest is a lifetime supply of Duff Beer.
“The way these guys wrote, [the] joke density, no laugh track … they were able to fit more jokes per minute than any show on television at that point,” Sljukic says.
How much is misbehavior around alcohol on “The Simpsons” intended as glorification, and how much is intended as satire? It’s a complicated question, and the way in which the show’s brand of dark comedy is received depends on the viewer and their fluency with parody.
“They treat these characters with a lot of humanity,” says Sljukic. “Even the alcoholics. I think a hallmark of ‘The Simpsons’ is that while they do place a high priority on jokes and joke density, there is just as much priority on humanity. Certainly with some exceptions. There are some really problematic elements, especially with racism and transphobia.”
Ultimately, this tension gets at the heart of the show, and its sometimes-complex legacy. “I think one of the great things of the show is their ability to hold up the mirror to themselves sometimes,” says Sljukic. “Yes, we have these alcoholic characters, so at times we have to show the seedy underbelly.”
Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, a former professor of communication studies at Randolph College, agrees. “As an academic, I always felt ‘The Simpsons’ was so unique in how it entered the space of meaning-making, and I am really fascinated in how people do it when they are crafting creative work,” she says. “With an animated series, everything’s on purpose.”
When I first asked Jackson-Beckham—now the principal of Crafted For All and executive director of Craft x EDU—if she would consider being a source for this piece, she sent me back a photo of her taken at Moe’s Tavern in Universal Studios, with a Duff Beer in hand. Prior to her vacation, she had presented a panel at a conference titled: “Ideological Crystal Lattice or Shotgun Critique?: Examining the Rhetorical Efficacy of The Simpsons’ ‘Itchy & Scratchy Land.’”
“They’ve got this way of brushing up to the absurdities of modern life and don’t minimize them,” she says. “There is still a joke in there. But that joke can be really fucked up. And there is a skill in that.” That skill has led to numerous awards over the years, including dozens of Peabodys, Emmys, and even a few Entertainment Industries Council (EIC) PRISM Awards, which honor accurate depictions of substance abuse and mental health in entertainment programming.
Jackson-Beckham is also intrigued by what she calls the “terms of engagement” with “The Simpsons.” “In the rhetoric of half-hour comedy, you either have an aspirational narrative or the other direction,” she says. “There are rarely horizontal relationships. You are either looking up to the Cosbys or down to the Conners. ‘The Simpsons,’ is more of that horizontal relationship than most shows on network television. They’re coded as middle-class in a lot of ways. People could look at Barney and be like, ‘Yup, there is that unrealized potential, just like me,’ and find some weird camaraderie,” she says.
“The Simpsons” is one of numerous children’s shows that have satirical elements and jokes intended for adult viewers. Often, it skirts that line of being perhaps too adult for children, or too childish for adults. There are subtleties throughout each episode that may be missed or misconstrued, depending on the viewer.
“They hold up for us a remarkable, nuanced mirror for the format,” says Jackson-Beckham. “I don’t know of any other half-hour family comedy that attempts to hold up that mirror to American society.”
“I think the attitude towards alcohol would be the same attitude of ‘The Simpsons’ towards anything else, which is, ‘Don’t take it too seriously, but do take prisoners,’” says the tenured animator and director Neil Affleck. I contacted Affleck because he was the director of a very important episode, “Days of Wine and D’oh’ses” (Season 11, Episode 18). In this episode, the show’s most recognizable alcoholic, Barney Gumble, becomes sober. Affleck says he had a vested interest in the narrative.
“I was an alcoholic by the time I was 20. From the age of 15 to 22 I drank heavily and recklessly. I quit at 25, and I am 65 now,” he says. Affleck describes Barney Gumble as a drunk, digraceful, funny, and stupid. “He makes Homer look like a judicious, well-intentioned, and a well-reflective individual by comparison.”
But what does Barney look like without beer? In the episode, written by Dan Castellaneta—the voice of both Homer and Barney—and his wife Deb Lacusta, Barney watches a video of himself acting deplorably and takes up sobriety to learn how to fly a helicopter. Affleck says the script “made his hair stand on end,” and was surprised that Lacusta and Castellaneta were able to reinvent a character who, in many ways, “is a one-trick pony.”
“Going to the table read, I told the writers that this story hit home for me. And I mentioned my problems with alcohol as a kid and [that I] quit when I was 25. It didn’t register with them at all. They were like, ‘Oh, that’s nice. Just do a damn good job. We want a really good show here,’” Affleck jokes. He didn’t ask to direct the show because of that connection; instead, it happened serendipitously. “As far as I know, you couldn’t ask for particular shows. Some of the more experienced directors had certain stories steered towards them by the writers, but I don’t think that happened to me. I think it was just a fluke, frankly. Happenstance more than anything else.”
For Affleck, the episode speaks to personal experience and demonstrates the show’s depth of feeling. “The thing I related to was when you have a problem like that, and you wake up the next day and you know your behavior has been disgraceful, and you’re befuddled, there is just a deep sense of personal humiliation that you experience. And believe me, I was there a bunch of times. So I related on that level. I related to the idea which Barney learns—that people I thought were friends of mine just sort of disappeared when I was trying to go straight and go on the wagon. You find out who your friends are in times like that.”
In episodes showing Barney’s sobriety, he is an upstanding citizen, whether training to be an astronaut (“Deep Space Homer”—Season 5, Episode 15) or a pilot. And yet, while he’s sober, or actively addressing his drinking problem, for two additional seasons, Barney eventually reneges on his new lifestyle and succumbs to alcoholism again.
“I really don’t think they could have ended it any other way than that,” Affleck reflects. “With him back at his appointed spot at the end of the bar, slowly falling asleep in another mug of beer. Because that’s who Barney is. And you can’t change a character’s brand like that. You can for 20 minutes, as long as in the last two minutes the universe is back as it is meant to be. So it was a fairytale, but that’s cool.”
A tin cup printed with a Bart Simpson graphic sits on my desk. It’s from 1999 and is a bit sun-damaged. I use it to hold pens. I grab for a red Sharpie to make annotations to this piece. I owned a lot of “Simpsons” paraphernalia growing up—books, toys, clothing—much like those kids who collected items from their favorite superhero universes. Still, I don’t think Barney Gumble was my hero. Nor were Homer, Marge, Bart, or Lisa, though they did recur in my life like characters in a fairytale, as Affleck puts it.
By the time I reached college and was close to the legal drinking age, I was also taking animation classes. In those days, I mainly looked to beer to socialize and as a way to potentially unlock creativity. After a year, I transferred to a larger state university, and my drinking habits also increased.
Growing up as someone who wasn’t familiar with drinking first-hand, depictions of alcohol consumption in shows like “The Simpsons”—and in college-centric films, and in mass media in general—didn’t help me gain understanding or appreciation of moderation. But in the same way that violent video games don’t just lead to aggressive behavior, watching “The Simpsons” as a kid didn’t necessarily predetermine my relationship to alcohol.
I did, however, have to learn the hard way about finding a balance in my own drinking habits over time. As someone who has worked in the beer industry and has seen the scope of functional alcoholism, I decided to participate in my first Dry January this year. To be honest, I’m still learning.
I watch “The Simpsons” less often now, though I find comfort in knowing that it still airs, and that I can flip through the channel listings and undoubtedly find it at any hour. In a way, my relationship to the show is similar to my relationship to dive bars. I may not always be on the prowl for one, but knowing they’re out there brings me some peace of mind.
Words by Samer KhudairiIllustrations by Colette Holston
Language 
