Bart Simpson

• 1. Introduction

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  Bart Simpson made his television debut on the 19th of April 1987, in a short called "Good Night" on The Tracey Ullman Show. He was ten years old, and has stayed ten years old in every season since. In 1998, Time magazine placed him among the hundred most important people of the twentieth century. He was the only fictional character on that list. What made a sketched cartoon boy from a dysfunctional Springfield family land in that company? And why did that same character alarm a sitting United States president enough to prompt a public response?

• 2. Born in a Lobby

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  In 1987, cartoonist Matt Groening arrived at producer James L. Brooks's office with a pitch. He planned to adapt his comic strip, Life in Hell, into animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show. Sitting in the lobby before the meeting, he realized that adapting the strip would require him to surrender its publication rights. He chose instead to create something new on the spot. Groening sketched a dysfunctional family and gave most members names drawn from his own relatives. For the rebellious son, he chose "Bart" rather than "Matt". He felt his own name would not, in his words, "go over well in a pitch meeting." Bart, as it happens, is also an anagram of brat. His middle initial, J, was chosen as a tribute to the naming convention used for Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel. Both characters had been named after their creator Jay Ward in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Groening later confirmed that Bart's full middle name is Jo-Jo, a detail settled during a recording session by Nancy Cartwright. After two years of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, the family graduated to a half-hour Fox series on the 17th of December 1989.

  Groening's older brother Mark shaped much of who Bart would become. Mark introduced his younger brother to a wide range of comics. Among them were Mad, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu, and Tales From the Crypt; at the time, Mad was still published as a comic rather than a magazine. Groening drew on all of them. He envisioned Bart as an extreme version of a typical misbehaving child, combining traits he associated with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He described Bart as "what would happen if the son of Eddie Haskell from Leave It to Beaver got his own show." Dennis the Menace had disappointed him because the character was not, in his view, genuinely mischievous. Bart was designed to correct that. According to The Oregonian, Groening's original conception was of "a much milder, troubled youth given to existential angst who talks to himself." The character evolved significantly through Nancy Cartwright's voice acting.

  The Simpson family was drawn to be recognizable in silhouette. Groening submitted rough sketches expecting the animators to refine them, but they simply traced over his drawings. Bart's earliest design featured spikes of varying length; this was later standardized to nine equal spikes. Groening was working primarily in black and white at the time. He designed the spikes to look like an extension of Bart's head, a choice not replicated in other characters. Director Mark Kirkland later described Bart's head as a basic rectangular shape resembling a coffee can.

  Animators first rendered Bart in three dimensions for the season-seven episode "Treehouse of Horror VI" in 1995. They found themselves uncertain how to model his distinctive hair. Their solution was to purchase a vinyl Bart doll already in production and use it as a physical reference. The computer animation for that sequence was handled by Pacific Data Images.

• 3. The Voice Swap

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  On the 13th of March 1987, Nancy Cartwright arrived at auditions expecting to read for the role of Lisa Simpson. Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner had already been cast as Homer and Marge through their work on The Tracey Ullman Show. The producers were holding open auditions for Bart and Lisa. Yeardley Smith had already auditioned for Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila felt her voice was too high-pitched for a boy. Smith described the result succinctly. "I always sounded too much like a girl," she said. "I read two lines as Bart, and they said, 'Thanks for coming!'"

  Cartwright found the role description for Lisa underwhelming. Lisa was described, at the time, only as the "middle child," with little developed personality. Bart, by contrast, was characterized as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, and clever." Groening allowed Cartwright to try out for Bart, and offered her the role immediately after hearing her read. Cartwright arrived at The Simpsons with a distinction none of the other five primary cast members shared: formal voice-acting training.

  The voice she uses for Bart came naturally to her. According to The Guardian, her everyday speaking voice carries no obvious traces of Bart. She had incorporated elements of it on earlier shows, including My Little Pony, Snorks, and Pound Puppies. She described the voice as easy to produce: "Some characters take a little bit more effort, upper respiratory control, whatever it is technically." "But Bart is easy to do. I can just slip into that without difficulty." In the studio, she typically records five or six takes of each line to give producers more options.

  Even in flashforward episodes, Cartwright continues to voice Bart. In "Lisa's Wedding" from season six in 1995, her voice was electronically pitched lower to convey an older Bart. She also provides the voices of several other characters on the show, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, and Kearney Zzyzwicz.

  Cartwright was paid $30,000 per episode for her early years on the show, a rate that held until 1998. Fox threatened that year to replace the entire main cast over a pay dispute. After the conflict was resolved, her salary rose to $125,000 per episode. In 2004, when the cast sought $360,000 per episode, a dispute settled at $250,000. Negotiations in 2008 brought the cast's earnings to roughly $400,000 per episode. Fox returned in 2011, threatening cancellation unless costs were cut. Cartwright and her colleagues accepted a 30-percent reduction, lowering her per-episode rate to just over $300,000. By 2016, she was earning $315,000 per episode, which Variety cited as placing her among the highest-paid voice actors in the industry.

  At the 44th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1992, Cartwright received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. She shared the award with five other members of the Simpsons cast, for their work in the season-three episode "Separate Vocations." In 1995, she received an Annie Award for voice acting in animation. During the first season of The Simpsons, Fox Network had quietly barred Cartwright from giving interviews. The network did not want the public to learn that Bart Simpson was voiced by a woman.

• 4. Catchphrases and Chalkboards

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  In most episodes, the camera opens on Springfield Elementary School and finds Bart at a chalkboard, writing a repeated line of punishment. This scene, called the chalkboard gag, changes every episode. Some messages carry political humor, such as "The First Amendment does not cover burping." Others are pop culture references, like "I can't see dead people." Meta-commentary entries have included "I am not a 32-year-old woman" and "Nobody reads these anymore." The gags are created quickly and sometimes respond directly to current events. In the season-four episode "Homer the Heretic" from 1992, the board read "I will not defame New Orleans." It was an apology for a controversial song in the previous week's episode, "A Streetcar Named Marge," which had described the city as a "home of pirates, drunks, and whores."

  Moe Szyslak, the barman at Moe's Tavern, became the target of another early Bart signature. Bart would telephone the bar, ask for a fictitious person with a pun name, and wait as Moe attempted to locate the nonexistent caller. Moe's profane reactions were inspired by the Tube Bar recordings. These were real prank calls made to a bar owned by Louis "Red" Deutsch, whose enraged responses influenced Moe's violent temperament on the show. The calls first appeared in "Homer's Odyssey," the third episode to air, in season one in 1990. By the fourth season, the writers struggled to invent fresh names and reactions. The prank calls were phased out as a regular feature, though they have occasionally reappeared.

  The catchphrase "Eat my shorts" has a precise autobiographical origin. Cartwright improvised it during an early table reading, drawing on a memory from her years at Fairmont High School. While performing with the school's marching band, the group had chanted "Eat my shorts" instead of their standard cheer. The phrase may also trace to The Breakfast Club, the 1985 film in which a character named John Bender says it to the school's principal. Bart's exclamation "Ay, caramba!" was inspired by a Portuguese flamenco dancer. "Don't have a cow" originated from the British expression "Don't have kittens" and was popularized in the 1950s. The catchphrase "Cowabunga" was borrowed directly from Chief Thunderthud of The Howdy Doody Show.

  When Bart appeared in The Simpsons Movie in 2007, he skateboards through a sequence entirely nude. Although various objects obscure his body throughout, his penis is briefly visible. Producers had initially worried the moment might earn the film an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA ultimately rated the film PG-13 for "irreverent humor throughout."

• 5. Rebels and Loyalties

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  In his 2004 book Planet Simpson, writer Chris Turner characterized Bart as a nihilist. Turner argued that Bart holds the philosophical view that life lacks inherent meaning, purpose, or value. This worldview shapes how Bart moves through Springfield Elementary School. He is enrolled in Edna Krabappel's fourth-grade class and identifies himself as a proud underachiever. He has acknowledged his academic record with blunt candor: "I am dumb, okay? Dumb as a post! Think I'm happy about it?" The season-eleven episode "Brother's Little Helper" from 1999 revealed that Bart has attention deficit disorder. The series also raises the possibility that his intelligence is affected by a hereditary trait. This trait, called the "Simpson gene," runs through the male line of his family. Despite these tendencies, Bart has moments of integrity and compassion, occasionally helping both Ms. Krabappel and Principal Skinner.

  Homer's short temper defines much of his relationship with Bart. Homer impulsively strangles Bart in cartoonishly violent outbursts, and Bart responds by addressing his father by his first name rather than "Dad." Homer, for his part, refers to Bart mainly as "the boy." Marge takes the more patient approach, describing Bart as her "special little guy" and consistently defending him to others. "I know Bart can be a handful," she has said, "but I also know what he's like inside." "He's got a spark. It's not a bad thing … of course, it makes him do bad things." In the season-seven episode "Marge Be Not Proud" from 1995, Bart is caught shoplifting. Marge responds not with anger but with increasing emotional distance, and Bart's guilt eventually drives him to make amends.

  Bart and Lisa maintain a sibling rivalry built on genuine, if combative, affection. They disagree frequently and sometimes physically, but Bart regularly turns to Lisa for advice and freely acknowledges her superior intellect. His closest friend outside the family is Milhouse Van Houten. In the season-three episode "Homer Defined" from 1991, Milhouse's mother forbade her son from spending time with Bart, citing his bad influence. Bart was initially unfazed by the ban, only realizing how much the friendship mattered when it was under threat.

  Bart has declared that "I've based my whole life on Krusty's teachings," and his bedroom is filled with Krusty merchandise. That devotion has driven several story arcs. In the season-one episode "Krusty Gets Busted" from 1990, Bart exposed Sideshow Bob's attempt to frame Krusty the Clown for armed robbery. He later reunited Krusty with his estranged father in the episode "Like Father, Like Clown." In "Krusty Gets Kancelled," he helped Krusty stage a comeback special. The "Krusty Gets Busted" episode also established a long rivalry between Bart and Sideshow Bob. The writers modeled that dynamic on the relationship between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Bob was developed as an intelligent, obsessive antagonist designed to keep returning.

• 6. The Role Model Debate

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  William Bennett, the United States drug czar, visited a Pittsburgh drug treatment center in 1990 and encountered a Bart Simpson poster on the wall. He addressed the residents directly: "You guys aren't watching The Simpsons, are you? That's not going to help you any." Bennett later apologized, saying he had been "just kidding" and promising to "sit down with the little spike head" to straighten things out.

  Robert Bianco of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described Bart as "the child we wish we'd been, and fear our children will become." Educators warned that Bart's underachiever attitude posed a "threat to learning" and called him "egotistical, aggressive, and mean-spirited." Bill Cosby weighed in during a 1991 interview, calling Bart "angry, confused, and frustrated." Groening declined to dispute the description. He argued that most people struggle toward normalcy, while Bart finds normal boring and does what others only wish they dared.

  President George H. W. Bush addressed the subject directly in 1992. He declared that he wanted American families to be "a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons." The show's writers did not let the comment pass unanswered. Three days later, before a rerun of "Stark Raving Dad," they broadcast a short response segment. In it, Bart replied to the president: "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."

  Producer James L. Brooks defended the show against all such charges from the beginning. "I'm very wary of television where everybody is supposed to be a role model," he said. "You don't run across that many role models in real life. Why should television be full of them?" By the third season, Homer had displaced Bart as the show's central figure. The series shifted its focus to the family as a whole, though Bart remained a breakout character. A 2003 survey of parents in the United Kingdom ranked Bart the most influential fictional character for children under the age of twelve.

• 7. The Bartmania Years

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  Entertainment Weekly named Bart its Entertainer of the Year for 1990. The magazine described him as "a rebel who's also a good kid, a terror who's easily terrorized" and a character capable of surprising even himself with serious displays of fortitude. Millions of Bart-themed T-shirts sold across the United States during the early 1990s, and some public schools moved to ban specific designs. Among the banned designs was the shirt bearing "Underachiever (and proud of it, man!)." A specimen of that shirt is now preserved in the National Museum of American History. Simpsons merchandise as a whole generated $2 billion in revenue in its first 14 months of sales.

  Counterfeit Bart merchandise appeared under names like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Bart," "Air Simpson Bart," and "RastaBart." Groening generally tolerated those imitations. He drew the line, however, at a series depicting Bart in Nazi uniforms and as a white-power skinhead. 20th Century Fox sued Tom Metzger, the creator of those designs. Metzger agreed to cease production.

  In the 1990 United States elections, Bart ranked among the most popular write-in candidates for congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial races. Among fictional candidates, only Mickey Mouse outperformed him in a number of contests. In November 1990, Bart debuted as one of the giant helium-filled balloons at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The episode "Bart vs. Thanksgiving" aired that same day. In it, Homer complained about balloons for "every flash-in-the-pan cartoon character." A Bart balloon was visible on the television behind him, unbeknownst to the character.

  The Simpsons Sing the Blues was recorded in September 1990 and released in December of that year. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album's first single, "Do the Bartman," was a pop rap track performed by Cartwright and released on the 20th of November 1990. The song was written by Bryan Loren, a friend of Michael Jackson. Jackson was a fan of The Simpsons and called the show's producers directly to propose a collaboration. He contributed backing vocals to "Do the Bartman." He later appeared in the season-three episode "Stark Raving Dad" in 1991, billed under the pseudonym John Jay Smith.

  "Do the Bartman" was not released as a single in the United States, but it became a substantial hit in the United Kingdom. It reached number one on the 16th of February 1991, held that position until March 9, and finished as the year's fifth-best-selling song in Britain. The British Phonographic Industry certified it gold on the 1st of February 1991. The song sold half a million copies.

  TV Guide ranked Bart 48th on its "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time" list in 1996. In 2002, he and Lisa were placed 11th on TV Guide's "Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time." In 2000, the Simpson family received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. On the 9th of April 2009, the United States Postal Service issued five 44-cent stamps commemorating Bart and the other members of the Simpson family. They went on sale to the public on May 7 of that year, and were designed by Groening himself. They were the first stamps issued for a show still in production since Sesame Street.