Homer Simpson, voiced by Dan Castellaneta, made the declaration in a recent episode titled 'McMansion & Wife', where he offered an explanation for his tight "grip"
Trying to be a good father is one of homers driving moral compasses. Often he does things to his kids that are bad and stupid but those are then the main story of the episode and he does his best to fix the wrongs he did, often by being genuinely empathic and understanding to his kids. The strangling is just abusive and there is never a consequence or resolution to it. That is a clear signal from the show that they think it’s an ok “character flaw” to have.
In defence of the strangling, I assumed it was a 3 stooges inspired slapstick humour that didn’t have any malice intentions when writing. Def a good call to just end it
I wrote about this exactly thing in college philosophy coursework 20 years ago.
I concluded that homer had an abuser mentality, that he would have understood his abuse “as tough love.” There’s an episode where he strangles Bart and gets all sad about “why do you make me strangle you?” or something to that effect. And another where he starts strangling Bart but then realizes Bart actually did the right thing, and he stops strangling him and they have a nice father son moment.
My takeaway is that Homer is a complicated guy. He’s both good and bad, as I suspect are we all.
Trying to be a good father is one of homers driving moral compasses. Often he does things to his kids that are bad and stupid but those are then the main story of the episode and he does his best to fix the wrongs he did, often by being genuinely empathic and understanding to his kids. The strangling is just abusive and there is never a consequence or resolution to it. That is a clear signal from the show that they think it’s an ok “character flaw” to have.
In defence of the strangling, I assumed it was a 3 stooges inspired slapstick humour that didn’t have any malice intentions when writing. Def a good call to just end it
I wrote about this exactly thing in college philosophy coursework 20 years ago.
I concluded that homer had an abuser mentality, that he would have understood his abuse “as tough love.” There’s an episode where he strangles Bart and gets all sad about “why do you make me strangle you?” or something to that effect. And another where he starts strangling Bart but then realizes Bart actually did the right thing, and he stops strangling him and they have a nice father son moment.
My takeaway is that Homer is a complicated guy. He’s both good and bad, as I suspect are we all.