Homer, the Simpleton
Monday, March 5, 2007
"Homer Simpson's Brain"Homer has a vacuous mind, but he is still able to retain a great amount of knowledge about very specific subjects. He shows small bursts of astonishing foresight, memory, creativity, and fluency with many languages in nearly every episode.
However, Homer’s brief periods of intelligence are overshadowed by much longer and consistent periods of ignorance, forgetfulness and stupidity. Homer has low IQ due to his hereditary "Simpson Gene”, his alcohol problem, exposure to radioactive waste, repetitive cranial trauma, and a crayon lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. The crayon in his brain is one of the main factors, and possibly the biggest, that causes his stupidity. Homer's intelligence was said to jump fifty points higher when he had the crayon removed, bringing him to an IQ of 105, slightly above that of an average person, but he went back to his old self when he had it reinserted, presumably lowering his IQ back to its original 55.
It has been suggested in some episodes that Homer's normal functions do not require the use of his brain. Homer has, at times, debated against his own brain. Occasionally, a specific body part is portrayed debating with his brain, such as his face, stomach or liver. He has also been known to think of himself as two people. This is first hinted at in "Tree House of Horror IV”, when Homer ate his emergency donut and left a note for himself saying "Dear Homer, I.O.U. one emergency donut, Signed Homer". After reading the note later, he referred to himself as a bastard who is always one step ahead. He also frequently confuses himself with ontological paradoxes, in which he intermixes others' lives with his own. He has been known from time to time to grow uncertain about the boundary between persons in large conversation groups that have rapid exchanges.
0 comments:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)