| The Simpsons character | |
|---|---|
| Abraham "Grampa" Simpson | |
| Gender | Male |
| Job | Retired |
| Relatives | Children: Homer, Herb Powell and Abbie Grandchildren: Bart, Lisa and Maggie Ex-wife: Mona (deceased) (See also Simpson family) |
| Voice actor | Dan Castellaneta |
| First appearance | |
| Ullman shorts | "Grampa and the Kids" |
| The Simpsons | "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" |
Abraham J. "Abe" Simpson,[1][2] often known simply as Grampa, is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and he is also the patriarch of the Simpson family, the father of Homer Simpson, and the grandfather of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson. In the 1000th issue of Entertainment Weekly, Grampa was selected as the Grandpa for "The Perfect TV Family".[3]
Grampa is a veteran of both World War I (by enlisting as a toddler) and World War II who was later sent to the Springfield Retirement Castle by Homer. He is known for his long, rambling, often incoherent stories and incompetence. He shares his name with Matt Groening's grandfather. However, Groening says he refused to name him, leaving it to other writers to choose a name. By coincidence, the writers chose the name Abraham.
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Grampa Simpson is the father to Homer Simpson, father-in-law to Marge Simpson and grandfather to siblings Bart, Lisa and Maggie. Grampa has also fathered two illegitimate children; a daughter named Abbie by a British woman named Edwina while in England during World War II,[4] and Herbert Powell by a carnival prostitute.[5] Grampa has an older brother named Cyrus, who lives in Tahiti and has multiple native wives.[6] He also has a younger brother named Chet, who owns an unsuccessful shrimp company.[7] Grampa was briefly married to Amber, the same woman Homer married on a drinking binge in Las Vegas.[8] Grampa has also been briefly married to Marge's sister, Selma Bouvier,[9] though Homer was against it, and was once romantically linked to Marge's mother, Jacqueline Bouvier.
Almost all of Grampa's biographical information is supplied by himself. Many of his stories seem to be wildly inaccurate, often physically or historically impossible, and occasionally inconsistent even with each other, suggesting that Grampa is quite senile. It is unknown where Grampa was born. He claims that he came to America as a boy from the "old country", but he cannot remember which country it was.[10] Grampa was raised in New York City with his parents, Orville J. Simpson and Yuma Hickman.[11]
Grampa is a veteran of World War II, where he served as Master Sergeant of the Flying Hellfish unit. At the very end of war in Europe, Grampa's unit "liberated" a stash of priceless art from surrendering German forces. The Flying Hellfish formed a tontine, and buried the art in a trunk at sea. Decades later, Montgomery Burns, the second surviving member of the unit, tried to murder Grampa in order to get the art, prompting Grampa to violate the tontine. When Grampa and Bart retrieved the art from Mr. Burns, the State Department arrived to give the art to their rightful owner.[12]
Homer's mother, Mona Simpson, was married with Grampa for several years. She became entranced with the hippie lifestyle after seeing Joe Namath's hair on television. She became a fugitive from justice after she abetted in the sabotage of a biological weapons research lab owned by Mr. Burns. To explain this to his then-six-year-old son, Grampa said that Mona died while Homer was at the movies.[13] Grampa has a poor relationship with his son, who placed Grampa in a nursing home as soon as he could, despite Grampa selling his house in order to provide Homer with a mortgage,[14] although its strongly and recurringly suggested that, while caring, Grampa was abusive towards Homer and he still had not forgiven him for that.[15][16][17]
The Simpson family will often do their best to avoid unnecessary contact with Grampa, but Homer has shown feelings of love for his father from time to time.[18]
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, wanted to have a character that was "really cranky" and old, and who complained a lot and invented stories to tell to children, so he created Grampa.[19] After naming the main characters after his own family members (except for Bart, an anagram of "brat", which he substituted for his own name),[20] Groening refused to name Grampa after his grandfather, Abraham Groening. He left it to the writers to choose a name and they chose "Abraham", not knowing that it was also the name of Groening's grandfather.[21] Grampa first appeared in the Simpsons short "Grampa and the Kids", which premiered on The Tracey Ullman Show on January 10, 1988. In the short, Grampa tells his grandchildren stories of "the good old days". When they stop paying attention to him, he feigns his own death to recapture their attention.[22]
The Simpsons writer Al Jean commented that Grampa is often the focus of pointed jokes about old people. He said the reason for that is because the staff is trying to illustrate how society mistreats the elderly, "and some of it is because people over 55 never watch our show".[19] Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, former writers on the show, said that they liked to write episodes about Grampa because they are "obsessed" with old people.[23] Weinstein commented that they "both love [old people] and seem to really hate them at the same time".[24] He also said that he "enjoys" to write for characters such as Grampa and Mr. Burns because of their "out-datedness", and because he gets to use dictionaries for looking up "old time slang".[24]
Grampa's voice is performed by Dan Castellaneta, who also voices numerous other characters, including Homer Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Barney Gumble, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby and Hans Moleman. Castellaneta was part of the regular cast of The Tracey Ullman Show and had previously done some voice-over work in Chicago alongside his wife Deb Lacusta.[25] Castellaneta likes to stay in character during recording sessions,[26] and tries to visualize a scene in his mind so that he can give the proper voice to it.[27] The episode "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" (season six, 1994) featured many interactions between Grampa and Homer, so Castellaneta therefore had to talk to himself when he recorded the voices for that episode.[28] Castellaneta said it is hard for him to do Grampa's voice because it is "wheezy and airy".[23]
Grampa is an old, grizzled, periodically incontinent and quite senile man, who lives in the Springfield Retirement Castle, a sad, lonely place filled with demented, crippled and depressed old people. His closest friend appears to be Jasper, a fellow Retirement Castle resident. He often shares long-winded recollections about his past, many of which are often far-fetched rants. Among Grampa's stories are the time he chased Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1922, the time John D. Rockefeller dropped silver dollars on him while floating in a Zeppelin, various times spent harassing Springfield's Irish immigrant community, listening to Thomas Edison recite the alphabet over the radio, when President Grover Cleveland spanked him on two nonconsecutive occasions,[29] and when he "took a shot" at President Theodore Roosevelt. He also claims to have served in World War I, albeit as a small child. He states he is a member and carries the membership cards of the Elks, the Masons, the Communists, the Stonecutters and for some reason unbeknownst to him he carries a card listing him as the president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance.[30] He spends a good deal of his time writing complaint letters. He once wrote to the President, complaining that there were too many states, and requesting that they get rid of three of them, simultaneously insisting that he was "not a crackpot". He also wrote to "the sickos at Modern Bride Magazine" about his disgust at not seeing "one wrinkled face" or "a single toothless grin" in the publication. He also owns a 49-star American flag, because of his unexplained hatred of the state of Missouri: "I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah."
Grampa claims to have attempted to kill Adolf Hitler on two occasions, one when he threw a javelin at him in the 1936 Summer Olympics, which barely missed and instead struck a would-be Hitler assassin, and once when he attempted to shoot him with a sniper rifle, missing only by a few centimeters due to unintentional interference by Montgomery Burns. Before taking the shot, he said to himself, "Now they'll never be able to save your brain, Hitler." Many of Grampa's war stories contradict each other, as some have him serving in the Army, while others portray him having been in the Navy. He is also shown serving in both the European Theater and Pacific Theater, as well as witnessing many historical events and personally encountering Adolf Hitler. Grampa claimed to have performed a drag show onstage to Hitler when he was caught many miles behind enemy lines. Bart called him out on the accuracy of his encounter with Hitler, in which Grampa did say that the story was not true but then admitted that he did wear a dress during a period in the 1940s. In a bizarre flashback of World War II, Grampa is seen coordinating tank movements through a minefield. He signals one tank to drive directly into a mine (and explode) and signals another tank in the opposite direction off a cliff. Because of his bumbling actions in the war, he ironically claims he was awarded the Iron Cross, which was an award given by the Germans. Another war story shows him on the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 with a young John F. Kennedy. He says he was "the first to discover his terrible secret" after Kennedy mutters to himself, "Ich bin ein Berliner"; a phrase, in reality, Kennedy did not say until 20 years later. Hearing Kennedy speaking German, Grampa proclaims, "He's a Nazi!" He and other sailors aboard the PT-109 then attack Kennedy. He also states that he never thought himself capable of shooting down a German plane but states, "Last year, I proved myself wrong." In episode "Simpsons Christmas Stories", he is a Navy pilot.
Grampa also is soundly rooted in his antiquated ways: "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it." (This is approximately .002 mpg, 10.5 feet per gallon, or 0.8 meters per liter). Like many of his fellow Retirement Castle residents, Grampa is a devoted follower of Matlock.[19] He seems to believe Matlock is a real person, suggesting they call him in to solve real-life crimes. During a Matlock public appearance, Grampa and Jasper swipe Matlock's pills, which were needed to prevent him from having a spastic heart failure. Once, reflecting on his lifetime, he lamented it as terribly boring and full of unruly teenagers, but then decided it was alright because "we did have two shows with Andy Griffith".
Nancy Basile of About.com named Grampa the fifth best character of The Simpsons, calling him a "perfect stereotypical old person".[31] In the 1000th issue of Entertainment Weekly, Grampa was selected as the "Grandpa for The Perfect TV Family".[3] Joe Rhodes of TV Guide considered Grampa's most memorable line to be "If I'm not back at the home by nine, they declare me legally dead and collect my insurance."[19] Dan Castellaneta has won two Primetime Emmy Awards in the Outstanding Voice-Over Performance category for voicing various characters, including Grampa. The first was awarded in 1992 for the episode "Lisa's Pony",[32] and the second in 2004 for "Today I Am A Clown".[33] In 2010, Castellaneta was nominated for the award for voicing Grampa and Homer in the episode "Thursdays with Abie".[34]
The Simpsons writer David Mirkin said that one of his favorite jokes on the show is the one where Grampa cycles down the street in high speed and shouts that he feels young again, and is then knocked flying from his bicycle after a doll's head flies into the spokes and falls into an open grave.[28] In a review of the Grampa-centric episode "Lady Bouvier's Lover", Patrick Bromley of DVD Verdict said that he is "never terribly interested" in episodes that revolve around Grampa, because he believes Grampa is "great as a background character, but less so when he takes center stage."[35] DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson said in a review of the same episode that Grampa is "always fun" and "it’s nice to see him in an ebullient mood, at least for a while."[36]
Mirkin thinks it is hard to make a "boring" and "tedious" character, such as Grampa, funny. He believes that what ultimately makes Grampa funny is that the things he says are "actually funny" in the context of the boredom and the tedium.[28] Anne-Marie Barry and Chris Yuill, the authors of the book Understanding the Sociology of Health, commented that in episodes in which Grampa appears, the comedy content is often generated by Grampa falling asleep at "inopportune" moments or "embarking" on long rambling stories about his youth. "Instances such as these match popular stereotypes that all old people are 'demented' and in poor health," they wrote.[37]
Alan S. Brown and Chris Logan wrote in The Psychology of The Simpsons that Grampa has the least amount of "power" in the Simpson family, and that he is treated as little more than a child and is often ignored. The family frequently laughs at his "failing" memory and his "ineffectual" attempts to get what he wants. They added that Grampa is left behind, forgotten, and rarely invited to spend time with the family. The authors commented that he is "not without influence, but he certainly does not play the traditional grandfather role in the family hierarchy."[38]
Brown and Logan also wrote that Grampa had a considerable influence in the formation of Homer's character, and that flashbacks in The Simpsons show what an "angry", "critical" father he was to Homer. "He yelled, used corporal punishment, and constantly belittled Homer's attempts to have fun, date, and excel at various activities," they added. The authors said that Homer tries "in vain" to repair his relationship with Grampa and continuously seeks for his approval, but Grampa continues to be "as critical as ever".[38] In his book Understanding the Psychology of Diversity, author Bruce Evan Blaine wrote that Grampa is typically portrayed as a "doddering", "senile", and "dependent" person who is a "trivial" and "often disposable figure" in his son's life.[39]
Playmates Toys created two Grampa Simpson action figures for the World of Springfield series. The first, released in May 2000, depicts Grampa in his usual appearance.[40] The second, "Sunday Grampa", was released in June 2002, and depicts Grampa in his Sunday church clothes.[41] Alongside the television series, Grampa regularly appears in issues of Simpsons Comics, which were first published on November 29, 1993 and are still issued monthly.[42][43] Grampa also plays a role in The Simpsons Ride, launched in 2008 at Universal Studios Florida and Hollywood.[44]
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