This is the story behind TheSimpsons meme that got so popular it was used by Homer himself. sirstefan reports
From the 1994 Simpsons episode “Homer Loves Flanders.” Photo: FOX If you spend any time online, you’ve seen it: a short GIF of Homer Simpson disappearing backward into a hedge, his eyes wide open — a visual “don’t mind me.” Taken from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons, it’s generally used as a reaction to express embarrassment or the desire to disappear from an awkward social interaction, a longing for an exit so seamless that it’s like you were never there.
That idea of hedges as suburban stargates stayed with him until it made its way onto The Simpsons in season five, episode 16, “Homer Loves Flanders,” a morally nuanced episode written by David Richardson in which Homer has a sudden desire to befriend his irritatingly Christ-like neighbor Ned Flanders and, in the process, ruins Flanders’s life.
Indeed, the movement is distinctly unlike Homer — smooth and disturbingly effortless rather than clumsy – resulting in something along the lines of Homer Simpson, Transdimensional Hedge-Monster. It’s the nature of memes to be shorn of their original context and used as emotional shorthand, often with no regard for their original meaning. As Mirkin points out, the Homer meme is no exception. “What’s really interesting is the meme really has nothing to do with the way it was used in the show, because it’s not a retreat or an embarrassment, as it’s used — it was really just an ominous, threatening look and a very weird backing up while never breaking eye contact with Flanders,” he says.
“I was brand new. It was literally my first week,” he says, explaining that he pitched the idea at a screening of the episode’s animatic . The episode had been written before he joined the writing staff, and when producer Al Jean and the writers decided that a scene in which Homer texts Lisa “needed a pop” at the end, he tossed out the idea and it got a laugh.
“These GIFs are kind of like sampling — little snippets, removed from their original context and repurposed into a whole new creative thing,” he says. “You can hate on it or you can embrace it, and I think it’s cool that the show gave a little wink and embraced it.”
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