Remembering "Homer's Enemy"

I recall watching the Golden Age Simpsons episode "Homer's Enemy" and being struck by its treatment of the figure referenced in the title, one Frank Grimes. Abandoned at the age of four by his family, depriving Frank of a normal childhood in ways he was never allowed to forget (as the relevant wiki article has it, he had to work as a delivery boy "presenting gifts to children from wealthy and loving families"), at the age of eighteen he suffered the additional calamity of having a silo fall on him, putting him in a full body cast. The recovery and rehabilitation from the accident were long and hard, but through it he managed to earn a degree in physics, making his life the kind of story of "overcoming adversity" that moralizing idiots love to fling in the faces of the discontented--such that, sure enough, it made the local news as a human interest piece. Happening to see it, it impressed Mr. Burns enough that he was moved to offer Frank a Vice-Presidency at the plant--only for (in another cruel twist of fate all too characteristic of poor Frank's life) Burns to forget all about him in his fascination with the protagonist of the next story, a heroic dog, to whom he gave the Vice-Presidency instead (!), as he had Smithers fob Frank off with a job "somewhere out of the way" in Sector 7-G, where, of course, he encountered that other Sector 7-G worker, Homer Simpson.

The intelligent, conscientious and hard-working Frank thus ended up constantly face to face with a man who was the opposite in every respect, a profoundly underqualified, incompetent, irresponsible and lazy man who nonetheless had "everything" (apparently living the "American Dream" in the suburbs--and a Grammy-winning astronaut to boot!). That was more than Grimes can bear, drove him over the edge of madness--and before the credits rolled, to his death.

One of the series' darker episodes, it seemed an indictment of something, but of what exactly? Some seem to see it as an indictment of the universe's absurdity. But that fails to explain the sheer meanness the episode itself seemed to display toward Grimes. Through the entire story Homer's endless financial, legal, health and family problems, which do see him constantly suffer from the stupidity and irresponsibility that so offend Frank, are conveniently forgotten, so that nothing disabuses Grimes of his illusions about just how good Homer apparently has it, while no one ever shows Grimes the slightest sympathy or empathy for his situation, the writing stacking the deck in favor of Frank's being not just made to feel even worse than before about his unhappy lot, but that having a problem with it he is the crazy one until eventually he does become crazy.

Still, I didn't give all this much thought until I read a piece about the writer who had the story credit on this one, John Swartzwelder. TV writing can be very collaborative, and the convoluted way in which the industry hands out credit means that a writer who has writing credit on an episode of a show may not have actually had much, or even any, input into that particular episode of that show. (I recall the quip in Toby Young's The Sound of No Hands Clapping by one Hollywood figure that he'd won Emmys for TV episodes he hadn't even seen, let alone written.) Still, Swartzwelder was notorious for fussing to get more of his material into an episode than his colleagues, while he has also been much remarked for his right-wing, libertarian, politics, which suddenly seemed significant. It is, after all, the right which insists on those who have been unfortunate gracefully stomaching not just misfortune generally but unfairness specifically, with this insistence, indeed, what defines their ideology (conservatism is in the end a defense of the status quo and those privileged under it against those who are not), with this reflected in how a very large part of what is conventionally presented as wisdom, morality, religion and personal "maturity" is stomaching unfairness without inconveniencing the comfortable, the powerful, those in Authority--not getting mad, not getting even, not protesting or trying to get redress in any way, just enduring it with a "good attitude." Indeed, the indoctrination in this accommodation to unfairness, from the first sneer of a grown-up that "Life isn't fair" in a child's face, is so intensive that at the first sign of objection to any unfairness people of conventional mind fall all over themselves trying to shut down the "whiner," and indeed, many gleefully embrace the role of "apologist and admirer of injustice, misery and brutality." It is also the right that gets outraged when people don't display the expected "convenient social virtue" to accept unfairness with grace, and denounces them as immoral, envious, self-pitying, even insane, and certainly dangerous--potential Pol Pots the lot of them (Homer's deciding that his flaws have nothing to do with the situation, that it's just Frank being "a crazy nut," obtuse and oafish as it sounds, perhaps not to be dismissed too quickly here as the Message).

Especially given the stress on the contrast between competent and conscientious but ill-rewarded Frank and a Homer who is the opposite on every count it seemed to me that the ideas of that particularly important figure in the libertarian tradition, Friedrich von Hayek, were specifically relevant. Where so many apologia for "things as they are" make much of meritocracy as a legitimator of inequality (and promise the disappointed that if they are frustrated now, if they are worthy, they will eventually get their share of the good things in life), von Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty, rejected meritocratic justifications in no uncertain terms. As he emphasized, a system of private exchange distributes rewards not according to "merit" (What would the standard of merit be? How would we assess merit?) but to the extent to which one's services have provided benefits" to other participants in that system. One may imagine that all other things being equal the intelligent and hard-working will create more "benefits" by way of their services than those who are not, and be rewarded commensurately, but merit and service remain two different things nonetheless, all as other things are not all equal, with Hayek indeed stressing the importance of "accident" in life, and the maximization of the room for accident to happen as indispensable to civilization's progress, and even sustenance (to say nothing of freedom as he understands it). The result is that there would be outcomes unexplainable in terms of merit, that are when judged by that standard, and perhaps any other, unfair, but simply have to be borne--with all that implies about what that Statement of Aims of the Mont Pelerin Society signatory and inspiration to Margaret Thatcher thought about the proper attitude toward those who did not simply accept unfairness the way they demanded. (I might add that it does not seem irrelevant that in giving Grimes a stereotypically nerdish appearance the show could seem to evoke certain well-known stereotypes about those the right has long perceived as disproportionately numbered among threatening malcontents.)

For his part Swartzwelder disavowed any sophisticated rationales behind the story of "Homer's Enemy" (the issue instead that Grimes "didn't approve of our Homer" he said in an interview a few years ago). Still, taking it altogether it can look an awful lot like a man to whom life has been generous punching down at the Frank Grimeses of the world and their sympathizers from the position of a cushy writing gig. And accepting that reading of the episode it also looks like a reminder of how pop culture tends to be a lot less "liberal" than many across the political spectrum constantly insist it to be, even a show as "liberal" as The Simpsons delivering its share of right-wing Message. Those racking their brains for another example of such a moment may find one in what seems to me the particularly anti-populist-with-a-whiff-of-Cold-Warrior story of Swartzwelder's later "A Tale of Two Springfields" (not so subtly having the revolt of the have-nots against their "betters" produce physical division behind an analog to the Berlin Wall, with the have-nots in a failing economy and society behind it), though venturing nowhere nearly so far through the episode guide one could find another Message and Agenda-heavy episode--in the immediately prior episode Swartzwelder got writing credit on, which aired just two weeks before "Homer's Enemy," "The Old Man and the Lisa."