"Homer³" is a tremendously novel installment of "Treehouse of Horror". Forget, for just a moment, that it made extensive use of 3D animation at a time when the technique had nowhere near the ubiquity it has now - when it debuted on October 29th 1995, as part of The Simpsons' sixth Halloween outing, it was the first ToH segment in a seeming eternity that had managed to avoid descending into a violent bloodbath by the out. There are no character deaths at all in fact, which at this point in the series made it an absolute rarity. I was trying to remember the last ToH segment before it in which nobody actually got killed, and I think it may have been "The Devil and Homer Simpson" of "Treehouse of Horror IV" (I nearly said "Terror at 5 1⁄2 Feet" from the same episode, since I was in two minds as to whether Moleman's car combusting counted when the guy's survived worse in the series proper, but then I remembered that Ned got his head ripped off by the gremlin at the end). That's an awful lot of carnage sandwiched into the seven segments in between. The Halloween spirit and freedom from the shackles of continuity give the ToH episodes leeway to go to freakier, nastier places than most regular Simpsons episodes could accommodate, and it's always fun to see what kind of gruesome creativity the staff can inject into the series' DNA, but kudos to "Homer³" for mixing things up and demonstrating that freakiness can come from sources besides the bloody and macabre. (If you really wanted to stretch it for casualties, you could argue that
we technically don't know what becomes of the 3D goldfish that get sucked
into the black hole, but since Homer survives I see no reason to assume
that they didn't either.) What makes "Homer³" particularly unique, however, is that it evokes a feeling I don't think had been attempted by any ToH segment before it, and that is melancholy. "Homer³" is an unusually sombre Halloween story; whenever it gets strange, it gets hauntingly moody in tandem. A huge wad of the credit for that goes to its soundtrack, evocative of Robyn Miller's score for popular contemporary video game Myst.
I find "Homer³" such a bittersweet segment, in part, because with hindsight it's hard for me not to read it as an analogy for the dawn of CG animation and the changing landscape of the industry. 1995 marked a significant year for the technique, with two breakthrough pictures that boldly announced how CG animation was going to radically re-shape Hollywood's approach to its visual effects and to storytelling possibilities going forward - Amblin Entertainment's Casper, the first live action film to incorporate a computer generated main character (courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic), and Toy Story, the first fully 3D animated feature film, and the flick responsible for putting incoming powerhouse Pixar on the map for mainstream viewers. Getting in just slightly ahead of Buzz and Woody was the Simpsons' own stab at the emerging craft; "Homer³" was a timely piece that served to herald this exciting new age, with animation from Pacific Data Images, one of the pioneering houses of computer animation. They would later join forces with Pixar's first major rival, DreamWorks Animation, helping to create Antz, Shrek and many other pictures, before closing their doors in 2015. They did a really exemplary job with their Simpsons assignment - the novelty of "Homer³" has inevitability faded since 1995, with these kinds of visual techniques now being so commonplace, but I don't think that the animation itself has aged anywhere near as badly as you might imagine. Certain gags seem somewhat lost to time - specifically, the gags that were designed to comment on the flashiness of the techniques, such as when Homer comments that he's "wasting a fortune just standing here", and and the knowing contrast between that particularly ambitious underwater shot of the 3D fish pond and the equally showy (but jarringly vulgar) shot of Homer drooling over the unprocessed fish sticks - and visually, it all looks fairly rudimentary compared to what was to follow. But PDI got things right exactly where it mattered for "Homer³". The CG Homer and Bart are recognisably Homer and Bart, the expressiveness is there (occasionally the CG Homer will slip into looking a trifle wall-eyed, but he's able to convey confusion, fear and annoyance wherever it's needed), and getting to see these familiar characters from a fresh new perspective is still such an exciting prospect - so much so that it's kind of a shame that time and budget don't allow for the entire family to enter in and get the three dimensional treatment (apparently Ned Flanders was slated to go in at one time, but the CG capabilities of the day weren't ready for his moustache). PDI's work was deemed impressive and important enough for inclusion in the animated anthology film Cyberworld 3D, which played in IMAX theatres in 2000, giving the Simpsons their first big screen outing (I've no doubt that snagging a big brand like The Simpsons enabled Cyberworld to gain more recognition). I didn't see it, and I'm kind of narked that I missed the opportunity to see Homer and Bart rubbing shoulders with the music video to the Pet Shop Boys' "Liberation" (it's from the Very era, so you know it's a gaudy delight).
The computer generated world cannot itself help but seem an entirely basic creation, particularly next to the colourful, fully realised child's playroom in which we'd shortly be immersed when Toy Story hit theatres, but in a way that feeds into the merits of the segment. It offers an assortment of tributes to the iconic 3D images of the time, such as the Utah teapot (also glimpsed during the Mrs Nesbitt scene in Toy Story) and the library from the aforementioned Myst, atop a grid that tips the hat to one or two old-school Disney sci-fis (we'll get to that shortly) and a whole bunch of math jokes geared toward tickling the eggheads in the audience. That the 3D universe should consist of such a vacant, open space adds to the strangeness of the place, in being nothing like the world that Homer has jumped in from, and to its haunting sombreness. There is nothing about the 3D plane that seems dangerous or overtly threatening, outside of the fact that it is so unfamiliar. Mostly, it is what it is - an adjacent universe, existing benignly and waiting passively for someone to stumble across it. Its relatively emptiness is suggestive of the barrage of ways in which this germinal universe could expand and develop, but also a loneliness and fragility; it is a universe that does not seem as though it could withstand the corruptions of a less benevolent world, as is borne out when the intrusions of the 2D world prove fatal to its entire being. Even before the 3D plane gets round to collapsing on itself, some of those eggheads might have already picked up on the warning signs; hidden among the background gags is the equation ρm0 > 3H02 /8πG, the inclusion of which writer David X. Cohen attributes to his astronomer friend David Schiminovich. It's apparently very ominous and indicates that this universe is ultimately too dense to remain standing. It doesn't stand a chance with Homer added into the mix.
That the 3D universe should collapse (taking the accident-prone Homer with it) while the 2D world endures seems contrary to how things actually panned out for the respective animation techniques. Back in 1995, the arrival of Toy Story was a magical moment, and the success and acclaim the film received was well-deserved. Pixar, PDI, Industrial Light & Magic and their ilk were all doing tremendously exciting things, and the possibilities of where they might take us next were exhilarating. All the same, I find it deeply distressing, as a fan of traditional animation, to contemplate how little time it took for 2D animation to all but die out in Hollywood, with 3D replacing it as the standard - not even a full decade separates Toy Story from Home on The Range (2004), which was then tagged as Disney's last traditionally animated feature (an attempt at a 2D revival followed in the late 2000s/early 2011s, but the damage was already done and it proved painfully short-lived). 2D animation still has a home on television, and The Simpsons has gotten to keep its familiar style, but even they were eventually forced to bend to the computer's domination and switch to digital colouring (bringing with it a more plastic-looking aesthetic). What "Homer³" gets across entirely accurately is the sense that the world as we knew it was changing and that things were never going to be the same again. Like Homer himself, once we'd stepped out over the line and immersed ourselves in this mind-bending new technology, we couldn't get back to where we were. I don't think that it had to be thus - in a fairer universe, 2D and 3D animation should have been able to co-exist just fine. But mistakes were made. Metaphorical cones were thrown, puncturing the very fabric of our fragile reality. I find it poetic that the preceding segment, "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace", should have opened with a tribute to the cartoons of Tex Avery; the Simpsons crew took a loving look back to the golden age of animation, before looking ahead and tangling with the CG beast lurking right around the corner, all poised to turn the industry inside out and devitalise the form that had been its cornerstone for so many decades.
"Homer³" was inspired by the classic Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost", something that Homer explicitly calls attention to when he observes that the portal to the 3rd dimension is like "something out of that Twilight-y show about that Zone". It seems significant to me that the segment should open with a deceptively ordinary set-up, one that could have figured in any number of regular Simpsons installments. Patty and Selma are on their way over with a pillowcase of seashells harvested from their trip to Sulfar Bay, wanting the family to join them for round of deceased hermit crab extraction, and no one in the household besides Marge is particularly eager to greet them. Homer is having to compete with with Bart and Lisa (and Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II) for the house's best hiding spots, and it's his fear of being uncovered by his sister-in-laws that prompts him to take his chances in the 3D world. Like "Little Girl Lost", "Homer³" is rooted in the troubling idea of the the most ordinary and domestic of spaces suddenly and inexplicably becoming the entry point to the strange and unknowable, and the even more troubling possibility of that strangeness coming between ourselves and our loved ones. It's only appropriate that Homer's cutting-edge adventures should initially be happening on the fringes of a more grounded Simpsons story, as opposed to one that immediately submerges itself in its Halloween trappings. There's the sense of disturbance in a world that's basically oblivious to the magnitude of the incoming change. It takes Marge and co a comically long time to grasp what Homer (who, like the little girl lost, is still able to verbally communicate with those in the adjacent dimension) means when he tells them that he doesn't know where he is ("We better call Ned, he has a ladder"), in part because Homer himself can scarcely comprehend it, let alone put it into words. He eventually settles for comparing the 3D world to the futuristic cyberspace of Disney's 1982 film Tron, and we then get a very emphatic gag based around the fact that nobody gathered within the Simpsons' living room has apparently seen the danged thing (except, possibly, Wiggum). This is the one gag in the segment that I kind of take issue with, because while the execution is certainly very funny, Tron isn't that obscure a picture, surely? I also refuse to believe that Frink, of all people, wasn't first in line to see it. I'll admit that it probably wouldn't sting so much if I weren't such an ardent fan of the movie they're ribbing. Look, I wasn't born when Tron came out, so I can't comment first-hand on how people felt about it during its theatrical run. My understanding is that it did moderately well at the box office, but it didn't meet Disney's Star Wars-sized expectations and was written off as a disappointment at the time. Still, it built up a cult following over the years, enough for Disney to finally capitalise on its sequel potential 28 years later. I just hope the Simpsons gag didn't give anybody the impression that Tron
is a lousy movie, not worth checking out, when actually the film is
cool as fuck (I mean, it's got David Warner playing all three of its main
villains, what more do you want?). Part of me would like to believe that Cohen (or whoever was responsible for that specific joke) got Tron mixed up with another Disney attempt at chasing the Star Wars model, The Black Hole of 1979. It honestly seems to me that the grid in Homer's 3D world could have been inspired by either picture (the green colour scheme puts me more strongly in mind of the latter), and when the entire terrain gives way into a mighty vortex, with Bart and Homer lingering at the edges - yep, that one visual at least was unquestionably taken from The Black Hole. Which really is a movie that nobody saw. Don't get me wrong, I like The Black Hole a lot too. Anthony Perkins is in it. Ernest Borgnine is in it. But nobody saw it. More's the pity. (Every now and then, talk surfaces about the possibility of a remake, but I would be very surprised if that's a priority for Disney any time soon. Not now that they have the actual Star Wars.)
If you did see The Black Hole, then odds are that the thing you
most remember about it is that mindscrew of an ending, where the black
hole is revealed to be a portal to Hell (whether literal or figurative)
or something along those lines. The black hole of "Homer³" goes to screwier places still, by having Homer transplanted into the "real" world, more specifically Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles (that he lands in a dumpster is reminiscent of the opening to Howard The Duck (1986), making me think that this could be the set-up to a crazier adventure still to come). This was a visual novelty in its own right, being the first occasion in which original live action footage was incorporated into the series, and yet as a child I remember feeling disappointed with it, if only because for a second there I thought that Homer was going to transform into live action and be represented by a flesh and blood actor to match his new surroundings. It still seems like a cheat to me that he doesn't, given that this was how things worked in the 3D animated world, and because seriously, the prospect of getting an official interpretation of what Homer would look like as a real person would be even more mind-blowing than seeing him in 3D animation. It's probably for the best that they didn't go that route, however. For one, I'd imagine it would be an arduous task casting an actor who could satisfy everybody's preconceptions for a "real" Homer, possibly more arduous than rendering him in CGI for a few scant minutes. The final arrangement would also have had to play out somewhat differently, as there'd be no reason for all those extras to gawk at Homer as they do if he could pass for one of them. A great part of the sequence's power comes from its depiction of two worlds colliding, with each as disturbing and inexplicable to the other. Then Homer discovers that they have erotic cakes in this world, and immediately feels a sense of belonging.
On the DVD commentary showrunner Bill Oakley insists that from his perspective this was a happy ending, since the implication is that Homer will be perfectly at home in our universe, although he admits that it was "controversial" and that the closing credits music, a Myst-ified take on the Simpsons theme, suggests another mood entirely. Arguably, it isn't radically different to the ending of "Time and Punishment" of "Treehouse of Horror V", in which Homer also never found his way back to his original reality and learned to make do with the one he had. But at least there he remained in presence of Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, none of whom seemed to care that he was out of step with them in lacking an extendable lizard tongue. "Homer³" ends with him stranded among the unfamiliar which, unlike the passive 3D world, is very actively contemplating him back, and how little sense he makes in their reality. The closing music honestly gives me the chills; it feels like something very profound is being communicated here, even if, as per Oakley's words, it's entirely by accident. The mood it conveys is one of dreaminess and unreality, playing into the idea that we're all at the mercy of our own perception, and we never know when our world is going to expand and force us to reevaluate what we think we know. At the end, 3D Homer has apparently made his peace with us. But will we make our peace with 3D Homer?
It's an optimistic ending perhaps, positing that the strange may not seem quite so if you look at it in a certain way, but also a profoundly poignant one. To me, it says something about the nature of change, as represented by the 3D Homer and the need for him to accommodate himself in our world, and be accommodated in return. The change that happens, for better or for worse, the sadness of what gets left behind and the anticipation of what might lie ahead. You can cope with change by finding the parts you like in it and making the most of that, even if it is something as dumb as erotic cakes. Ultimately, that's what consider most impressive about "Homer³". Not only did it take us to some bold new territory on the aesthetic front, it hit a few unexpected emotional buttons along the way. It's great that after so many Halloweens, the "Treehouse of Horror" installments still knew how to be surprising.
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