There's Something About Marrying - Themes and Analysis

Themes and Analysis

The episode's plotline revolves around homosexuality—the third time for The Simpsons. The first was season eight's "Homer's Phobia", and the second was "Three Gays of the Condo" from season fourteen, both of which won Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Program. This time it centered on the right for homosexuals to get married and the coming-out of a character. In the episode, Homer is shown as being tolerant with homosexuality, whereas in "Homer's Phobia" he is portrayed as being slightly homophobic. In that episode, the Simpson family gets a new friend that Homer dissociates himself from after finding out that he is gay. He also fears that the friend will have a negative influence on Bart and decides to ensure Bart's heterosexuality by taking him to do manly things such as hunting. As James Delingpole of The Daily Telegraph writes, it was first after "Homer's Phobia" that Homer began to be portrayed as enlightened about homosexuality. Marge, on the other hand, who had previously been portrayed as supportive of gay people on the show, is seen as disapproving of her sister's sexual orientation.

According to the publications Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture and Value War: Public Opinion and the Politics of Gay Rights, it was the controversial lesbian outing of the main character (played by Ellen DeGeneres) in the sitcom Ellen in 1997 that paved the way for Patty's coming-out in this episode, as well as for many other gay characters on other television shows. In his book Queers in American Popular Culture, Jim Elledge noted that unlike many episodes of The Simpsons that go through a situation and then everything returns to normal during the ending, this one does not. He commented that the staff of the show could have made Patty heterosexual again at the end of the episode and leave it how it was before by having her marry Leslie. Instead, they ended it in a way that could potentially be experienced as distasteful to the heteronormative audience by having Patty exclaim "Hell no! I like girls!" to Leslie's marriage proposal. The author also noted that it is possible the Simpsons staff chose Patty to come out as gay instead of a male character because lesbians were "traditionally considered more acceptable" on television. She did, however, not "adhere to the eroticized male lesbian fantasy or fit into the loveable, asexual guise of the comedy lesbian" that had previously been seen on shows such as Ellen. Instead, Patty is "rude, crude, and not ashamed of declaring her sexual preferences", and this could make her unpalatable to some viewers according to Elledge.

Around the episode's original broadcast in early 2005, the same-sex marriage question was one of the hottest political issues in America. It had been an especially hot topic during the then-recent presidential election in the United States. Marty Kaplan, a professor at Annenberg School for Communication and radio host on Air America Radio, commented that the episode is telling "those who demonize homosexuality, or what call the homosexual agenda," anything from "lighten up" to "get out of town". This was not the first time that an episode of the show had brought up a current issue. Writing in an article about "There's Something About Marrying" for The New York Times, Sharon Waxman said that "as television's longest-running situation comedy, The Simpsons is no stranger to hot-button social, religious and political issues, mocking wardrobe malfunctions, Hollywood liberals and born-again Christians, among other targets."