Notes from Inside Waylon Smithers’ Closet

by Lorette C. Luzajic

Who’s the President of the Malibu Stacey Fan Club and has the largest collection of Stacey dolls in the world? Well, good guess, but it’s not Lisa Simpson, who is most likely to burn her Barbies along with her bra as soon as she begins junior high. It’s Waylon Smithers, who also staged “Malibu Stacey, The Musical.” Poor Waylon Smithers is also the proud owner of just about every other stereotype of queer middle age.

Montgomery Burns may seem oblivious to the hints of undying love from his good and faithful servant, but The Simpsons‘ audience has known all along. In 2004, when a clever marketing gimmick announced that the show would be ‘outing’ a character, bets all around were on the obvious closet queen. But it was Marge’s sister who came out. Waylon Smithers never did come out of the closet- it’s just not in his character.

The Simpsons has been completely egalitarian in making fun of absolutely everyone, yet loving them all the same. The show uses the stereotype as a tool to create a comic community where we can all see ourselves, more or less, at our worst and our best. For all that the sniveling sycophant Smithers takes on every stereotype in the book, he is an indispensable part of Springfield. Some say the megabuck Simpsons movement may have stepped over the line when they created The Simpsons Clue game: Smithers is the cleaning lady, wearing a woman’s French maid uniform. Nonetheless, everyone scrambles for that game piece when the Clue board comes out of the closet! Besides, Smithers may have opted for a life outside of servitude, but given the choice to be at the side of Springfield’s nuclear power magnate, his one true love, he took it. Smithers even has a computer screensaver of Monty’s wrinkled old mug.

The Simpsons has long surpassed every other animation in longevity, and nearly every other kind of show as well. For 18 years, we’ve been laughing and crying with Springfield. The show has signed for another two years, which will bring its running to 20 years. The only prime time program that has run for longer is Gunsmoke. The Simpsons is the brainchild of Matt Groening and a massive team of hilarious writers and artists and actors. It was a stroke of genius to make every episode so layered in pop cultural allusions, letting us return to the same episode over and over without tiring of it. Indeed, the Simpsons team is filled with scientists, mathematicians, and literary types, and all the science references and literary quotes are real. The other genius of the show is that Springfield is, in a way, the first virtual world. Despite the fact that these are fictional, illustrated characters, they are very real to the audience. Every episode deepens the characters, and every viewer has their favorites. After 450 episodes, we have lasting friendships with the cast, and we’ve learned to live with our not-so-lovable neighbors, too.

While each character has its attributes, it can also take on a life of its own, surprising us, and surprising the writers, too. Though Waylon Smithers was not intentionally gay, it soon became clear to Springfield’s inventors just what was going on with Mr. Burns’ assistant. The character was created as something of a parody, of the general butt-kissery that many ‘admin’ jobs insist upon, and more specifically, of the “yes, sir, no sir,” to which no one was immune, toward Barry Diller of Fox. Smithers was originally married, but a season two episode comment about getting home to his wife and kids was cut due to time restraints, and the cues and clues just seemed to keep appearing on their own. Simpsons‘ writer Sam Simon suggested Smithers be gay, but that it never be overt. And so the fun began.

The first appearance of Waylon Smithers was one of the show’s major faux pas, because an error caused the colour stylist to make Smithers black. It was never the intention of the team to give Mr. Burns an African-American subservient, and though the episode aired with the mistake, it was believed that continuing the program with this detail would be in poor taste. The show may well be a festival of stereotypes, but it is rarely mean-spirited. Smithers was restored to his intended squash-yellow.

Mr. Burns’ executive assistant is quite possibly the only person in the world who likes the old tyrant. Once, during a rare burst of emotion, Burns exclaims love for Smithers. In classic Waylon monotone, concealing a heart pounding like the surf, he replied, “The feeling is more than mutual, sir.”

In another episode, Smithers is fantasizing about his birthday: that Mr. Burns jumps naked out of a cake, and sings Happy Birthday, Mr. Smithers, in the tradition of Marilyn Monroe. When Burns eats garlic pickles for lunch, he mentions that no one will want to kiss him, and Smithers retorts that it is their loss.

And on and on it goes. The banter between Burns and his disciple is a plot staple, bursting with every innuendo in the book. Smithers drops frequent hints of his undying devotion, but they fly over Montgomery Burns’s head. But the big boss seems to understand the situation on an unconscious level, in that he often jokes about allegiance and ardor. Even so, poor Smithers never does get the full Monty, so to speak. Mr. Burns remarks at one point that the it would be a great honour for Smithers to bury himself alive in Burns’ casket upon his demise. He is prone to sarcasm of this nature. Indeed, Smithers seems to be quite content to simply worship, grateful for the most menial tasks in Montgomery’s service, such as polishing his fang dentures. In the disciple’s rare off-duty occasions, he is seen visiting men’s single retreats, boogieing the night away on dance floors with The Village People blasting.

It was episode 138 when The Simpsons decided to have a bit of fun with their entendres and innuendos. “What is the real deal with Mr. Burns’ assistant Smithers? You know what I’m talking about,” is the question raised. A clip montage of various queer allusions or unrequited Burns-love follows, and at the end of it, Troy McClure says, “As you can see, the real deal with Waylon Smithers is that he’s Mr. Burns’s assistant. He’s in his early forties, is unmarried, and currently resides in Springfield.”

Though there are several gay characters or references in The Simpsons, including Lisa’s activism for equality, and Homer’s hygienic and classy roommates, with Smithers the show has all the fun with stereotypes that it can. He collects Malibu Stacey dolls. He goes to see Guys and Dolls, the musical. He irons his clothes in a pink bathrobe. He wears chaps. He drinks cocktails with little umbrellas. After leaving a brothel, he sighs and says his parents hoped he’d ‘give it a try.’ He dances in conga lines. He dances to In the Navy. He drives a speedboat pulling a pyramid of muscle men in tight bikini briefs. He likes “It’s Raining Men” and of course, ABBA. He alludes to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to explain why he couldn’t stay married (in the play, Brick and Maggie are torn apart because Brick is gay.) And he has a Yorkshire Terrier named Hercules.

But above the sparkling flamboyance and the in-jokes and the pink think, the story of Waylon Smithers stands for something else altogether. Unrequited love is a staple theme in all of cinema and literature and art; it is a burden that every one of us has had to bear. And so, no matter how tedious Smithers’ ardor gets, no matter how much eye rolling we do at his flubbed attempts to express himself, we have a soft spot for the sycophant because we’ve been there. And without a doubt, most of us would have gone to the ends of the earth for no other reason than to be at our loved one’s side, if we’d had half the chance.

So perhaps there is something less pathetic and more enviable in Smithers’ role than first appears. For despite the fact his love is not returned, his agony is bliss. He gets something that few of us do: a lifetime spent with the one he loves.

Says Smithers: “I value every moment we’re together, from when I squeeze his orange juice in the morning, to when I tuck him in at night.”

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Lorette C. Luzajic is a Toronto writer and artist, the girl behind thegirlcanwrite.net. A journalism grad, she has published hundreds of poems, and her reviews, profiles, columns, and features have appeared everywhere from Adbusters to Dog Fancy. Her favourite thing in the world is getting to know interesting people, so she started a project called Fascinating People: gossip for smart people at www.fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com. She writes Fascinating Writers for Bookslut.com. She is also The Spice Girl at Gremolata.com, a foodie’s paradise. Lorette’s first book was The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos. Her second, Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life, is also available, and her third, Dendrite Pandemonium will be released later this year. Lorette lives in her library with her cats.

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