Matthew Groening

From Philosopedia

Groening, Matthew (15 February 1954- )

Groening, writer and cartoonist of “Life in Hell,” wrote Love is Hell (1985), Work is Hell (1986), School is Hell (1987), With Love from Hell (1989), and numerous works about “The Simpsons,” a program that is well-known to television viewers.

When asked by David Wallis how he responds to critics who consider Bart Simpson “a dreadful role model for children,” he replied,

• If you don’t want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don’t act like Homer Simpson.

When told that he poked a lot of fun at organized religion and asked what is the most comical story in the Bible, Groening responded,

• I was very disturbed when Jesus found a demon in a guy and He put the demon into a herd of pigs, then sent them off a cliff. What did the pigs do? I could never figure that out. It just seemed very un-Christian. Technically, I’m an agnostic, but I definitely believe in hell—especially after watching the fall TV schedule.

Groening was born and grew up in Portland, Oregon, the son of Homer, a filmmaker, advertiser, writer, and cartoonist who did single-panel gag cartoons in magazines, "the kind featuring starving men crawling across the desert. Later he turned to surf movies. That's where he made his mark." His mother, Margaret, was once a teacher.

In Olympia, Washington, he attended The Evergreen State College, which he described as "a hippie college, with no grades o required classes."

Life in Hell, he told Kristine McKenna, was loosely inspired by a chapter in Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy.

{CA; Freethought Today, February 1999; David Wallis, The New York Times Magazine, 27 December 1998)}