Akbar and Jeff: Thoughts on Matt Groening’s Cartoon Gay Couple

They’ve been together since the 1980s, when Matt Groening, the eventual creator of The Simpsons, added Akbar and Jeff to his Life in Hell series. Though he initially teased journalists by saying they could be twin brothers, gay lovers, or both, Groening quickly acknowledged that Akbar and Jeff are indeed a gay couple. Teetering fickly between adoring love for each other and utter frustration with each other, the couple’s odd brand of humor has resonated not just with gay men but with everyone who’s befuddled and bemused by the absurd ups and downs of human relationships. Indeed, the fez-hatted, big-nosed guys wearing Charlie Brown shirts speak to the masses despite being living in the shadows of The Simpsons.

My own exposure to Akbar and Jeff began in 1996, when someone at my college’s Writing Center pencil-sketched a giant spoof on the wall, something like: “Akbar and Jeff’s Writing Hut: Where the elite tread to have papers read.” As I learned, the entrepreneurial duo – when not busy vacillating between adulation and contempt for each other – skips around opening little huts, selling everything from reincarnation and liposuction to videos and tofu. Intrigued, I searched out the Life in Hell books and delighted (gaily, if you will) in the Akbar and Jeff cartoons.

Almost radical at the time they were introduced, when few gay couples were being portrayed, let alone in a positive light, Akbar and Jeff have continued to serve not as role models, per se, but as humorous meditations on gay coupledom and the banalities of daily life together. It’s almost an off-handed response to the still-lingering criticisms that gay male relationships are short-lived, marred by infidelity, or hard to understand. In one famous cartoon, Akbar and Jeff fret over visiting a gay bar, only to find upon arrival that all the patrons look exactly like them, donning fezzes and wearing similar shirts. The comic absurdity and ultimate likability of the pair is what has given them such longevity. They’re stuck together, they know it, and most of the time, they’re happy with it.

Akbar and Jeff aren’t political activists in their two-dimensional world, but Groening has acknowledged here and there that the couple faces some social hurdles. They are, on occasion, discriminated against for their identity. They have even commented on legal decisions affecting the gay community. And in one AIDS-themed cartoon that appeared over 15 years ago, Akbar and Jeff even discussed HIV tests. But despite the occasional tackling of “issues,” the real genius of Matt Groening’s duo is their ambivalent, curious, and enduring relationship.

Consider for example, the way they touch each other. Instead of kissing (something which might lead conservative papers to ban the syndicated Life In Hell cartoons featuring then), Akbar and Jeff connect fingers and skip together as a way of showing mutual affection. And while their expressions differ ever-so-slightly in each frame, it’s attributable more to randomness of line than to scrupulously intentional nuance. For all intents and purposes, Akbar and Jeff wear the same expressions all the time, and the result is a sort of gay everyman sensibility. Within that framework, people gay and straight can see a part of themselves and laugh.