Lisa Simpson

Lisa Marie Simpson (voiced by Yeardley Smith) is a fictional character on the animated television series The Simpsons. Matt Groening, the creator of the series, named her after his sister.

Lisa is 8 years old; according to her brother Bart, Lisa is 2 years and 38 days younger than him. This presumably places her birthday as being on May 9, given Bart's birthday is April 1. While she was shown as being born during the 1984 Summer Olympics in one flashback episode ("Lisa's First Word"), given that the characters in The Simpsons generally don't age, no specific year for her birth can truly be given (besides "always" being born "about 8 years ago").

Lisa is an extremely bright girl, with an IQ of 159. Officially, her highest grade is an A+++ which she earned by cheating in a test on The Wind in the Willows. (She later re-marked the test as an F.) Once, when she was unable to attend school due to a teachers' strike, she suffered a sort of "school withdrawal" and invented a perpetual motion machine; Homer chastised her for this, telling her that in the Simpson household "we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

Her musical abilities are extensive: she sings with a powerful voice, and has been seen playing both the acoustic six-string and electric bass guitar proficiently. However, her great love is jazz blues performed on her baritone saxophone. She uses a 4 & 1/2 reed, a fairly stiff reed for an 8 year old. Her musical inclinations were greatly nourished through her relationship with the late jazz musician Bleeding Gums Murphy. She is also fluent in Swedish, and understands Chinese as seen from listening to Yao Ming.

For all of, or because of, her talents, her character was gradually remodeled as an outcast whose intelligence the other children, and many adults, cannot appreciate.

Lisa is both a lacto-ovo vegetarian and a practicing Buddhist, although she pays lip service to her family's Christian denomination. In addition, she is a supporter of the Free Tibet Movement. She also dabbles in Wicca, which she finds empowering as a budding feminist. This explanation of hers seems very likely, because she has a strong skepticism against the supernatural, applying Occam's Razor when the rest of the family fails to. Her skepticism in the supernatural is further shown by her disbelieving in a so-called angel when the whole town believes that the specimen in question is in fact an angel, stubbornly seeking out scientific disproof of this "Angel" (which she eventually finds). She is seen by some to whine at times or to have a persistent sense of superiority that often grows into self-aggrandizement, but she retains a childlike impressionability despite her intelligence, for example, she would love to have a pony and enjoys her mother's homemade waffles (and is disappointed when they turn out to be square pancakes). She has solved various problems around Springfield, often in tandem with her brother Bart.

Lisa's future has been revealed in three episodes, by a fortune teller in a medieval carnival, by a Native American who is in charge of an Indian casino and by Professor Frink. The fortune teller reveals that Lisa will fall in love with a British man who matches her intellectually, but her marriage will be cancelled because of a dispute over his dislike for the Simpson household. It is also hinted at that Lisa will lose her virginity to Milhouse. The American Indian reveals that Lisa will become the "first straight female US President", having defeated Chastity Bono. A balding middle-aged Milhouse van Houten works for the Lisa Simpson Administration. Her administration's main issue is the massive foreign debt. She appoints Bart as the "Secretary of Keeping it Real" as a way to keep him out of the way at Camp David. Professor Frink shows that she is to take Milhouse to her Prom.

Lisa is someone who is very eclectic in her knowledge and shows a deep understanding of the world around her. She may be seen as a child prodigy. Critics have also pointed out that the character of Lisa is a hint to the slighting of children in the real world though they may be a lot more knowledgeable and perceptive than the adults. Lisa shares her intellect and over-achieving personality with many other female members of the Simpson family (it has been revealed that male Simpsons inherit a gene that causes stupidity and under-achieving, which is carried on the Y chromosome.

Like every young girl, Lisa has also gone through periods of rebellion. For a short time, she smoked cigarettes with older girls in the school bathroom, and even told her teacher, Miss Hoover, to "shove it" when she didn't feel like sprinkling sparkles on her art assignment.

In Japan, the broadcasters of the series found they were able to turn the apparent viewer dislike of the series around by focusing marketing attention on Lisa. Apparently, her struggles to be a voice of reason and a force of good in her family and her city struck a chord with the Japanese.

Notable accomplishments

• Won the regional Reading Digest (a takeoff of Readers' Digest) contest
• Served brief term as Little Miss Springfield
• Co-invented the Lisa Lionheart doll
• All-star goalie in pee-wee hockey
• Discovered Jebediah Springfield was a murderous pirate named Hans Sprungfeld
• Helped Mr. Burns recover his fortune, which made Burns $120,000,000 with the "Li'l Lisa" recycling plant. She was offered 10% of the profit but turned down the offer, giving Homer five heart attacks: four simultaneously for giving up the "$12,000" that Homer had mistaken it to be, and another for learning the real value of the 10%.
• Passed with "satisfactory completion" of the second grade as the first female cadet at Rommelwood Military Academy
• Won the Li'l Starmaker singing competition

Relations

Lisa is:

• Granddaughter to Abraham Simpson, Mona Simpson and Jacqueline Bouvier.
• Daughter to Homer Jay Simpson and Marjorie Bouvier Simpson.
• Younger sister to Bartholomew Jo-Jo Simpson and older sister to Margaret Simpson.
• Niece to Herbert Powell, Abbie, Patty Bouvier and Selma Bouvier Terwilliger Hutz McClure.

Her former uncles-by-marriage include Robert Underdunk "Sideshow Bob" Terwilliger, Lionel Hutz, Troy McClure, and Disco Stu.

See also: Characters from The Simpsons.da:Lisa Simpson de:Lisa Simpson