SpongeBob SquarePants

SpongeBob SquarePants is a children's cartoon character created by Stephen Hillenburg. SpongeBob, who is bright yellow and looks like a kitchen cleaning tool instead of a living underwater sponge, is the star of an animated series set in a tide pool. Spongebob lives alongside his friends and nemeses in an undersea world called Bikini Bottom, where adventures and disasters often occur due to well-intentioned actions by SpongeBob that inevitably backfire.

The SpongeBob SquarePants series has aired on Nickelodeon, a children's television channel, since 1999. SpongeBob and many other characters on the series have also been featured in adaptations for other media, such as a Broadway musical and motion pictures.

Background

Stephen Hillenburg was born into a military family at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. His father was in the US Army, and his mother was a teacher. When he was a year old, the family moved to California, where his father began working in the aerospace industry. Growing up, Hillenburg was a talented artist and also interested in marine life. He was a fan of Jacques Cousteau’s ocean documentaries. He became interested in cartoons when he attended an animation festival.

He went on to study marine biology at Humboldt State University, where he chose art as a second major. After graduation, he found work at the Orange County Marine Institute, teaching marine biology to children. He wrote a comic book, The Intertidal Zone, to make his lessons more interesting. One of the anthropomorphic creatures in the book, which he was able to get published outside the institute, was Bob the Sponge.

The experience inspired Hillenburg to return to school to focus on art. He earned a master’s degree in experimental animation at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts). By this time, he had made a short film that caught the eye of Joe Murray, the creator of Rocko’s Modern Life, a successful Nickelodeon cartoon series. Murray offered Hillenburg a chance to direct his series, which gave Hillenburg his proper start in the entertainment industry. From there, Hillenburg worked as a writer on Rugrats, and eventually receiving the chance to create his own animated series. He revamped his Bob the Sponge character, who was drawn as a genuine sea sponge, and transformed him into a somewhat nerdy kitchen sponge lookalike. As a fan of classic comedy, he decided to pattern SpongeBob as an innocent, similar to Stan Laurel of the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo. Oliver Hardy provided the inspiration for jovial Patrick the starfish.

SpongeBob SquarePants debuted on Nickelodeon in the summer of 1999. The series was an immediate success. By 2003, it had become the highest-rated children’s series on television and been franchised in many countries, with an audience of more than sixty million people. Hillenburg reluctantly wrote and directed a full-length movie debuting in 2004, which was also highly successful. He stopped being a writer for the series around this time and served as an executive producer, which gave him more time to pursue other interests including writing an unrelated short animated film.

The series was adapted as a musical and made its stage debut in 2016 in Chicago before landing on Broadway in 2017. Cyndi Lauper, David Bowie, John Legend, and Steven Tyler were among the songwriters. The series was renewed for a thirteenth season in 2019 after its twentieth anniversary special, SpongeBob’s Big Birthday Blowout, drew 2.2 million viewers. As of mid-2020, SpongeBob SquarePants remained on television. The series had received multiple awards, including several Daytime Emmy Awards along with many nominations. From 2003 through 2019, the series won the Kids’ Choice Award for favorite cartoon except for one year.

Overview

SpongeBob is a sponge who lives in a pineapple in the underwater community of Bikini Bottom. His best friend, Patrick Star, is a dim-witted but gentle starfish living under a nearby rock. SpongeBob works as a fry cook grilling up Krabby Patties and other grub at the Krusty Krab, which is owned and operated by the gruff Eugene Krabs, a red crab. Other major characters are Plankton, Krabs' nemesis, who operates a competing dining establishment called the Chum Bucket and will stop at nothing to get his hands on the secret Krabby Patty recipe; Sandy Cheeks, a cheerful, adventurous squirrel who lives in a glass dome habitat and dons a diving suit to mingle with her aquatic neighbors; and Squidward Tentacles, who is employed as the cashier at the Krusty Krab. Squidward, much to his horror, lives next to SpongeBob and often has his life interrupted by the sponge and starfish. Secondary characters include Pearl, Mr. Krabs’s teenage daughter, who is a sperm whale; Mrs. Puff, the driving instruction teacher, a pufferfish; and Karen, the supercomputer who is co-owner of the Chum Bucket with her husband/creator, Plankton.

The series occasionally includes live-action scenes such as those between Patchy the Pirate, portrayed by Tom Kenny, and his puppet pet Potty the Parrot. Patchy is president of the SpongeBob Fan Club and is frequently annoyed by Potty, who likes to interrupt him. Another character, also voiced by Kenny, is the French Narrator, a scuba diver patterned after Jacques Cousteau.

SpongeBob, voiced by Kenny, loves his job at the Krusty Krab. His hobbies include catching jellyfish and blowing bubbles. He has a pet snail, Gary, who meows. Gary is ironically often responsible for solving his owner’s problems.

Many of SpongeBob’s adventures involve Patrick, his perpetual sidekick, who is up for absolutely anything because he is not smart enough to perceive danger. The pair frequently panics whenever they run into, or create, a serious problem, and often enlist Sandy’s aid when something needs to be fixed or invented.

Many of SpongeBob’s travails are related to Plankton’s endless attempts to steal the secret recipe from Mr. Krabs’s office safe; SpongeBob is a loyal employee who wants to help Mr. Krabs protect the recipe. SpongeBob spends a great deal of time proudly flipping Krabby Patties at his workplace. He takes his work very seriously, yet spends his workdays laughing and grinning.

Multiple episodes have followed SpongeBob’s efforts to get his boat driving license. He is a devoted student who can recite the answers from the driving lesson book. However, he is the bane of Mrs. Puff’s existence because he becomes so flummoxed behind the wheel that he crashes the boat. In true SpongeBob fashion, he refuses to give up, and time after time Mrs. Puff steps into the classroom only to see her most determined student ready to try again.

Bibliography

Andreeva, Nellie. “SpongeBob SquarePants Renewed for Season 13 by Nickelodeon on Heels of Strong Ratings for Anniversary Special.” Deadline, 17 July 2019, deadline.com/2019/07/spongebob-squarepants-renewed-season-13-nickelodeon-anniversary-special-ratings-1202647458/. Accessed 2 June 2020.

Franklin, Marc J. “Building Bikini Bottom.” Mashable, 2017, mashable.com/2017/11/30/spongebob-squarepants-musical-projection-design-peter-nigrini/. Accessed 2 June 2020.

Harper, Blake. “Why ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Will Never Die.” Fatherly, 18 May 2018, www.fatherly.com/play/what-is-spongebob-squarepants-about/. Accessed 2 June 2020.

Kennedy, Merrit. “Stephen Hillenburg, Creator of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants,’ Has Died at 57.” National Public Radio, 27 Nov. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/11/27/671247547/stephen-hillenburg-creator-of-spongebob-squarepants-has-died-at-57. Accessed 2 June 2020.

Lefkowitz, Andy. “The SpongeBob Musical: Live on Stage, Featuring Broadway Cast, to Air on Nickelodeon.” Broadway, 17 Oct. 2019, www.broadway.com/buzz/197270/the-spongebob-musical-live-on-stage-featuring-broadway-cast-to-air-on-nickelodeon/. Accessed 2 June 2020.

Manby, Christine. “Stephen Hillenburg: Marine Biologist Who Created SpongeBob SquarePants.” Independent, 5 Dec. 2018, www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/stephen-hillenburg-dead-spongebob-squarepants-als-death-age-cause-creator-cartoon-a8666776.html. Accessed 2 June 2020.

“SpongeBob SquarePants.” Internet Movie Database, 2020, www.imdb.com/title/tt0206512/. Accessed 2 June 2020.

“SpongeBob SquarePants.” Nickelodeon, 2020, www.nick.com/shows/spongebob-squarepants. Accessed 2 June 2020.