Family Guy: Too Crude for TV?
Since its inception in 1999, the Fox animated sitcom Family Guy has gained fans worldwide, and turned its main character, Peter Griffin, into almost as much of a household name as Homer Simpson. With a rude husband, a wacky wife, a talking dog, two oddball kids, and a whole slew of funny neighbors, Family Guy is one of the most popular shows on Sunday nights. Notorious for its offensive, envelope-pushing comedy and bathroom humor, the show goes as far as it can in an attempt to make people laugh. But does it go too far? A lot of people think it does.
Returning to Fox in 2005 after a three-year hiatus, Family Guy came back with a vengeance, doing nothing to subdue its crude, often distasteful humor. Seth MacFarlane, the show’s creator and executive producer, said in a 2005 interview that the writers try to “pack [the show] with as many laughs per page as [they] can.” MacFarlane won two Emmy awards for music and voice-over, in 2000 and 2002.
However, while Family Guy does make people laugh, some viewers are worried about the message it sends to both children and young adults. MacFarlane admits that Fox is “walking a tightrope with the pressure it gets from the FCC,” but apparently the pressure isn’t enough, because even after the scripts are edited, many viewers are still offended by what remains.
In 2005 the Parents Television Council (PTC) named Family Guy and its partner show American Dad (co-created by Seth MacFarlane and two Family Guy writers) as “two of the worst shows for families” to watch. President of the organization, L. Brent Bozell said the shows “contain crude and raunchy dialogue with sex-themed jokes and foul language. Even worse is the fact that Hollywood is peddling its filth to families [by using] cartoons.” While some might claim that Family Guy is a cartoon aimed at adults, one cannot argue that animation itself assumes children as its target audience.
The PTC aren’t the only people offended by the Emmy-nominated sitcom. Also in 2005, an episode supposedly making fun of HIV and AIDS received angry feedback from offended viewers and AIDS groups. The episode, entitled “The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire,” featured Peter trying to explain to his friend Cleveland that Cleveland’s wife was cheating on him. Claiming to be terrible at breaking bad news to people, Peter flashes back to a time when apparently he was part of a barbershop quartet that worked in a hospital singing patients their diagnosis.
The flashback showed Peter and his fellow band members singing “You’ve got AIDS,” to a frightened man in a hospital bed. With lyrics like, “You’ve got AIDS, yes you’ve got AIDS, not HIV but full-blown AIDS,” the song spawned attacks on Family Guy, its writers, and the FCC for being too lenient with what it lets on TV. The Advocate, an award winning news website for gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender individuals even went so far as to claim that, because the man sitting in the hospital bed had a goatee, the writers of Family Guy were somehow insinuating that he was gay.
However, nowhere in the song’s lyrics were there any homosexual innuendos. Fox defended the show, saying that “given the nature of [the] series as well as the well-established cluelessness of this particular character [Peter], the scene – while certainly abrasive – is not beyond the expectation of the Family Guy audience.” However, this did little to quiet the angry AIDS organizations. Craig E. Thompson, executive director of the AIDS Project in Los Angeles spoke out against the episode claiming that in this day and age “it should be socially unacceptable to see this kind of garbage passing for entertainment.”
Much to the dismay of those against Family Guy, with five seasons under its belt, syndicated episodes on Cartoon Network’s “adult swim” block, not to mention DVDs, books, and accessories, it looks like Family Guy isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Unfortunately, when dealing with comedy, every joke is bound to offend someone. In defense of Family Guy, there is always an advisory warning that the forthcoming content may not be suitable for younger viewers, when aired on both FOX and in syndication on TBS and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Besides, in this day and age there are over a thousand channels to choose from. If someone is offended by what’s on they could always change the channel.
