Family Guy was created as a cartoon that breaks all norms and defies the law of most television sitcoms. The main protagonists are suburban American family members living in the current times and dealing with many of the same issues and popular media we all see today. This premise works because the show unafraid of political correctness and mocks ALL common stereotypes, but at the same time, does not encourage them. The show pokes fun at high culture as well as low culture and culture in general. Family Guy takes a mirror and places it up towards our society and forces us to take a look at ourselves, while providing humor and amusement for the reflection. Just take a look at the subsequent lines of the theme song
Lucky there’s a family guy, lucky there’s a man who, positively can do, all the things that make us, laugh and cry.
Many people we see frequently in today’s media, including Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Tyra Banks, Dane Cook, Jay Leno, The Rock, and even SAMUEL L. JACKSON, are all parodied and made fun of as a result of the show lampooning the entire popular culture, low and high included. The show is only considered lowbrow or low culture because of the quality of some of the jokes. For instance, it would not be uncommon to see a joke that includes the main character Peter getting cursed out by Samuel L. Jackson in a cutaway setup by the line, ‘This is worse than the time I farted on a plane next to Samuel L. Jackson!’ However, this joke is still a well thought out parody our popular media because it takes a person (Samuel L. Jackson) from one of the biggest forms of media, which is movies and also mocks one of the best ‘bad’ movies of all time, Snakes on A Plane.
In conclusion, Family Guy is not intended to be a viewer friendly, civilized and polite show, but a show we can all take a look at and say, ‘This may be wrong, but it is funny because it’s true!’. Since it’s return in 2005, Family Guy has become the second most successfully FOX Network cartoon of all time behind The Simpsons. It’s ability to satirize the popular mass media we see today and the popular culture we embrace, is what makes this show so enjoyable and is the reason it is so successful. The show’s comedy does tend to fall to the low culture portion of the ‘culture skyscraper’, but I still believe the show is good because of it’s often witty analysis of our entire society and culture.
