Stewie is Gay? Still hate the show.
So, I was reading the September issue of Playboy Magazine and came upon a shocking gay revelation: turns out I'm into stick-thin blonde 18-year-old women who are really tan and have ginormous boobs. I kid! I was there to read this interview with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane after it was linked to on some blogs that I follow. The big deal is supposed to be that MacFarlane reveals that Stewie is gay.
PLAYBOY: We wanted Family Guy fans to have their say in this interview, so we solicited some questions from them on social networks. Here’s one from Devon: “Is Stewie coming out of the closet?”
MacFARLANE: Not yet. We had an episode that went all the way to the script phase in which Stewie does come out. It had to do with the harassment he took from other kids at school. He ends up going back in time to prevent a passage in Leviticus from being written: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is abomination.” But we decided it’s better to keep it vague, which makes more sense because he’s a one-year-old. Ultimately Stewie will either be gay or be a very unhappy repressed heterosexual. It also explains why he’s so hell-bent on killing Lois and taking over the world. He has a lot of aggression, which comes from confusion and uncertainty about his orientation.
Here's where a fun story about another gay character on TV turns into a rant in which I rain on the Family Guy fan parade. I hate the show. The jokes about violence against women, including so-called "jokes" about rape, one of which was discussed in a piece on feministing last year, are not funny to me. It goes like this:
Peter: Can I have that record? I love that song. I'll let you have sex with my daughter...
Waiter: I don't know...let's see what your daughter looks like.
P: She's...uhh...(pans past Meg to "hot" girl)...right there!
W: Ok, I'll do her. But can you tell her to cry and beg me to stop?
P: I think that can be arranged.
Yeah yeah, I know the arguments: no group is off-limits, the show is an equal oppotunity offender, it's not to be taken seriously, the entire basis of FG's humor is in it's gall to push jokes to the very edge of offensiveness untill that line no longer exists. Sometimes it's ironic and really funny, but all-too-often, it is not.
I suppose everyone's line is different. The episode that sealed the deal for me involved Peter and Stewie passing time by abusing Lois, wife of Peter and mother of Stewie. They begin by throwing things at her for laughs then end up stripping her, beating her, tying her up and rolling the car into a lake with Lois trapped in the trunk.
Family Guy has recently received much attention after announcing at ComiCon that an episode they wrote about abortion is being banned by Fox. The episode will likely be released on DVD, but in the meantime, a table reading of it can be heard on Huffington Post. What kind of world do we live in that racist, homophobic, transphobic and sexist (to name a few) jokes are given the green light while an episode about abortion is deemed too offensive?
Comments [14]
umm....
thought this was already known. no "coming out" episode necessary. stewie=gay=yeah, duh.
Uh... I have seen just three
Uh... I have seen just three episodes of Family Guy, & Stewie definitely portrays the stereotype, in the mind of sixth thru tenth graders, of what it is to be gay. So, no coming out episode is required. Unless, of course, it's too put Stewie in charge of an accountancy, as an every-Sunday-Episcopal-Church-going bourgeois man who could not be anymore removed from the free (gay) love 70s presumptions of the show's target audience.
The only thing, then, I havn't heard in my (albeit, limited) exposure is the ol' chestnut, "If you're on a bus & all the other riders are gay, do you stay on or get off?"
When you're ten, & asked this, of course, there is no right answer. While staying on could & very well should imply, "I myself am not gay, I am merely open-minded & willing to ride on the same conveyance of public-transport until such time as we reach my stop", to a fifth-grader it says, "Yeah, I'm staying on... & ripping off all my clothes & being gay gay gay gay gay". & "get off"? Seemingly the right answer, saying "Hell, no, I don't want to be on a bus with those queers", it is actually interpreted to mean, "Oh, I am so excited finally to have a chance to be with my own people, sexually-voracious homos".
I am glad Family Guy has never stooped to this, then. To the best of my knowledge. But even so, the gaity of Stewie is axiomatic.
Hah :)
The show is hilarious. It seems to come on TV when I'm sleepy, so I fall asleep with it quite often. However, I must say.... the animation pretty much sucks.
Family Guy
I have never seen the show Family Guy, but now I have the opportunity to watch it millions of times because I recently cut back my cable service and one of the remaining channels seems to be showing Family Guy and The Simpsons all day long.
Anyway, this reminds me that way back when (i.e. more than 15 years ago), people told me that I would hate South Park and I didn't. To each her own.
Civility is not a sign of weakness.
I think the acceptance of
I think the acceptance of this kind of 'humor' is part of how we as a society no longer have any respect for others or ourselves. I was just complaining that when I visited the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor yesterday, people were talking in their normal voices about their usual stuff. Some guy even had the girl he was with take a picture of him in front of the memorial while he SMILED at the camera. I wanted to slap people.
We had to watch a video beforehand. It's not like they didn't know it's a tomb for hundreds of sailors. I fear for humanity sometimes.
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Terrible Tourists
I think that the biggie for me was definitely when the site of the fallen WTC became a hot spot for tourists by the time I made it home for Fall Break in 2001. However, I feel like we, humans, have been doing this for a long time. I'm not exactly sure how that's any different from the hoards of tourists who flock to Europe taking pictures at landmark after landmark. Actually, I felt most uneasy in New Orleans because you're standing in this GORGEOUS square, and it's oh so picturesque, and then you read the plaque and learn that you're standing at a popular spot for lynching people to death and the like and suddenly everyone's smiles turn ominous as all hell. History has a way of ruining things.
________________________________________________________
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I don't mind about people
I don't mind about people going to pay their respects to folks who died suddenly and tragically. I was commenting on their lack of respect for the hundreds of dead sailors still trapped in that ship and the rest of the people who died that day (there were civilian casualties too). Because they weren't being respectful. Just one young man who brought a carefully folded flag with him, probably his grandfather's, and one of the sailors raised it up the flagpole and saluted it. He was the only one who was behaving in the solemn manner the place deserves.
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I love family guy, it is
I love family guy, it is halirious! Sometimes, i don't think some of the things on there are funny, but you can't please everyone all the time! If you get a group of stangers on a couch, i bet you every one of them would laugh at least once!
Isn't there an episode where stewie goes into the future, and discoveres that he is like a 40 year old virgin, and then realized it was because he was actually queer?
~~~Formerly KC~~~
I love the adult cartoons...
... though the animation isn't what I would call great.
Okay, all those who have seen even one episode of "Family Guy" that didn't know Stewie was a repressed closeted gay character, give a shout....
[deafening silence]
Seth fan here
I've loved some episodes and hated others. But this part of your blog (that you found unpersuasive) sounds like some of the pro-Bruno arguments:
"Yeah yeah, I know the arguments: no group is off-limits, the show is an equal opportunity offender, it's not to be taken seriously, the entire basis of FG's humor is in its gall to push jokes to the very edge of offensiveness until that line no longer exists. Sometimes it's ironic and really funny, but all-too-often, it is not."
Is that logic true for Bruno but not Family Guy?
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." ~ Pollyanna
true
Yes, that is the argument I make for a lot of my favorite comedians including Sacha Baron-Cohen. Sarah Silveman is another great example. Like I said though, everyone's line is different. To me SBC and SS are funny and I'm comfortable where they take their humor. FG, to me, goes too far and I feel uneasy laughing at a lot of it. Does that make sense?
Makes sense
I get it. Our lines are playing opposite day.
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." ~ Pollyanna
Too serious?
I have never seen any part of this show that I like. Does that mean that I'm too serious, or that the society that created an audience for this show is F*ed up?
I would guess...
... a little of both.
Personally, after 11 hours of driving in traffic while inattentive drivers try to commit "suicide by truck" or otherwise remove themselves from the gene pool with their stupidity, these silly shows really help me to wind down, because there is absolutely nothing serious about them.
Having said that, I would NEVER allow any child to watch them.