So are we in the era of Seth McFarlane-type cartoons?

W

Webster R

New member
I.e. Making fun of pop-culture/gags. If so, why do you need animation for it? Or perhaps I'm just angry that except for The Simpsons, McFarlane owns basically all the primetime adult animation slots.
 
Considering how most of MacFarlane's pop-culture "jokes" consist of simply rotoscoping an old movie or TV show scene exactly, he may as well just cut to actual clips from said movies and TV shows, Muppet Babies-style. It'd be more intellectually honest.
 
My theory is that the way to keep pop culture jokes from getting annoying is to tie them into the personalities of the characters who are making them. I don't want to make myself look better than the professionals or anything, but I draw a comic strip for fun called "Forever 16", which focuses almost exclusively on pop culture humor. Rather than just going "Hey, remember this?", I have my characters react to these cultural events in a way that feels natural for them based on their personalities.

My main character, Joel, is an innovative thinker who's always got an idea for how things should be done, so when he goes to see G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and decides he doesn't like it, he gets out his old G.I. Joe toys from when he was a kid and videotapes his own movie. His younger sister, Katy, has an opinion that's very easily swayed by whatever's popular at the given moment, so when she tears down her "Wizards of Waverly Place" posters and instead wallpapers her room with "Sonny With a Chance" memorabilia, her conscience manifests itself in the form of Hannah Montana to tell her that she's a fickle victim of the Disney empire. Joel's best friend Aaron is a resourceful guy who looks to take advantage of any opportunity laid before him, so when Cash for Clunkers rolls around and he wants a new car even though the one he has is perfectly fine, he takes a baseball bat to it in order to "clunkify" it enough for it to qualify for a trade-in.

To me, that's pop culture humor done right. It shouldn't be the punchline of the joke, it should be the opener.
 
But then the show wouldn't be able to be distributed on DVD.

And American Dad doesn't have those cutscenes, only Family Guy and possibly the Cleveland Show. The jokes in the latter could have only been in the pilot.
 
An hour and a half in Sunday nights really isn't that much. It's just that there isn't much in the way of primetime adult animation in the first place.



Then it wouldn't be funny. Believe it or not a lot of Family Guy fans do enjoy the straight film/TV references with the FG characters thrown in. That's a big reason why Blue Harvest was so popular.
 
Also take into account the American Dad pilot played like a regular episode of Family Guy with cutaways intact, but the show now has almost never had a single cutaway since and has evolved into arguably a much better series than Family Guy.

I don't see why people act like MacFarlane is soley responsible for the age of pop culture humor. The Clerks cartoon relied on the same style of cutaway humor and movie references in the same vein of Family Guy.

The Fairly OddParents is also incredibly guilty of lazy TV and film references and that was before Family Guy rose to prominence.
 
Pop-culture jokes have always been present in animation, dating back all the way to those theatrical shorts like Looney Tunes.

The reason there's so many of them in primetime is because those kinds of shows are a proven success. I'd love to see more variety but apparantly that isn't very successful because the adult audience just doesn't care for more serious animation.
 
And ironically enough, on the Clerks: Uncensored DVD commentaries, Kevin Smith and Dave Mandel bad-mouthed Family Guy pretty harshly.

And while we're talking about pop culture references in cartoons, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Pinky & The Brain and Freakazoid referenced that kind of stuff on a regular basis (though, Pinky & The Brain didn't do it that much and used parodies more as inspiration for stories instead of throwaway gags, and Freakazoid's in-jokes tended to be more esoteric).

And I think the pop culture references in Family Guy have become less prevalent. I can't really think of too many really memorable cultural references since that Jason Voorhees cameo.
 
I found their bashing of Family Guy highly hypocritical because Clerks The Animated Series literally felt like Family Guy set in a convenience store. One episode focused entirely on the movie Outbreak. Every episode included Star Wars and Jaws references and it had cutaway gags frequently. Add that up with tons of throwaway gags and little continuity and it fits right in with FG.

I think Smith and Mandel bashed it more so out of jealousy that a series using a highly similar style of humor succeeded longer than their series. Clerks would have been a better fit on Fox.
 
I won't deny how I find some of FG's pop culture refs annoying, HOWEVER, I honestly can't say there are many cartoons out there these days that don't have pop culture references in them, whether subliminally, a parody, or direct reference.
 
I agree wholeheartedly. What annoys me is that people act as if Family Guy invented the pop culture joke/reference and are solely responsible for any series that is influenced by it. Hell, even The Simpsons is guilty of the same jokes FG pulls a lot of the time.
 
Hartman was also a director on a short Seth MacFarlane created for "Oh Yeah! Cartoons", Zoomates.

The art style was very Hartman, but the writing was so MacFarlane.
 
SpongeBob very rarely, if ever, has had any pop culture references. Especially not in the first three seasons, Stephen Hillenburg himself said he didn't want to include them so the show would be considered timeless and could be enjoyed by people in the future.
 
Yeah and I found it Ironic they started doing after he left I mean the show really never had mentioned a local band except for that stingray c.d. afterwards that's when they started showing some rockbands
 
Back
Top