Why Family Guy's lowbrow style and pop culture and media references are successful

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micheleann62

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This is an essay I wrote for a college course where I was asked to make a case defending a media product that could be consider lowbrow or low culture. Being on of my fave shows, I chose Family Guy, but I would say the same for early seasons of The Simpsons, South Park, Beavis and Butthead, and all lowbrow cartoons I like :D. Anyways, check this out and let me know what you guys think, it's not due 'til Sunday so all suggestions and feedback are welcome.

It seems today, that all we see, is violence in movies and sex on TV, but where are those good old fashion values, on which we used to rely?

These are the lyrics to the theme song of one of today's most popular animated sitcoms, Family Guy. This highly successful cartoon made it's debut in 1999 and was canceled in 2002, only to return to air in 2005 due to an overwhelming amount of DVDs sold, which is one of many examples of just how powerful mass media can be. This show has been classified as a "lowbrow", or low culture adult cartoon because it consists of plenty of raunchy dialogue, lewd gestures, and obscene humor but it also covers political subject matter. Some recent episodes include plots involving the legalization of marijuana, the indisputable right-wing bias of FOX News, and the main character, Peter, discovering his Mexican heritage and empathizing with illegal immigrants. To the casual viewer, this show could easily appear to be very low culture, and many people would argue that it is in bad taste and aligned with the questionable tastes of the masses, but I believe the ironic attribute of this show is it's ability to be a clever parody of what some may consider to be high culture or highbrow humor, thus making it an excellent show regardless of how low culture it may appear to be.

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.
 
Great article.
Alot of what you said was true, like how lowbrow FG is, and how it's an ironic parody (althought I still don't understand what that means).
But ever since Family Guy was resurrected from cancellation, it's become more and more dependent of cutaway gags, which don't contribute to the plot at all and rather distract away from it. Why can't MacFarlane associate these jokes into the plot without making entire flashbacks out of them like American Dad? See, this is why I liked the post-cancellation episodes of FG more than the latter ones: better writing, actualy plots, good humor, and no cutaways. FG really needs to go back to that formula, because I'm tired of hearing "THIS IS WORSE THAN THE TIME WHEN *whatever*" or anything of those lines.
I did notice, however, that one episode this season, "FOX-y Lady" seemed to be a more, dare I say, serious episode than most current episodes. For one, the episode had a plot and stuck with it, and there was only one cutaway throughout the entire episode (the Batman one). Why can't MacFarlane make more episodes like that? Is it really that hard?

In any case, great article. :sweat:
 
Dean, thanks for the feedback, I agree the quality of the cutaways has declined a lot since the show's return. Pretty hit and miss for the most part.



This is a good point as well, I'd like to try to incorporate it in the paper but it'd be kinda hard to explain
 
It bothers me a bit that most people, even hardcore fans of the show, seem to consider Family Guy a stupid show. Funny, sure, but still stupid. And while it does contain a LOT of jokes that are indeed very, very lowbrow and... well yeah, stupid, it also contains a lot of really fresh, inventive, clever jokes that only people with true comedic talent could write. A lot of the shows dialogue, especially in the earlier seasons, is certainly smart enough to have fitted nicely in to any "golden age" Simpsons episode.

And dont get me started on how idiotic and hypocritical it is that people often mention the pop culture parodies found in shows like Animaniacs and The Muppet Show as examples of how smart those shows are while pointing out jokes of the same kind in Family Guy as examples of how lazily written the show is.
 
Oh, I'd definitely put Animaniacs around the same level as Family Guy. The only difference is, to me, the Warner siblings and supporting cast are very likeable. Most of the FG cast are either terrible human beings, or just not that interesting.
 
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