Family Guy and Parents TV Council

On February 8, 2015, Family Guy released an episode titled “Quagmire’s Mom.” In the episode, the recurring sex addict character Glen Quagmire is arrested for having sex with a high school girl. After claiming that his mother is the reason he became a sexual deviant, Quagmire is still sentenced to twenty years in prison. However, his mother enters the episode and finds a way to have her son acquitted of his charges. While I’m a huge fan of Family Guy, I personally thought this episode was mediocre. However, I apparently loved this episode compared to the Parent Television Council.

The Parent Television Council is probably more active in attacking Family Guy than any other major organization. Family Guy has made its annual “Worst Primetime Family Watch” list three times and over forty episodes have been chosen for the “Worst TV Show of the Week” from the Parent Television Council. They have even launched campaigns for the Fox network to cancel Family Guy.

I know a lot of people hate Family Guy for multiple reasons, including clipped jokes, inconsistency, and of course offensive humor. Most television viewers dislike certain popular shows. I hate The Bachelor because I don’t believe for a second that it’s reality and I hate Downton Abbey because I find it slow, pretentious, and painfully boring. However, if those shows are popular, who am I to say they should be off the air? I just won’t look at them. In fact, if I had the option to cancel those shows myself, I wouldn’t do it because other people enjoy them and they don’t force me to. Similarly, no one is forcing members of the Parent Television Council to watch Family Guy. I doubt you like anything about it. This means that they watch this show of their own choosing, not because there is something about the show that appeals to them, but just so they can complain later.

Humor is subjective and different people have different senses of humor. For example, I did not find the movie “Elf” the least bit funny despite its universal praise. But I’m not going to criticize other people for laughing at it or starting a campaign against the film because it didn’t fit my sense of humor. The Parent Television Council does not seem to understand this. They think that if you find something funny that they don’t, it’s your fault and you’re inferior to the sophistication of these elite intellectuals. In one of his recent articles complaining about the “Our Idiot Brian” episode, Christopher Gildemiester stated “it was a typical Family Guy episode, except for the long middle part of the episode making fun of stupid people”, which undoubtedly insulted many of the Biggest Family Guy. fans. “These people constantly complain that Family Guy negatively generalizes to certain types of people, yet they just called Family Guy fans” stupid people. “

More than anything else, the Parent Television Council complains about Family Guy for indecency, such as making fun of certain types of people or groups, violent or sexually explicit content, or offensive jokes on sensitive topics. That would be like going to see “Dora the Explorer” and complaining that it was too childish and silly. Members of the Parent Television Council are obviously not the target audience. Neither do people who tend to be offended by shock humor. This is the type of program that Family Guy is and always was. It’s obviously not for everyone, but let the people who like the show watch it. The folks at the Parent Television Council can watch whatever they want to watch.

Now, I would understand if they made this kind of complaint about a family program. For example, in an episode of SpongeBob called “Are you happy now?” there is a joke where Squidward is depressed and picks up a rope that says “maybe this will help”, implying that he will hang himself just to get something else instead. This is clearly a suicide joke and of course it got a lot of backlash. Watching SpongeBob is a children’s show and this kind of joke is out of place in a show that is expected to be a family show. In this case, the program is to blame for the content the children were exposed to. But Family Guy was always an adult cartoon. It sure has gotten bolder over the years, but it wasn’t for kids to begin with. The Parent Television Council often complains that children are exposed to the Family Guy. I’m not a parent so I can’t judge whether a parent lets their kids see Family Guy or not. But Family Guy is clearly not a show for kids and everything that kids are exposed to is up to the parents. And I know the TV Parental Council complains about the Family Guy time slot, how it tunes in too early when the kids are still watching TV, but that’s not the fault of the show either. That is the fault of the network and that problem needs to be addressed with them, not with the program itself.

They also like to complain about certain messages that they claim to be broadcasting on the show. They claim that Family Guy belittles the seriousness of serious problems such as rape, racism and abuse. However, they must remember that Family Guy is a comedy. Not only that, but it is completely absurd without any attempt at realism or logic. I’m not going to learn that it’s okay to treat a family member like trash because they do it in Family Guy. They don’t actively tell us that abuse is okay (except maybe with one or two rare exceptions like “Seashell Party”). I can laugh at racist or suicidal jokes while still understanding the seriousness of the problems. I know some people can’t and that’s just a difference in the sense of humor. I can even laugh at jokes that make fun of me. I have Asperger’s syndrome and I was never one bit offended by Family Guy’s numerous jokes about autism. If others are offended by this black humor, they can watch more politically correct shows. The Television Council for Parents must understand that just because a program offends them does not mean that it should not exist.

However, the turning point for me to write this was the article on the aforementioned episode, Quagmire’s Mom. The Parent Television Council complained that the episode joked about the rape of minors. Now this was just baffling to me. Family Guy is not new to making this kind of joke. They have made far more offensive jokes than this, like almost any episode with the character of Herbert, an old man who constantly tries to get sexual pleasure from young children. Even the main character of this episode, Quagmire, has done a lot worse. Many other episodes have implied that he has committed numerous forcible rapes and has even kept women locked up in his home for his own sexual desires. In fact, one of my complaints about this episode is that when Quagmire finally gets significant consequences for his actions, it’s because of something that, to be honest, wasn’t even his fault. He had consensual sex with a girl who lied to him saying she was an adult and Quagmire was shocked when she revealed that she was underage after they had already had sex. I’d say the real-life injustice this episode is joking about is that people can go to jail for twenty years for having sex with someone they thought was legal. But since this episode involved anything that included the word “rape,” the Parent Television Council is freaking out about it. This episode isn’t even that callous on the subject compared to other episodes. In fact, he actually takes the subject quite seriously for an episode of Family Guy.

The Parent Television Council, to me, represents the worst of modern censorship. If people want to publicly rant about how much they hate Family Guy, that’s their freedom of speech. However, the Television Parent Council is actively trying to shut down the show because they don’t like it. People should be able to enjoy the entertainment they prefer, but no one can tell you what they like. You can hate Family Guy all you want, but the best way to deal with it is to just avoid him. Hopefully, the Television Parent Council will understand that one day.

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