Seth MacFarlane’s animated sitcom Family Guy has long traded in shocking humor and crass jokes. “Family Guy” emerged like a fratboy-ready version of “The Simpsons,” when many comedians and television shows were testing the boundaries of what was considered acceptable on television. Many of the comedians in question pushed back against the still-remembered manufactured health of Reagan’s 1980s. MacFarlane was born in 1972 and therefore grew up on the boredom of the “classic American sitcom”. There was also a general cultural outrage at the 1990s trend toward “politically correct language,” even among those who agreed with the sentiment.
MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” opened with a riff on the title sequence from “All in the Family” and then exploded into a dazzling song-and-dance routine that was (ironically, of course) about restoring “good, old-fashioned values.” The title was ironic, however. Peter Griffin (MacFarlane) wasn’t a “Family Guy” at all, but rather a crass, media-blind alcoholic with tendencies toward sexism and bigotry. The old-fashioned values, MacFarlane explained, are actually terrible and outdated.
Much of the shocking humor in “Family Guy” is intended to be a nod to the sexist, bigoted attitudes so often seen in “good, old-fashioned” television, revealing just how rotten many of America’s core conservative values really are. However, many of the series’ jokes blur the line. Sometimes MacFarlane makes a comment. Sometimes he’s just so badass. There will be at least one joke per episode that will offend most people.
“Family Guy” has 23 seasons in 426 episodes on this line. The show has been canceled and revived, and there is no sign of it ending any time soon. In a 2022 interview with The Hollywood ReporterMacFarlane and producers Alec Sulkin and Rich Appel theorize how they were able to get away with it for so long. MacFarlane assumes few people are truly offended by his show.
Seth MacFarlane feels like Family Guy doesn’t really offend anyone
MacFarlane found no evidence (at least anecdotally) that anyone was actually offended by any of his outlandish jokes on Family Guy. He said he’d come across a few thoughtful essays and thought pieces about how someone might be offended by “Family Guy” or how the show was some sort of cultural signal of diminished respect for our fellow human beings, but he’d never spoken to anyone who that offended would have openly upset (apart from the occasional celebrity he mocked).
He noted that there was some outrage among users of Twitter (which was turning into X’s social media nightmare), but MacFarlane was smart enough to acknowledge that Twitter users were not a serious cross-section of his viewing audience. He knew that social media wasn’t reality. MacFarlane said:
“I don’t find much of the supposed outrage in the real world. I’ve read a lot about this on Twitter, which, as much as we believe it, is statistically very marginal. Most people aren’t active.” But when it comes to comedy, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a single person in the real world – outside of social media and outside of thinkpieces – if ever I’ve heard the opposite laugh.”
It’s also worth noting that, as an animated film, Family Guy has a lot more leeway to say and do crass things. When a live-action actor in a comedy show says something pointedly anti-Semitic, it’s hard to stomach because there’s a real person on the tape saying it. On “Family Guy,” the dark jokes are repeated through wide-eyed caricatures, talking dogs and other fantastical characters. The absurd optics take a lot of the edge out of the whole thing.
Family Guy gets away with a lot because the characters are animated
Producer Alec Sulkin points out that “Family Guy” also has to give a lot of credit to fellow producer Rich Appel, who has a keen eye for what’s legal and what’s not. It’s fair to mock a public figure, but “Family Guy” sometimes comes close to the edge of legal libel. Appel himself then chimed in, noting that because of their medium, animated series are able to push the envelope with shocking humor. After all, “The Simpsons” and “South Park,” “Family Guy’s” big brothers, can also get away with “objectionable” material, and so “Family Guy” simply followed suit. Apple said:
“I think if you look at ‘South Park’ and ‘The Simpsons’ and our show, it’s no coincidence that they’re all animated. And I think that trembling ‘outrage’ and people’s willingness to take offense at anything is what’s called for.” It’s a different world when it comes to animated characters. To me that’s proof that people don’t take it so badly.
MacFarlane pointed out that you can’t tweet angrily about characters like Peter, Lois and Stewie Griffin because they are animated characters. You can’t even pretend they live in the real world, and the audience has to accept them in the abstract.
It’s easy to be offensive when all the evidence suggests that people aren’t offended. There will always be a market for edgy, offensive humor, and Family Guy has been ready to provide it for over two decades. One can certainly make legitimate criticism of “Family Guy” – The makers of “South Park” openly satirized The show’s preference for pop culture references over history – but the show’s inappropriate humor, we can all agree, is not one of its major weaknesses.
