Seth MacFarlane Admits Problematic ‘Family Guy’ Jokes Are ‘A Little More Complicated’ Than He Once Believed
If you wanted to cut Seth MacFarlane some slack, you could concede that the writer and producer was only 25 when Family Guy hit the airwaves. But now he’s 51 and wrestling with the legacy of his outrageous and sometimes objectionable creation. “This is the conversation that tortures me at night,” he recently told CBS Sunday Morning.
“When I started the show, my attitude was like, ‘It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s like, if it’s funny let’s do it,’” he explained. “And the older I’ve gotten, I look back at shows that we’ve done and I’m like, gosh, I guess it’s a little more complicated than that, isn’t it? Comedy and jokes do have an impact.”
Unlike contemporaries such as South Park and The Simpsons, which also have come under fire for offensive humor, Family Guy is known for courting controversy seemingly for its own sake. For example, there’s not much satire in a scene in which Peter and a barbershop quartet cavort around the bed of a man dying of AIDS — it’s just an exercise in “Can you believe they did that?”
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There’s a legion of webpages devoted to ugly Family Guy bits like that one, including:
- Quagmire’s sister being physically abused by her fiancé, mainly so the show can write jokes about domestic violence.
- Stewie bringing stereotypical Jewish character Mort Goldman back to Nazi Germany in his time machine for some Holocaust hijinks.
- Peter setting up a neighborhood watch program and shooting Black character Cleveland Jr. when he mistakenly thinks the kid is breaking into the Griffin house.
- Peter befriending a Muslim man who turns out to be a radical extremist terrorist.
- Costumed Chris and Meg unknowingly hooking up at a Halloween party, then deciding what’s the harm in a little incest?
Shocking jokes with no point beyond shock are one reason the Parents Television Council has named Family Guy “Worst TV Show of the Week” more than 40 times. The group also protested Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show for “disgusting sex jokes, crass Holocaust humor, cruel impersonations of deaf people and loads of bleeped profanity.”
In the past, MacFarlane has defended comedy that, for example, makes fun of Sarah Palin’s kid with Down syndrome as the work of an “equal opportunity offender.” Now that he’s older and recording albums of Frank Sinatra covers, he’s slowly coming to understand that not all offenses are created equal.
Does that mean MacFarlane is going soft?
“I have to figure out a way to maintain what the show is and maintain this thing that people love,” he told CBS Sunday Morning, “but at the same time, recognize that I am analyzing it now in a different way than I did when I was younger.”
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