On February 8, 2015, Family Guy released an episode titled “Quagmire’s Mom”. In the episode, 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 grew up a sexual deviant, Quagmire is still sentenced to twenty years in prison. However, his mother walks into the episode and finds a way to get her son cleared of her charges. While I am a huge fan of Family Guy, I personally thought this episode was lackluster. However, I apparently loved this episode compared to Parents 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 list of “worst primetime shows to watch as a family” three times and over forty episodes have been chosen for the Parent Television Council’s “Worst TV Show of the Week.” They have even launched campaigns for the Fox network to cancel Family Guy.
I know a lot of people hate Family Guy for various reasons, including the cut jokes, the lack of consistency, and of course the offensive humor. Most viewers distance themselves from 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 because other people enjoy them and they don’t force it on me. Similarly, no one is forcing members of the Television Parents Council to watch Family Guy. I doubt you will like anything about it. This means that they watch this show by their own choice, not because there is anything 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 didn’t find the movie “Elf” in the slightest despite its universal praise. But I’m not going to criticize other people for laughing at it or starting a campaign against the movie because it didn’t fit my sense of humor. The Parents Television Council cannot seem to understand this. They think that if you find something funny that they don’t, you are at fault and inferior to the sophistication of these elite intellectuals. In one of his recent articles complaining about the episode “Our Idiot Brian”, Christopher Gildemiester stated that “it was a typical episode of Family Guy, except for the long central part of the episode that makes fun of stupid people, which undoubtedly insulted many of the most important Family Guy characters. fans.” These people constantly complain that Family Guy negatively generalizes certain types of people, but they just call 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 about sensitive topics. That would be like if I went to see “Dora the explorer” and complained that she was too childish and dumb. The members of the Television Parents Council are obviously not the target audience. Neither are people who tend to take offense at shock humor. This is the kind of show that Family Guy is and always was. It’s obviously not for everyone, but let people who like the show watch it. The people at the Parents Television Council can watch whatever they want to watch.
Now, I would understand if they made these kinds of complaints about a family show. For example, in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants called “Are You Happy Now?” there is a joke where Squidward is depressed and holds up a rope saying “maybe this will help”, implying that he will hang himself, only to come up with something else instead. This is clearly a suicidal prank and of course it had 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 a cartoon for adults. Sure, it’s gotten edgier over the years, but it wasn’t for kids to begin with. The Parent Television Council often complains that children are being exposed to Family Guy. I’m not a parent, so I can’t judge whether a parent allows their children to watch Family Guy or not. But Family Guy is clearly not a children’s show and whatever children are exposed to is up to the parents. And I know the Parent Television Council complains about Family Guy’s schedule, how it airs too early when the kids are still watching TV, but that’s not the show’s fault, either. That is the fault of the network and that problem should be dealt with them, not with the program itself.
They also like to complain about certain messages that, according to them, the programs emit. They claim that Family Guy downplays the seriousness of serious issues like rape, racism, and abuse. However, you have to remember that Family Guy is comedy. Not only that, but it’s 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 on Family Guy. They’re not actively telling us that abuse is okay (except maybe with one or two rare exceptions like “Seahorse Seashell Party”). I can laugh at racist or suicidal jokes while still understanding the seriousness of the issues. I know some people can’t and that’s just a difference in sense of humor. I can even laugh at the jokes that make fun of me. I have Asperger’s Syndrome and was never offended one bit 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 Parents Council needs to understand that just because a show offends them doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist.
However, the turning point for writing this was the article on the aforementioned episode, Quagmire’s Mom. The Parent Television Council complained that the episode joked about statutory rape. Now this was just baffling to me. Family Guy is not new to pulling pranks like this. They have made much more offensive jokes than this one, like almost every episode with the character of Herbert, an old man who is constantly trying to get sexual pleasure from little boys. Even the main character of this episode, Quagmire, has done much worse. Many other episodes have involved him committing numerous forcible rapes and even keeping women locked up in his home to satisfy his own sexual desires. In fact, one of my gripes about this episode is that when Quagmire finally gets significant consequences for his actions, it’s for something that, to be honest, wasn’t even his fault. He had consensual sex with a girl who lied to him that she was an adult and Quagmire was shocked when he revealed that he was underage after they had already had sex. He would say that the real-life injustice this episode jokes 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. This episode isn’t even that callous on the subject compared to other episodes. In fact, he actually takes the issue 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 Parents Television Council is actively trying to remove 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 you like. You can hate Family Guy all you want, but the best way to deal with it is to avoid it. Let’s hope the Parents Television Council understands this one day.
