Case Studies - TELEVISION: Postmodern Features

Family Guy is a show rich and dense with references from popular culture. Even the main idea of the show is a reference to the very popular television genre; family sitcom. In a typical family sitcom, the story revolves around a nuclear family comprised of a husband, wife, and a couple of children. The story for each episode is stand-alone, and is most commonly about the family's mishappenings with each other, their friends, or neighbors. In the end, the problem is solved and the family live on happily to suffer the next episode.

Family Guy is all of these things but with a dysfunctional twist. The main character and man of the house, Peter Griffin, is lazy, overweight, and unintelligent. Lois is the typical stay at home wife and mother who unknowingly dodges assassination attempts made by her infant son Stewie. Meg is the eldest daughter and although she seems the most normal, the rest of the family seem to have accepted her as the black sheep and have no trouble pointing out that she is the least favorite child. Because of her strange family, Meg has become very self conscious about her weight and looks. Chris is the middle child and oldest son, who has taken his father's attributes of being lazy, fat, and unintelligent. Brian is the family dog who also so happen to stand on his hind legs and talks.

In the Family Guy one hour special, they did a whole episode parodying Star Wars IV: A New Hope. It is entitled "Blue Harvest." The show was made to celebrate the premier of it's sixth season and also the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. They even had promotional art done in the style of the old Star Wars posters with the cast replaced by Family Guy characters. At the end of the episode, it turns out Peter is just retelling the tale to his family to pass time from a black out. This is where Family Guy breaks the fourth wall again when Chris mentions that Robot Chicken, which is a show on Cartoon Network, had just also previously done a special episode on Star Wars and that it doubled their ratings. Peter denies knowing this fact and assures Chris that he did not steal the idea.

People may not know it, but Family Guy is a show that thrives on postmodernist ideas. It's always pulling references from other popular medias and makes fun of itself whenever possible. Even their theme song is a satire on modern television. In the beginning lyrics Lois sings "it seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV." Then Peter jumps in and sings together "but where are those good old fashion values on which we used to rely? Lucky theres a Family Guy." Although they are saying that we should reply on Family Guy for family values, we know that it should be the complete opposite just because we know what the show is like. That already gives viewers their own inside joke. For Family Guy, the whole world is a source for comedy and lucky for them, the rest of the audience is in tuned to their televisions and computers enough to get all the smallest happenings in the world and media so they can get all the random jokes. There are new avenues for fame everywhere, especially in Youtube and soon Family Guy wont be pulling from just television and movies anymore. What they do already is play on the fact that in real life, dialogue does not flow as smoothly as it does in a written script. Communication is often messy or hidden with small nuances. Family Guy mimics these speech patterns for a familiar yet funny scene even if the characters are just talking to each other.