blog 5 family guy

While reading the responses of viewers of the Family Guy episodes, I was able to relate many of the concerns that the viewers had to the subjects we have been learning about in class. Most of the responses talked about the offensive humor that is portrayed in the Family Guy episodes. While very few found the racial and ethnic slurs that are widely apparent in the episodes humorous, many of the bloggers were upset and found the material degrading. After reading a few blogs I began to see a pattern from viewers. It seems that the family guy episodes were originally intended to poke fun at racial stereotypes rather than actually degrading people of the particular minority. Even though the writers of Family Guy may have intended the show to be attacking the stereotypes rather than the minority groups, the way the issues are portrayed can be easily misunderstood and taken by the viewers as hurtful and demeaning to their ethnicity. Some of the viewers that found the show humorous also express that despite the fact that they found some of the jokes funny, they could not help but feel guilty for the way the jokes were aimed at other people’s religion, beliefs, race or ethnicity. Reading these blogs was really an eye-opening experience for me because since the jokes never seemed to be pointed at me, I never realized how offensive they could be to the minority groups that were attacked. I now see that shows like Family Guy that use racial and ethnic issues as a basis of humor are not funny at all, but are just adding to the tension that is behind many race issues.