Seth McFarlane as a mirror for society

Often times, when I'm watching Family Guy, I see various sexual innuendos, lame plot devices and story lines, and jokes that don't really deserve laughter to be thrown at them.

And this makes me wonder. Who watches this stupid show? It's now becoming apparent to me that everyone loves it. Family Guy never was the greatest show on TV, but some of the early episodes, such as the time when Peter predicts the end of the world and goes off to start a new civilization based around a Twinkies factory, actually did manage to keep us in stitches for a while.

Now we'd be lucky for more than a cheap giggle over some physical humor.

I'm convinced that McFarlane realized that if he changed the show, he could appeal to a larger demographic of people. I'm not saying that the viewers are always mindless, just that they are when viewing this nonsense. McFarlane seems to enjoy testing us, to see how much crap we can endure. In The Splendid Source, his great dirty joke is "guess what, chicken butt." And while I understand that the joke is supposed to be funny because it's not funny at all, it really isn't... It really... isn't.

If this wasn't enough, he follows up with more mindlessness in Family Guy 2...oops I mean, the Cleveland Show, and American Dad.

His character's flaws are all things about characteristics we make fun of in people: homosexuality (Stewie), mentally challenged people and obesity (Peter and Chris), ugliness (Meg), and racism (Brian). If my learning in AP Lit was correct, then the reason we people take enjoyment, and laugh at this is because they feel superior to the people they are laughing at. If society didn't still cling to their need to feel superior to others, had it actually advanced past such backwards ideas, then this show would have stayed canceled.

Seth McFarlane is showing society how hypocritical it really is. That even though we seem to advocate for things like selflessness, and kindness towards others, these concepts are so against our nature, that we still haven't left them. I'm not saying that we should abandon all ideals of goodness, it's just that it's unrealistic to think that people can be always good, and that anyone who criticizes others is a hypocrite. People have to accept that they are not born either good or evil, that they are born human, and that they will be human throughout their lives. But if humanity did not strive to attain goodness in morality, then it would not evolve to the state that it has today, it would not even be able to build a civilization at all, since we wouldn't be able to act under the guise of goodness to instate law and to maintain order in society.

Family guy may be the bane of television, it may be a contributing source for all the sex on TV, and lack of family values. But it's only a mirror for humanity. Reflecting in it is the face of humanity, is the face of Seth McFarlane, a thin veiled smile, hiding the pure evil below