Why It's Ok to Laugh at the Parody in Family Guy

Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, language: English, abstract: In Entertainment Weekly, Family Guy has been criticized numerous times and was even nominated for the worst show on television (Tucker 1999-12-24). According to famous TV-critic Ken Tucker, Family Guy is "vile swill" because of its jokes that are often racist, anti-Semitic, or play on touchy subjects such as AIDS. Furthermore, the show is a shoddy animation based on stolen ideas (Ibid.). At a first glance, claims like these appear to be justified. For example, Peter, who just lost all his money and his car, proposes to Lois to find a Native American high roller to pay one million dollars to sleep with her. When Lois objects, he says, "These people took 24 dollars for the isle of Manhattan. They have no idea what things are worth" "(The Son Also Draws"). Now, that Family Guy has been successfully produced for such a long time, people grew fond of its humour. However, is it reasonable and socially desirable to laugh at this kind of humour? It seems that people are laughing for all the wrong reasons.