Family Guy: Apocalyptic, or Nihilistic?

After reading David Dark's thoughts on The Simpsons, I was interested to watch The Family Guy with new horizons. Dark proposed that The Simpsons was a kind of contemporary piece of apocalyptic literature, similar to the biblical book Revelation, in disclosing what N.T. Wright calls the "cosmic significance" of everyday events. We are invited to take a more heightened, alert perspective on people and facets of our everyday lives, and have a renewed perspective.

The Family Guy is notorious for its slap-stick humor, fast pace and cutaways, and taboo jokes. I've always loved the show, and thought of it as something of the "next generation" of a show like The Simpsons. The show follows an average dysfunctional family and watches as chaos ensues. The father is the stupid simpleton (Homer), the children Meg and Chris don't like their family (Bart & Lisa), and the mother Louis is a guiding figure (Marge). I had never been a huge follower of The Simpsons, so I figured this was probably just the next itineration of the similar idea. So after reading David Dark's analysis of the Simpsons as an apocalyptic window into culture, I was excited to see Family Guy as much of the same. I was wrong.

I seem to remember in class us discussing that David Dark had come to Calvin College, and discussed this very point. If I recall correctly, the significant difference that Dark himself noted with the Family Guy in particular was a distinct lack of love. Rather than the show being a kind of amplified caricature of people around us, and showing redeeming qualities of such characters, the Family Guy definitely seemed strictly interested in the tearing down of characters without redemption.

In the episode I watched, Meg wants to attend college, but doesn't have a strong enough extra-curricular portfolio for her application. She decides to write an article for her high school paper. Her father Peter thinks the article is boring, so secretly swaps it with a more sensational story of his own making: "Luke Perry is Gay." Perry finds out and files a lawsuit, so Peter tries to lure Perry into a gay pose with him to take a photo, to redeem Meg in the situation. In the end, Perry decides to do an interview with Meg, to which the episode closes with Peter's moral of the story: "Things work out if you do whatever you want and don't worry about the consequences."

Perhaps there are some redeeming qualities of the show: a strong demonstration of a father's sacrificial love, for example. But it's certainly a bit of a stretch, and it's a thin observation at that. On the whole, I think Dark's analysis rings true: the characters are more bent on hurting and humiliating one another without remorse, than striving for something more. While the show does indeed play on caricatures and stereotypes, rather than lovingly redeeming them, they serve as surrogates for racial and prejudiced jokes.

Augustine wrote in De Doctrine Christiana that people may variously interpret the scriptures, and some may even interpret them wrongly. But as long as the ultimate product is love, that is a relatively safe place to be. While The Simpsons perhaps strikes this balance, The Family Guy seems to not be interested.