“Family Guy” Takes on TV Racism Intelligently

I’m watching “Family Guy” right now. As I’m watching, I’m starting to see some of the genius that actually goes into the writing of the show. The episode in question is “Peter Griffin: Husband, Father …Brother?” where Peter finds out that an ancestor of his was, in fact, black. Most critics of “Family Guy” cite how random it is, and how unintelligent it is in comparison to “South Park”. Manatees anyone? But a nugget of cultural criticism emerged during this episode that I felt compelled to write about.

In the scene where Peter is delivering a speech to a group of African Americans (I hate political correctness…) in order to ease his transition into their good graces, he begins talking about the television show “Good Times.” At first, it seems to follow the manatee randomness many have come to love, but on further inspection, it is much more. “Good Times” was largely a show about black people, made for white audiences. In fact, most shows that appeared on major networks where black characters starred as the main characters were targeted towards white people, who made up the majority of the viewership. What’s so clever about this scene is that Peter uses his knowledge of “Good Times” to communicate with the people in the room. As a white individual, this is the most knowledge he has about black people. So he communicates with a room of black people by the only means he has: a television show.

For a large portion of America, what they see on TV is all they know about a race/culture. Television is only caricature of life. The problem comes in when people associate what they see on TV with how the real world really works. So when the only representation arabs ever got on TV was either on news channels in the middle of war-torn countries or in action movies as the evil terrorists, it becomes hard for people to dissociate what they’ve seen with what is reality.

Anyway, just thought I’d give some props to “Family Guy” for being smarter than people want to believe. Take that, Trey and Matt!