Cultural Hegemony and Family Guy

As we’ve discussed in past weeks, pop culture can often work to reinforce existing stereotypes and cultural norms in our society. Comedy in film and television often comes from poking fun at different aspects of society or the people in it. A number of things are safe to poke fun of while other things are considered “going too far”. Our society has come to accept a number of controversial topics as comedic, even things like gender and sexual preference. However, one topic that is usually strictly off limits to poke fun at is the disabled population. That’s why I was so surprised to watch one particular episode of “Family Guy”.

“Family Guy” is a comedic cartoon for adults that focuses on a “typical” family. It plays on Fox during prime time so it reaches a pretty large mainstream audience. The show forces the viewer to accept unconventional family roles; the father Peter acts like a child, the baby Stewy is a genius and works various jobs and drives a car. The family dog walks around on two feet, drinks coffee and dates while the other children play a minor role in the show.

On the episode I watched, a deaf woman starts working in Peter’s office and his coworkers all find her attractive. It leads them to believe all handicapped women are hot so they start a “Disabled Night” at their bar. The bar hosts an array of women in wheelchairs and prosthetics and Brian, the dog, meets an attractive blind woman who he begins to date.

Some of the notable controversial moments of the show involved Brian tricking his blind date into believing they went to exotic destinations as well as a friend of Peter’s who is in a wheelchair asking his wife to commit suicide with him. My first question was, “How is this show getting away with these things?” It’s a very popular show that has been around for at least ten seasons so it has a good track record. On the other hand, I started thinking of cultural hegemony. We are trained to understand what is acceptable on TV and what is not, but this show seems to have no concept of that. I know people enjoy it, but how come I never hear them talking about it? Are they simply too afraid to bring up the controversial topics that “Family Guy” dives right into? In my opinion this show challenges cultural hegemony jumping out of a pattern of what is accepted in mainstream society and addressing basically anything it wants to. However if it doesn’t get people talking, other TV shows may not follow suit and the societal norms “Family Guy”  aims to break will continue.