Friday, July 18, 2008

Family Guy Analysis

1) Race-In the "Don't Make Me Over" episode, the white race was the hegemonic representation that was most dominant. There was only one person of color, Cleveland, the "token" black person in a predominantly white neighborhood. Not only was Cleveland the only black person, but he appeared to be slow, as was evident by is droopy eyes and voice. Higginbotham makes reference about the "token" black person in her article "Teen Mags", where she makes reference to one light skin black model amongst a group of white models in teen magazines. She states, "Maybe they think if they surround her with enough white people no one will even notice she's black".

Reference: Higginbotham, Anastasia. Teen Mags: How To Get A Guy, Drop 20 Pounds, and Lose Your Self-Esteem. 1996

2) Ethnicity- As stated above, the characters in the episode were predominantly white; however references were made to Asians as well. There was an Asian reporter named Miss Tokonowa, who had a thick Asian accent, and there was an Asian pedicurist named Miss Wong with a thick Asian accent as well. When Meg and her mom got into an argument, the pedicurist said, "Oh yes. She mad. Old lady jealous", in broken down English. These references show Asians in typical everyday roles.

3) Gender- The characters in the episode consisted of mainly white males. The episode focused on how important it is to society that women maintain sexy looks, whereas men don't have to do much to themselves. Meg completely transformed her look, and had the typical blonde look. she wore low-rider jeans, had midriff shirts that showed her stomach. Her mother wanted her to wear shirts that said "Little Slut", "Porn Star", and "Sperm Dumpster", which she deemed attractive because they were glittery. She was viewed as a sex object by men. These depictions can be shown in two big scenes. The first scene showed Meg and her family singing to the inmates in jail, and how they swooned over and basically wanted to devour her. One man said that he could strangle her all day. The second scene is when Jimmy Fallon tricked her into sleeping with him on national television, which in turn embarassed her. These scenes show that women are seen as property and nothing more.

4) Sexuality- There were alot of homosexual references in this episode as well. One scene showed a cow licking an ice cream and speaking with a feminine type of voice. When Meg asked Craig Hoffman out, he said that he doesn't go out with dudes, but then when she had her makeover that's when he showed interest in her. In the scene where all the guys were dressed up to perform, Peter made a comment that if their outfits matched, they would look like queers. One scene made fun of the Tin Man from "The Wizard of Oz" finding out that he was gay, and showed him falling on top of a man and saying, "Look what happened by accident". This scene portrayed sexual intercourse between men. A man named in jail braided Chris's hair, which implied that he was gay. When Peter signed the contract on Tony's butt cheeks, Tony screamed each time the pen touched him. This scene implies that Tony was raped by men.

5) Incarceration (Prisoners)- The jail scene showed buff, old, white, dirty men who had not seen or been in contact with women for a long period of time, which explains why they reacted to Meg's presence that way. One man said that he could strangle her all day, which can imply rough sex. Another scene implied that there was male raping going on in the jail, because a man was sensitive when it came to someone touching his butt.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Classwork from 7/16/08

Nice job with the Family Guy analysis!

:o)
Jessie

See SOCS for point/grade-related credit (reminder: for all blog-assignments, the number or letter-grade will only be posted to the "Gradebook" on SOCS).