In her article “Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,” Antonia Peacocke discusses how those who watch the show Family Guy should realize the creators’ jokes should be viewed as what they are intended to be: a harsh reality rather than crude. Peacocke argues that when taken at face value, Family Guy’s humor could potentially be considered offensive. Instead, the creator Seth Macfarlane intelligently uses satire to mock American culture. The article is overall effective with one minor weakness. The article gains a majority of its effectiveness from the author providing her own personal experiences to help the reader relate to the topic at hand, and by pulling examples straight from the show to back up her argument.
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Peacocke pulls dialog directly from the show to use as examples in order to prove her point and to make sense of Family Guy’s unusual humor. In one of her examples, Peacocke provides an excerpt from the episode “I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar” in which an instructional video plays about women working in a factory in the 1950s. A man speaks to the camera and makes clear sexist comments and even slaps a woman on her behind. Though someone could argue that the scene is crude and offensive, the author argues that “The message of the clip denounces and ridicules sexism rather than condoning it” (263). In another example, the author includes dialog from the episode “PTV” in which Brian, the family’s talking dog, and Stewie, the Family’s talking baby, have a discussion in the car about a book written by Oprah that Stewie is reading. When asked what book the baby is going to read next, Stewie proclaims “Well, she hasn’t told us yet- damn!” The creators’ actual intentions of this scene are to show how Americans are willing and able to follow a celebrity’s instruction without much thought. Peacocke does a fair job at acknowledging how Family Guy’s humor could be viewed offensively on the surface, then proceeding to discuss the creators’ true intentions and backing it up with examples …show more content…
At first read, someone might assume the author will compare and contrast Family Guy to Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious throughout the article. However, Freud’s book is actually only mentioned twice in the entirety of the article in the introduction and conclusion. Though the author might assume the readers will relate the show to the book throughout her argument and examples, some readers might actually completely forget about Freud all together until the conclusion. If Peacocke removed her mentions of Freud, the article would still be just as effective, if not more, because readers would be left less confused. However, Peacocke could get away with just simply using Freud’s book as an example to further explain her
Peacocke pulls dialog directly from the show to use as examples in order to prove her point and to make sense of Family Guy’s unusual humor. In one of her examples, Peacocke provides an excerpt from the episode “I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar” in which an instructional video plays about women working in a factory in the 1950s. A man speaks to the camera and makes clear sexist comments and even slaps a woman on her behind. Though someone could argue that the scene is crude and offensive, the author argues that “The message of the clip denounces and ridicules sexism rather than condoning it” (263). In another example, the author includes dialog from the episode “PTV” in which Brian, the family’s talking dog, and Stewie, the Family’s talking baby, have a discussion in the car about a book written by Oprah that Stewie is reading. When asked what book the baby is going to read next, Stewie proclaims “Well, she hasn’t told us yet- damn!” The creators’ actual intentions of this scene are to show how Americans are willing and able to follow a celebrity’s instruction without much thought. Peacocke does a fair job at acknowledging how Family Guy’s humor could be viewed offensively on the surface, then proceeding to discuss the creators’ true intentions and backing it up with examples …show more content…
At first read, someone might assume the author will compare and contrast Family Guy to Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious throughout the article. However, Freud’s book is actually only mentioned twice in the entirety of the article in the introduction and conclusion. Though the author might assume the readers will relate the show to the book throughout her argument and examples, some readers might actually completely forget about Freud all together until the conclusion. If Peacocke removed her mentions of Freud, the article would still be just as effective, if not more, because readers would be left less confused. However, Peacocke could get away with just simply using Freud’s book as an example to further explain her