Stereotypes In American Dad

Stereotypical American American Dad is an animated television series that stereotypes everyone and everything they can. The writers of this series, American Dad, uses these stereotypes for laughs, and they are very successful at it. The latent effect of this humorous television show is that it brings more and more stereotypes into the culture. American Dad allows the continuation of placing stereotypes on groups of people which leads to negative consequences. Season 1 episode 6 of American Dad is a prime example of a non-multicultural piece of literature. This episode is about how the Smith family, a white middle class family, wanted to throw a barbeque for their neighborhood. Stan and his wife Francine went around to all the houses personally …show more content…
Even though the Mamaris were not white, they were a token family. They were put in just because the writers thought it would make the episode more diverse. As stated in class, token characters are usually unhelpful because they reflect what the writers think instead of the actual reality. In Sandra Hughes-Hassell’s article, Multicultrual Young Adult Liturature as a For of Counter storytelling, she quotes Beverly Tatum which states, “Stereotypes, omissions, and distortions, combined with an image of white superiority, to some degree socialize children of color and indigenous children to value the role models, lifestyles, and images of beauty of white culture over those of their own cultural group.” The Mamaris family is distorted and has an image of white superiority throughout the episode. This is troublesome because just the children who are not white will feel like they will have to change in order to be accepted and/or …show more content…
Whose culture are they going to accept? Most likely the dominant culture. They will accept the dominant culture because they see that the dominant culture is very successful. American Dad shows the side of the dominant culture and that culture only. Stan works for the CIA, where gets paid a substantial amount of money, and he has traditional family where his wife stays home and she cooks and cleans. Any viewer who watches this can see that the white Americans are the dominant people in this animated world that reflects our own world. Therefor anyone who does not have white skin and wants to achieve the same things as Stan, they are going to reject their own culture and then they will try to become more like