Don't apologize for things you didn't do, to people who don't believe in forgiveness or redemption.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
TV blasphemy: cowardly, not cool
I watch ‘Family Guy’. Good snark, most of the time. But Seth MacFarlane obviously hates the church. This year he went for full-on blasphemy at Christmas. I dare him to do that about Mohammed. I don’t know if he was being wrong on purpose, but as most of you know, the Immaculate Conception isn’t the Virgin Birth. Maybe before MacFarlane trashes a faith, he should bother to learn about it first. Re: ‘I went to Catholic school for X years’, which he’d probably say, the answer is: Vatican II -> bad catechesis. Anyway, living in a Protestant country and taking shots at the church is cowardly, not edgy. Merry Christmas anyway, Seth.
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I don't watch Family Guy regularly myself, but it's on often enough at other peoples' houses that I've seen plenty of episodes. MacFarlane's shows are funniest when he and his writers stick to things they know well- basically, '80s pop culture and the lives of secularized middle-class Northeasterners. When they try to write about any other part of the world- England, Germany, the American South, Ireland, etc.- or some other social group- religious believers, Mexican immigrants, old-money WASPs- the results are painfully, horrendously unfunny. Not "unfunny, because that makes me angry and offended" (though that's usually true), but "unfunny, because your parody doesn't bear even the slightest superficial resemblance to the thing you are allegedly spoofing". (In MacFarlane's defense, not that he deserves defending, I'm told that he doesn't personally write the worst of the preachy, obnoxious episodes).
ReplyDeleteThe same phenomenon happened in lesser degree with a far more talented animator- Mike Judge's weakest effort yet has been "The Goode Family", his attempt to skewer PC SWPL-types in a university town. It wasn't nearly as awful as the worst Family Guy episodes (many of the jokes were quite funny), but you could tell it was an outsider's perplexed, uncomprehending view of a strange world (Judge resides in Red-state suburban Texas, like his best characters). Judge never seemed to grasp the key insight about SWPLs- they're hypocrites who don't actually strive for consistency in their Political Correctness. The Goode Family were a kind of reductio ad absurdum of what a PC family would be like if they were trying to follow all of their arbitrary prejudices consistently.