family guy

ok anybody watching fox last night will probably already know were this is going, I thought about trying to do some in depth analysis but these two places http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/   http://www.afterelton.com/TV/2010/5/seth-macfarlane-complete-idiot  already did that far better than I could, and since I'm still job hunting and trying to write a few side projects I figured I'd leave the more logical discussion to them and use this space (as I often do) to vent.

so with that out of the way let me state that I'm not one of those people that hate family guy by default (well I am now but I wasn't last week) while I felt they went frequently over the line, it usually felt more like failed humor and rarely seemed mean spirited, though i could easily be wrong about all of that.

the episode featured quagmires dad during the first segment of the episode had a seris of gay innuendo as the cast was trying to convince quagmire that his farther was gay, bad but not really insulting or horrible yet. but then comes the reveal that that quagmires dad is a woman trapped in a mans body. I'll forgive how all of her transition is apparently done in one quick operation, but after the reveal the entirety of the episode is little more than a series of dehumanizing jokes at the expense of transsexuals. Ida (quagmire's farther) is referred to as it. both peter, the stupidest character in the show, and Louise (one of the smartest) insist that transexuality is simply being gay, with the only advocate that it's not being quagmire, the shows running gag of sexual deviant.

later on brian starts to fall for Ida and ends up sleeping with her, following that most of the cast as a few laughs at his expense and when Brian learns about it, he proceeds to vomit for thirty seconds straight, followed by screaming, and then states that transsexuals need to inform the neighborhood when they move, that's right, now the most liberal and intelligent character treats the sexual encounter as the worst thing that could possibly happen and infers that transsexuals are sex offenders. I cannot stress how down right insulting that is.  the vomit scene alone probably goes on as long as any attempt at portraying transsexuals has human beings.

and to cap this all off, if you follow the links at the beginning, the creator of family guy stated that he's on the side of the GLBT and thought that we'd be "very very happy" with it. here's a hint seth, if you want us to enjoy the episode, don't portray us as the disgusting it.

ok angry rant over and I honestly feel a little better, mind you I'm officially avoiding family guy from now on. so thanks for reading and I hope I'll have something a little more light heated next week.