Why Family Guy Is Funny

We often ask ourselves the question, what is humor? We all have different interpretations as to what makes something funny. Generally, humor is something that makes people laugh. Family Guy is a sitcom that has been on the air since 1999. This show revolves around an extremely dysfunctional family, the Griffins. Family Guy is the only show to be cancelled twice, but be brought back due to high sales of their DVDs. Family Guy is an effective form of humor because of the use of put down humor, irony, and stereotypes. All of these elements of humor are what makes Family Guy one of the top ranking shows in America. In my opinion, stereotypes are a fundamental element for humor. Stereotypes are a great starting point to tell humorous jokes. They give a joke the possibility for any type of audience to understand because the use of stereotypes are universal, even if the stereotypes are not true. Family Guy pokes fun at many stereotypes because there is a handful of different races in the show. There is a black character, a half Japanese character, a handicapped character, a female white character, a fat, uneducated, white, middle class job worker. Just listing these characters creates a plethora of stereotypes that can be used to make jokes and be humorous. There are countless times you can see the stereotypes being made fun of in Family Guy. In one episode, Cleveland, the black character, was told he was only in the group of friends because of the fact that he is black. He was just being used as the token black friend so that this group of friends, Peter, Joe, and Quagmire, wouldn’t be seen as racists. Another instance of stereotyping in this show is when the lottery in Quahog (the city the show takes place in) reaches $150 Million and the news reporter asks a Persian waiting in line what he would do with the money and he responds “Ill buy every Persian a white BMW!” You have to think about what happened and know the characters to find some jokes humorous, which I