Friday, July 18, 2008

Family Hegemony Guy

In this blog, I will dissect a few scenes from an episode of Family Guy to expose the hegemonic and patriarchal ideals behind the characters and their situations.

The first example involves the characters the daughter Meg, her girlfriends, her mother Lois, and a boy named Craig. The characters are predominately white, of the middle-class, all females expect for Craig, all assumed heterosexual, and they are all teenagers except for Lois. In the main scene between Meg and her friends and Craig, the media reinforces hegemonic ideals for femininity, race, and sexuality. Meg and her friends pursue the stereotypical masculine Craig who is considered a rebel and attractive. When Meg is denied a relationship with Craig because she is not considered attractive enough by society, her friends and her mother decide to help her; and the only logical solution to this dilemma for an unattractive girl is a makeover! In by acknowledging that beauty is merely cosmetic and materialistic, Meg, her girlfriends, and her mother maintain the hegemonic, sexist, stereotyped ideal of beauty in a patriarchal society. When Meg receives her emergency makeover, she is transformed into a blond-haired, half-naked, sex object and now labeled as popular, attractive, and desirable. Her new wardrobe consists of low rider jeans, and t-shirts that say, “Little Slut,” “Porn Star,” and “Sperm Dumpster” written in glitter. These slurs reinforce and maintain the oppression of women in a patriarchal society. Meg later on realizes that beauty is hard work confirming that there is no such thing as natural beauty in the world.

The second example involves Lois, Peter, their kids, and an elderly lady. The characters are all white, of the middle class, consist of female and males, and all assumed to be heterosexual. There are two scenes with subtle images of patriarchal gender ideals. In the one scene, Lois and the kids state that they have a duty to stand by their father’s side, even when he is making a complete fool of himself on stage. In the other scene, an elderly lady and other people are leaving a church for the funeral of her husband. When the coffin slips from the coffin bearers’ hands, everyone runs away except for the elderly lady, at least at first. Lois and the elderly lady immediately and unconsciously perform stereotyped gendered behavior. Both of these scenes display the hegemonic ideal that women are dependent on men in a patriarchal society.

The third example involves Peter as the masculine father figure. Peter is white, middle class, and heterosexual. He portrays the hegemonic heteronormative ideal of a masculine, heterosexual male. Throughout the episode, he is not nurturing towards his daughter, uses sexist language/slurs as humor, and focuses his actions on competition, aggression, and violence. Peter displays heteronormative masculinity in which it is unacceptable to show emotion or empathy towards others, even his daughter, but it is more acceptable to defend his daughter through violence. He also maintains a hegemonic patriarchal ideal that men are superior to women by using sexist language/slurs to produce humor and laughing at the concept of natural beauty.

The fourth example involves Peter and his male friends. The men are of mixed races, assumed to be heterosexual, and of the middle class. In one scene involving all of the men, they decide to remodel their favorite hangout location, a bar. In the scene, they perform physical labor, compete against one another, gawk at a female passerby, and sing karaoke without losing their manhood. This scene depicts the hegemonic ideal for males in a patriarchal society by the men using gendered and sexual slurs/language toward the woman and acting in accordance with stereotyped masculine ideals; the woman is devalued as a human, and therefore turned into a sex object. Even though the men perform gender-specific tasks such as physical labor and competition, their heterosexual, masculine status is never minimized during their karaoke performance. They all still maintain their hegemonic status, however some of the men show their higher masculine rankings by using homosexual slurs towards the other men.

The fifth example involves an imitation of the original 1972 character of Fat Albert. This character is black and appears to be of the lower class. In the brief scene involving this imitation, there are ethnoracist symbols that reflect the views of a patriarchal society. Surrounding the character are garbage, tires, old newspapers, and etc that which conforms to the racist symbolism of blacks in a hegemonic patriarchal society.

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Family Guy. “Don’t Make Me Over.”
Season 4, Volume Three, Disc One, DVD. 6/5/05
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation: Beverly Hills, CA. 2005.