There's an episode of "South Park" in which the characters discover that episodes of "Family Guy" are written by manatees randomly assembling brightly coloured balls with subjects on them--an aquatic Mad libs, in other words. This criticism is fairly justified. Since the show returned from its cancellation, the episodes have become increasingly random and nonsensical. The humor comes equally from the random aside gags as from the episodes themselves, and there really isn't a through plot--just a sort of gross lurching from event to event.
And yet I watch it. There's a few reasons for this: I like to see how far the TV medium can go and be allowed to go in terms of cartoons and network television. I like the 15 second comedy "burst," in small doses, at least. And sometimes, to be honest, I like mindless comedy where you can turn off your brain for half an hour. So I like "Family Guy." I even like the second show MacFarlane put together, "American Dad"--it DOESN'T use the random comedy bits, so at least it feels like it has an ongoing plot.
And then there's the third show by the main creators, the Family Guy spin-off, "The Cleveland Show," which took possibly the most boring character from Family Guy and gave him his own series. Honestly, I think the only mandate MacFarlane was given by Fox executives was "Could you do the same show as Family Guy, but with a black lead to play to our other demographic?" To be fair, the show does flush out the Cleveland Brown character somewhat--it pretty much had to, or the show would be 22 minutes of him repeating his one previous catch-phrase, "That's nasty." And while the show occasionally pushed the bounds of good taste even further than its predecessors, it was okay.
Enter Thanksgiving episode.
Here, in broad strokes, is the plot for the show. Cleveland's parents come down for Thanksgiving. Cleveland is surprised and dismayed to find out his dad came at all, since the man is a philandering dead-beat who is dismissive and abusive towards his family. Within a few minutes of his appearance, he threatens Cleveland physically and comes after him with a broken bottle. And yes, that is an offensive, caricatured stereotype, but hold tight, because we haven't gotten to the really offensive bit yet. The other guest for dinner is "Auntie Mama," the aunt of Cleveland's wife. Auntie Mama is an obese woman with frequent flatulence problems (because nothing says cutting edge humor like a fart joke) who constantly tells everyone how outrageous she is. She flirts openly with Cleveland's father (Freight Train), and the two plan to go upstairs and have sex right during Thanksgiving dinner. Which makes for a fairly awkward meal downstairs.
The catch is that Cleveland discovers that Auntie Mama is really a man, who, as he explains it, dressed up as a woman thirty years ago to give Cleveland's wife a maternal figure after her parents' divorce. Cleveland tries to stop his father from making his rendezvous, but figures the man will get what's coming to him when Auntie Mama disrobes. Instead, the two are gone for 40 minutes, and when they return, exchange crude innuendos in which stuffing a turkey figures prominently. Cleveland's response is to vomit for a full minute over the entire Thanksgiving dinner. Later, when he tells his father what really happened, Freight Train's response is the same projectile puking.
There is a lot here that, where one of a mind to do so, one could take offense with. But I want to focus on one particular aspect: the homophobic undertones that are never quite brought into the forefront. Let's start with the puking reaction. Note that Cleveland is not nauseated by his father having sex while the rest of the family, including his mother, gather downstairs, knowing exactly what is going on. Nor, due to other comments throughout the show's history, does he have a problem with anal sex. Or homosexuality in general: the show started with him asking two female characters to make out in front of him as a going away present. But when it's two guys--well that's just icky gross, how could you not throw up?
It could be argued that this is just Cleveland and Freight Train's characters, and they are homophobic rather than the show itself putting forward a negative message. But there's two things that keep me from believing that. First, the show makes it pretty clear that Freight Train is a bad person, and the sex is a form of narrative punishment. Now, it's swell that a show produced in 2009 frowns on cheating on your spouse while you're in the same house and child abuse. But to portray male homosexuality as a punishment, as something negative, seems not to be the best way to go about it. And that brings up the third point: the portrayal of Auntie Mama. Auntie Mama seduces Freight Train, and has sex with him without revealing her true identity--and the implication here is that THIS IS WHAT "THESE" PEOPLE DO. In other words, from the evidence presented in this episode, homosexual males dress up as women and seduce straight men as SOP. That, in case my stance here hasn't been made clear, is bullshit. I won't go so far as to say that the writers deliberately meant to present anything that could be interpreted as homophobic. But I do think it's there, and presenting it in an unconscious manner doesn't excuse the problem--it just suggests that it runs deeper than meets the eye.
Again, there's counterarguments to be made. First, that when a show attempts to take on tough issues, I shouldn't reject it because the result doesn't fit within my standards of morality. Sorry, no, that doesn't work for me. I'm a fan of Dexter, so I'm no stranger to watching shows that depict alternate morality structures. I'm a fan of South Park, and I've sat through the "Million Little Fibres" episode, so I can stand pointless grossness and general disgusting premises. And I'm a fan of "Boondocks," so I KNOW there are better, more intelligent, and frankly, funnier ways that black issues (and homosexuality in black culture,for that matter) can be dealt with in the cartoon medium. I reject this show because it's not dealing with the issues it presents at all--it just presents the case in an insidious manner, and tries to hide it behind fart jokes and vomit takes.
The other argument is that I'm taking all of this too seriously, that it's just a cartoon show. Like I said earlier, it's time to turn the brain off. The problem with this argument is that the human brain doesn't have an off-switch. The argument that "entertainment is just entertainment" is a derivative of the argument of "art for art's sake." The latter tried to elevate "high" art above social issues, and the former tries to shove entertainment below them. The "art for art's sake" argument was eventually discredited when people realized that it itself was a social position. And the "entertainment is just entertainment" should not be allowed on the same grounds. When I was in high school, the boys in my class would repeat Seinfield catch-phrases ad nauseum to show off our social cache. And my Facebook page is usually littered with grad students quoting Arrested Development and the Simpsons. And some of those are mine, because, dammit, they're funny. But to pretend for a moment that these shows haven't had any influence on their viewers is ridiculous. According to the these guys, this episode was watched by 6.3 million viewers. That's a lot of brains out there being told that if they misbehave, they run the risk of being turned gay. Because that's how that works.
So to sum up, for next week, and every future week after that, the number of viewers for the Cleveland Show will have 6.3 million viewers minus one, because I'm not going to be watching it. Frankly, I've got better things to do with my time.
Later Days.
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