The artistic influence of Family Guy

Cafe Society
1

Family Guy, with it’s flashback gag format, random humor, etc., has been such a smash that I believe it’s had an artistic influence on many different shows/films, much in the same way Pulp Fiction brought in an age of strange, surreal, visually-absurd, chronologically-swapped films in the past 10 years. I really give it that much credit.

I think you can sense it’s flashback-gag, ADD style wacky humor in Drawn Together, with it’s surreal flashbacks. Are they produced by the same people? Also, Robot Chicken, which as it happens was conceived? by Seth Green from FG, seems absolutely FG-influenced, what with the constantly changing small gags we get, ADD-style.

Pop cultural references: FG does all the ones in the book, and Robot Chicken shares certain ones with FG that I think show Seth Green stealing ideas :smiley: .

I’ve been to several kids movies this year, and it occurs to me that a lot of them use gags that make fun of film conventions, such as having a character repeat something when we think it’s an echo, or, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, having the young Wonka character walk by a montage of nation’s flags (us thinking: he’s traveling the world, going places), when really he’s just inside a Flags of the World Museum :D. Family Guy- and for that matter, South Park- are not at all the first to make fun of every convention in the book, but perhaps they made it even more fashionable?

Am I the only one here? I mean, it’s not like we can deny that Family Guy, South Park, Drawn Together, or the like would even exist if it weren’t for The Simpsons for goodness sake; art has major reverberations.

2

“The Simpsons” did the cutaway gag long before “Family Guy” even existed. “Animaniacs” used the same kind of wacky humor, but I don’t want to give it too much credit, as it doesn’t seem to be as popular as it should be. Bottom line: everything has already been done.

3

One of the main reasons I like “Scrubs” so much is because its cutaway humour reminds me so much of Family Guy. I’m not sure which came first, so I cant really say Scrubs was influenced by FG.

4

Right. They actually stopped doing them because FG did them so much. I’ve sometimes been surprised to watch an older Simpsons episode and see that type of joke.

5

I think you’re confusing one of many symptoms with the actual phenomenon - “Family Guy” is simply the latest cultural artifact to exhibit these behaviors.

I think the culprit is a mass-popularization of cheap absurdism, or “non sequiter as lifestyle.” It’s a post-ironic thing - where irony ceases to be, well, irony and “randomness” becomes the de-facto mode.

All of the things you mentioned (simply limiting to cartoons) can be traced back to the aforementioned animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, and even farther.

6

That style of making fun of various dramatic conventions goes way back. Rocky & Bullwinkle did that sort of thing a lot, where the cartoon would seem to call attention to predictable cliches and then go an unexpected direction (sometimes with the characters directly breaking the fourth wall). There were quite a few of those moments even in old Looney Tunes shorts. Nowadays we have a few new conventions to make fun of but the whole “taking a cliche and going a completely different direction” technique is almost as old as the cliches themselves.

I think Family Guy’s contribution to the cut-away flashbacks is that the flashbacks blatantly conflict with the continuity of the show and reality itself. Like in some of them Peter will die, or exist in another time period, or be 3 inches tall, etc.

7

Every anecdote in Family Guy is a hyperbole. Whenever a character comments on “remember the last time X person did X action?” they’ll always show some extreme example. Sometimes they don’t do this, which is also entertaining-

-The Griffon’s vacation trip to purgatory

-Stewie making a JFK Jr joke then catching himself.

-Assorted Tom Tucker bits.

8

If it has an influence, I’d say it was a bad one. Unlike The Simpsons, which routinely took a riff from a movie or TV show and worked it (sometimes seamlessly) into the overall storyline, the relatively lazy writing at Family Guy is content with “Remember that time when…” and a direct pop-culture copy that has little or nothing to do with the overall plot and just generates a cheap laugh of recognition.

9

Don’t all these cartoon shows owe something to Python? The rapid changes from one setting to another, absurdist humor, running gags, unexpected connections. Not to mention Gilliam’s cartoons.

10

Actually, Shakespeare was the first to use the cutaway gag:

Henry VIII, Act 9 Scene 4 Quattrain 11 Verses 3-15:

Henry: Hast thou not rememberst, when thou hast thine own wife to prostitution sold?

The peasant thinks hard for a moment.
[Run off stage, assemble new set]
The peasant sits on a chair, w/ a sign that readeth ‘Whore: 12 pence’

Peasant: Why hast none my fair prostitute used?
Man walking by: Thy prostitute is the biggest calf I haveth seen since I last saw thy wife, John.

[Run off stage, assemble sameth set as beforeth]
Peasant: Ah yes.

I remember being surprised when I read that.

11

The first incarnation of Family Guy* abused the cutaway to limits I didn’t think possible. It’s one thing to beat the dead horse but when bits start flying off it’s time to get back to the narrative. The show still does it but usually not as badly as before. In tonight’s show they even poked fun at the cutaway itself in the bit about Greg Louganis.

But damn that Lois has it going on. Giggedy!

12

Right… now they prefer to beat the “this scene is going on too long” joke to death. :wink:

13

It’s amazing how much beating to death can be done in a dozen episodes, isn’t i?

:rolleyes:
-Joe

14

RE: Their vacation to Purgatory. This was especially funny in our household because there are two vacation destinations called Purgatory closeby.

Purgatory Chasm in Massachusetts (about 10 miles ? from Rhode Island)
and some place called Purgatory Chasm in Rhode Island, which I’ve never been to (though curiously enough I have been on Purgatory Rd in Middletown).

15

Actually, in the cave paintings at Lascaux, there’s a picture of a guy wearing wooden underwear. He’s flashing back to a picture of himself wearing stone underwear.

Totally absurd.

Everyone knows caveman didn’t have flashbacks.

16

COUGHRake sceneCOUGH

17

Fine. That makes it Simpsons 1, Family Guy 812.

18

Since Robot Chicken was mentioned…

RK is a direct swipe from Twisted Mego Theater that has run in Toyfare magazine for literally atleast 7 years.
I have to assume that Seth Green and his people either paid off the Toyfare guys or are about to be sued.

19

No, but you’re probably the youngest. :smiley:

20

It’s neither. I think one of the guys from that magazine has been working with Green on the show since the beginning.

I don’t have a stopwatch and the right DVDs on me, but the rake scene doesn’t begin to approach the chicken-suit fight or the ecstasy scene in terms of needlessness.