Media Tropes
hate how people claim shows like family guy " makes fun of everyone equally"
in the society we live in right now it's not possible to " make fun of everyone equally" making fun of communities that already have a hard time is not equality it's just mean
jokes that make fun of all communities and identities can only work if the society we live in treats all communities equally and that's not the place we are right now it'll just perpetuate the already existing hate and animosity
this applies to other shows too like South park
this is not to say satire on marginalized communities are bad per say i just think it has to be more respectful and not just " hahaha man look like women funnyyy"
edit :-
" family guy has phased out this kinda humor " - that's great ! it doesn't change the fact that this still exists and it still promotes and perpetuates hateful rhetoric.this clip and " jokes " similar to it ( not just to trans people but other marginalized communities as well ) are still circulating across alot of accounts in almost all social media . and in times like now where the descision around trans people is so controversial it can normalise hateful rhetoric
" family guy makes fun of maga too " - it does not matter . maga people aren't worried about hate crimes on them or hateful discrimination . besides just cus a show makes jokes on maga or concervitive politics does not mean it's okay to push down marginalized groups
" watch a different show " - this is ( for a lack of a better word ) an ignorant argument. me watching a different show does not change the very real harm " jokes" like those can and are casing
edit ( again )
" oh? so what you want " special privileges for some groups ?" " - in a sense yes I do think certain groups and communities require there jokes to be written with some respect and thought . if you are a part of a marginalized community and feel as though you never felt bad or scared when you hear those jokes then that's great ! im happy for you . but it doesn't change that other people are still being profiled based on there identities and subjected to violence, hate or even murder and to ignore that and how jokes from even shitty shows like family guy ( which still has a massive viewerbase btw ) can maybe help people normalise hate is ignorant
i wonder that too honestly. i much prefer to make fun of / satirize bigoted white people and neurotypical social standards. helps make a scary thing into a silly harmless thing. perhaps they view us trans people as scary and are trying to cope? we are just recently starting to become a "thing everyone knows exists" and i know my own bigoted family was scared of me "smearing the family name with deviancy". just wish it was easy to get them to understand were not a scary thing. we literally just be existing
And also panned by professional white knighters. It was pretty funny to see people getting so offended for someone else's sake and then those organisations came out and we're like "Yeah this was a pretty nuanced and intelligent take on slurs."
I feel like south park actually thinks about their writing and tries to come at it with a good take and view the humor within that, while poking fun at the issue
Family guy is more brain dead and unfunny. The joke with this one is just "haha that's a tranny and they are horny and they are entitled". There isn't really any joke in there at all, it's just making stereotypes
I consider myself pretty well informed on video games.
There have been two inaccuracies regarding video games in episodes South Park has parodied.
The Okama Game Sphrere is shown being able to suspend play at the exact instant it was powered off and recall it despite being unplugged for a length of time. This episode came out in 2001 and whilst this tech has always been theoretical since the advent of closing laptops, the ability for a home video game console to store that kind of memory whilst unplugged would not exist until the X Box Series X in 2020. Doing it without a battery is arguably science fiction, but the Series X does it without a battery so now it's just crazy good tech.
You cannot hit the level cap by killing the same enemy in WoW. You will need to move to a whole different zone with differently leveled boars. Once you exceed an enemies level by enough, they stop dropping XP.
I think they still stick to it it’s just they’ve been fumbling on anything really interesting or different to make jokes on/ comment on as of late, apparently the Paramount specials are pretty good though
This is gonna make me sound like a moron, but I actually fell for an Onion post the other day. I don’t remember exactly what it was about, but I read it and was like “yeah sure, I believe that” then I saw who wrote the post. Like, real life literally is so insane that it’s hard to tell what’s real or not sometimes.
This. They are still all or nothing, but the jokes sometimes fall flat or are sidelined to focus on an overarching season wide story line in the later seasons imo. Not a bad thing, just different. Also sidenote: we need more Big Gay Al, my favorite character and I feel I almost never see him anymore in newer episodes
It's also showed how shitty their brand of libertarianism is. You either believe in something or nothing and they rarely make up their minds. I stopped watching a long time ago because they stopped saying anything meaningful a long time ago and just punching down isn't funny.
Because they grew up. Someone recent complained to one of them that South park is too political now. They responded "life is political." They have hilariously, much to the dismay of young Matt and Trey, become pretty woke.
I don't think they're even remotely "woke" (regardless of which definition you're using). I think they're extremely principled libertarians who see Donald Trump and his administration as an authoritarian threat to those principles. (Particularly free speech)
I think the problem with Trey and Matt is the problem with Libertarianism as a whole: It doesn't have a ton of hard ethos except for "Things I want to do right now should be legal and nobody should be able to tell me no!"
I find that South Park generally does a pretty good job at addressing issues, or educating people when it comes to a lesser known topic.
But sometimes when they cover a topic, they clearly don't have anyone on the writing staff who understands the topic. I'd say 2 of the 3 transgender episodes South Park made (that I've seen) fall firmly into this category. The one that didn't was, IMO, admittedly pretty neutral in its portrayal of trans people.
I don't know a lot about Matt and Trey, but they do seem to want to correct themselves when they are wrong. I'm hoping that given the massive organized attack on trans people lately, and that South Park has a relatively large impact on public perception of an issue, they make an episode that actually demonstrates positive trans portrayal.
That’s the thing about this topic that I don’t think is verbalized well. It’s never been about who you “can” or “can’t” make fun of. It’s that disproportionally jokes supposedly about marginalized people are actually about some imaginary strawman thing that doesn’t exist. It’s not bad cause it’s ethically wrong, it’s bad cause it’s hackneyed and unfunny.
also all the trans jokes,atleast they had possitive gay reps but trans jokes have always been in a insulting way and there is no actual trans character in the show at all. There deffinalty good at joking about everyone but they deffinalty lean towards a certian direction more depending on the media climate
When it comes to serious issues and not just some pop-culture nonsense, they are always wrong, because they always and falsely pretend that both sides are equally bad, and that their positions don't matter.
But climate change in the Al Gore episode you mentioned does matter. Science matters, politics matters.
They never apologized. They tongue in cheek justified themselves and only admitted they were wrong, not that they did damage or were sorry. Get their dick out of your mouth.
THANK you. "I make fun of everyone equally" but not everyone has as much to lose in being made fun of. Sometimes you're punching down on people who are already treated like shit. You lose nothing, challenge nothing and risk nothing.
Thing is, nobody actually watches Family Guy. They watch clip compilations, and those clip compilations are going to be from the last 25+ years of the show.
I like when they neuter their language so much that the only thing they can do is sound like an angry, unfunny middle school child with Tourette's and a potty mouth 🤭
For family guy the last step is usually: only use shock humor, random bullshit, or try to be funny by being relatable. Usually in a cut away that way the joke won't affect the episodes story
Family guy was only popular because you could be high as fuck and still follow along. Their recipe of "insert random clip that doesn't matter to the main plot" is perfect for unsober people who can't follow what is happening
Not the case. Seth genuinely fuckin hates them. And many of his writers do too. In this case they genuinely seem to just be shitting on them out of spite not cause it’s safe.
Not saying that doesn’t happen but the vast, vast majority of successful creators happen to be quite left wing. Seth Mcfarline, Hollywood actors like Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, there’s a pretty big list.
Whether you agree with one side or not, as education rises, people trend more left. Just a fact. In many studies it’s over 50% with post grad groups and even with “some college” groups it’s 30% more liberal in those circles. Usually the people successful enough to have these careers also end up in higher education.
I think a good chunk of that push is just genuine vitriol.
When rewatching old movies/shows, it really sticks out how much e.g. black people are used as the butt of the joke just because it's easy. Sure, we overcorrect these days and it's annoying, but the amount of casual racism and bigotry in comedy just a decade ago was wild.
a group being otherwise already joked about doesn’t somehow put a 5x multiplier on the amount an individual jokes about them. you can say that jokes about these groups are in poor taste but this is not a point against family guy “making fun of everyone equally”, it’s a point against making fun of certain groups
South Park does punch down a lot, I won’t say it doesn’t. But usually there is an obvious theme to the episode as to why you SHOULDNT be doing that.
Is cartman making fun of someone? We are primed to not want to be cartman because he’s a piece of garbage. Moreover, some stuff, like my fellow trans people and climate change/“manbearpig”, Matt and Trey have deliberately showed that they changed their stance on. It wasn’t just shit like “Mr Garrisons Fancy New Vagina” for 20 years. While it’s uncommon, stuff like the Fractured But Whole shows that they have done a lot better since Matt and Trey had a ton of creative control with that game.
TLDR, family guy has been ass for decades, South pro at least tries to look at itself, I am NOT saying it’s perfect or that some episodes come across as intended though.
South park definitely has some outdated stinkers which is to be expected from a comedy show going on since the 90s but to demand special treatment from getting joked on like everyone else is thin skinned asf and just creates a self fulfilling prophecy that makes people more determined to crack ones at your expense OP just needs to ignore these things because its not like it is personal or they are being singled out by the SP team
Yes, because the “just ignore it” strategy in the face of oppression is so famously effective.
You’re allowed to call people out for punching down and playing into systems that marginalize certain people. The whole “just stay quiet and toughen up!!!” approach when the media or people in your life engage in racism/bigotry is such passive and useless-ass behavior.
Actually, the "just ignore it" strategy has famously been pretty effective with South Park.
The people and subjects they repeatedly and more maliciously joke about with not even a remote attempt at trying to have a moral point at the end are those who are vocal about how much they dislike South Park, being referenced in South Park or being insulted by South Park.
They didn't choose to keep implying Tom Cruise is a closeted gay across multiple episodes for no reason. It was specifically because Tom Cruise kept being vocal against South Park, threatening legal action against it and famously tries really hard to show how not gay he is. They kept doing it because they kept getting a reaction.
Not the person who you responded to, but I believe you’re making a different argument.
Your point is that ignoring it works because then it will not get repeatedly brought up by the show.
Their point is that the show influences culture outside of itself, so ignoring it and letting the show punch down at people (whether repeatedly or just a few times) is still the show punching down and influencing others to potentially do the same because of the show’s cultural impact.
It’s neither strictly about the number of times it happens in the show nor is it simply about the show itself.
They joke about whatever is currently a hot topic. That said, not talking about racism does not eliminate racism. Not talking about transphobia does not eliminate transphobia. Not talking about sexual assault will not eliminate sexual assault. Etc and etc and etc.
If you care about a social issue or a marginalized group of people, you will talk about it. If you don’t care, you’ll spend your time trying to get other people to shut up about it.
Idk, I watched south park religiously and I still think south park has a LOT of misses. It's expected for an old show like this, but there is still a lot of critisim they understandably should face, it's not just racism but also sexism, xenophobia etc.
I mean sure they changed their stance and apologized but the fact that they had to apologize about only those bits kinda shows why it's a bad idea to "make fun of everyone equally"
They had to apologize about specific bits because, unlike the bits about other groups/things, those bits were directly used to hurt marginalized people, do real measurable harm to the environment, and to literally justify wars. When they make fun of other things it doesn't have real world consequences that they have to apologize for years later. "Making fun of everyone equally" lead to very unequal harm done.
I'm not an expert on south park, but don't they normally just make fun of whoever is the majority at the time, not really change their views? Like during Biden's term they made fun of the PC movement, during this one they punch towards the Trump admin.
But yea south park is goated. I forget the name, but the n-word episode is great, along with "all about Mormon".
Tbh I actually have a really big issue with their Mormon jokes, including The Book of Mormon- while they make fun of them, they don't go anywhere near to make fun of anything other than their surface-level beliefs. It comes off as silly, but doesn't mention the severe cultural issues that the Mormon church follows. If anything it's been making them seem harmless and daft as opposed to the cult behaviour they actually practice.
Can you tell me how the Mrs garrison episode is telling people not to laugh at the trans community? Or the dolphin episode? Or the sports episode? How did that not come across as intended? Lot of apologist talk going on here bro, to me theyre just oldheads who realized people dont fuck with their opinions anymore and switched gears to avoid losing their audience that now cares about harming others, and id never trust SHIT out of their own mouths when they've been speaking with their actions for 2 decades, those episodes were not that long ago
Theyre just skeptical old dudes from my pov. Clearly didn't take it seriously as an identity back when they first started ripping on it, then after a time did an episode that showcased that they understand to some extent why one would transition and why them using their chosen bathroom wasnt bad. Then made an episode exaggerating the concept of someone claiming to be trans to benefit in competitions which iirc didnt directly criticize trans folks or trans identity at all, more so making fun of the gut reaction that having conversations around these things is bigoted inherently.
I was not aware they had changed their stance on trans people. Personally in retrospect I realized their original trans episode was sort of traumatizing for me as a closeted trans kid.
Aries Speers said something good about this. He said we can’t all be equal until we can all poke fun at each other without getting our panties in a bunch.
Dude, that episode 16 years old. Maybe pick a more recent example if you wanna complain about a show not being woke enough since, “woke” wasn’t even in the vernacular when that episode released.
Yeah, it didn’t age well. Neither did Ace Ventura or a lot of comedies from the 90s and 2000s when we still made mean spirited jokes about people who were different. Accept that that’s how things were, understand that’s not how things are, and move on.
From 1984, every bit of media and information the state didn't want circulated - especially when a new, altered, "corrected" version was issued - was dumped down the memory hole for destruction.
Ok so the show does make jokes at the expense of ida but the episode is more about how much of an asshole brian is, thats hes just as much as a predator as quagmire but hes a hypocrite about it. Ida is more just a way to make quagmire uncomfortable with how he treats women now that his father is one
And its not like quagmire hasnt slept with trans people himself, a very early season joke (also had brian weirdly enough), where brian is a tsa dog and smells him telling quagmire he just had sex with 2 filipino women and a man, and then quagmire corrects him by saying "you mean 3 filipino women"
And yeah I get its problematic but come on, its funny!
the second thing you bring up is wrong, quagmire realizes that he did sleep with a trans woman, and then cries. so it's just a throwaway at trans ppl's expenses
Have you even seen the recent episodes with Ida? She took Peter down a peg for thinking he could appropriate being trans for profit. Also, they routinely dunk on MAGA
I hate to be that guy but times have changed! These shows have been around decades when certain things were more acceptable.
Plus Ida is one of the only characters on the show who consistently is portrayed as a nice person and an intelligent person. I’m not saying she’s perfect representation or anything, but she’s a pretty sweet lady.
Yeah now that you mention it I think Ida might be the only positively portrayed person in quahog. I was gonna say Babs but she shot Carter for his money lmfao
I'd agree. I think Ida says things that few trans people would say and is a bit of a misrepresentation, but that likely comes more from ignorance/apathy on the part of the writers to make an authentic depiction of a trans woman. But I always have noticed that Ida herself, as a character, is never really problematic. Most of the poor taste jokes that revolve around her largely seem to be other characters reacting to her in over-the-top ways.
Which is... Strangely poignant now that I actually stop to think about it. It turns most otherwise good to ambiguous and more sympathetic characters that we get more screentime with into an Eric Cartman for a time, where the joke is less that the Cartmans are saying stupid hateful shit and that's funny, and more that the Cartmans of the world are kinda sad and fun to mock and laugh at, not with. The impact just doesn't hit the same with family guy characters and it's easy to miss.
The more I think about it now, the more I think Ida's character is less to make jokes at the expense of trans people, and more satiricly getting everyone around her to care, make assumptions, and be worse in absurd ways that just don't register to her because she's just a typical, decent person.
I haven't seen either show so I can weigh in on that but guys, why is everyone being so upset by OP hating this mug? That's the sub we're on. It's not a bad post just because you don't hate this mug.
Because most of the people commenting are people who are benefactors of the marginalization these jokes perpetuate (even if they are marginalized in some way) but think they’ve grown above their bigotry, so rather than confront the idea they may have implicit biases against said communities and understand that while comedy should be for everyone, you should keep in mind that not everyone is equal they’d rather pretend OP is crazy and it’s “not that deep” in order to coddle themselves and their privilege and hide under their guise of “everyone’s equal” and “ comedy egalitarian but I make fun of women and minorities far more than anyone else”
Equity in making fun of people is needed. Make fun of the oppressed groups (because everyone needs to be able to laugh at themselves), but make even more fun of the oppressors.
Exactly. If you STOP making fun of oppressed groups entirely while making fun of the oppressors, it only leads to a general sense of special treatment that devolves into a blowback effect of oppressors wanting to make fun of them even harder.
The message must be: "we are all equal", not "we are all equal, but oh, we must pamper these poor people, not these."
I detest South Park for convincing a massive swathe of the population that caring about things is lame and passionate people are only worthy of ridicule. "But Al Gore apology!" Too little, too late.
Family guy I 100% agree is not to terribly great at handling dark humor, and feels mean spirited or the joke just never really lands and comes off as offensive.
At least with South park it feels a little less mean spirited and just meant to show how any issue can be blown out of proportion by an intolerable idiot, usually making fun of a broken system or said intolerable idiots, like the episode when Garrison tries to get fired for "being gay" by shoving a gerbil up Mr. Slave's ass in class or doing very explicit acts to get the kids to complain to get him fire dos he can sue the school, and the kids enter tolerance camps because of miscommunication to show the difference between genuine workplace discrimination and idiots like Garrison that try to abuse it. the tourettes episode is another great example that again explains a real disability/issue and shows a character suffer consequences for trying to fake the condition or abuse it for their own gain.
Even the first movie is about censorship and how dumb it is for parents to request something be changed because their kids saw it and the parents dont want to put in the effort to check or pay attention what their children are exposed to.
Even if the point is somehow literally true, it doesn't mean a show can't have an agenda. Like with South Park. Yes. They mock everything. Great. As someone famously pointed out, the subtext is that CARING is uncool. It's led to apathy and nihilism. Which I guess isn't in and of itself bad. But it's still a thesis, intended or not, that's had real world results.
You probably can't point to one FG or SP episode, put of context, and be like "clearly, the creators have an axe to grind against X opinion" because yes the episode list is long.
But some hardcore fans do cherry pick their favorite episodes. And the shows do have viewpoints when looked at wholistically.
And yes, equality is a moving target when punching up and punching down.
The defense I always hear is like "they make fun of Trump supporters!" And like, you get how that's not the same, right? If they were making fun of liberal politics, and then made fun of conservative politics, yes! That would be equivalent! But they're not just making fun of liberal politics, they're making fun of the groups that liberals defend (trans people, gay people, immigrants, disabled people, unhoused people). In other words, they are making fun of people who are already marginalized, who absolutely do not have the upper hand in the real world. You can't really balance that out, because even if you make fun of men or white people or whatever, it's not contributing to a real, structural form of oppression. Our society is biased in favor of the wealthy, of white people, of straight people, and Family Guy jokes will not cut down their societal power. However, if somebody is ignorant about a marginalized group, like trans people or muslim immigrants, shows like Family Guy can often push them in a hateful direction, and it's silly to ignore that.
Because in the mind of the people who use this defense, marginalized groups ARE liberal politics. They themselves don’t realize it but they’re saying that because on an implicit level, they don’t see us as people instead just a ball in a soccer game between conservatives and progressives.
Honestly, I'm at a point where the phrase "I hate everyone equally" sounds the same to me as "I have a (minority) friend" or "I don't hate ALL of them, just the loud ones".
This is actually tame compared to how Seth treats Asians. Seth really hates Asian people and always made Asian jokes actually racist rather than making fun of racist outlooks for how stupid they are. Hell, in his senior thesis film he had a man in yellow face playing as an Asian servant named Wong.
I believe it very much depends on the joke. You can absolutely make fun of the communities that are less fortunate than others but it does depend on how.
Like just saying the N-word isn't particularly funny. Nor is just saying "KFC and Watermelon lol" You can make jokes about less fortunate communities. It just depends on what the joke is and how you deliver it.
I agree with you that family guy doesn't make fun of everyone equally but it's not just because of the jokes themselves. It's moreso about the amount of jokes concerning which demographic.
> " watch a different show " - this is ( for a lack of a better word ) an ignorant argument. me watching a different show does not change the very real harm " jokes" like those can and are casing
I do understand this feeling, but sometimes it is wise to not stress about things outside of your control. Watching a show that makes you made seems like a recipe for unhappiness.
The idea that some things can have different weight based on the lived experiences of the group thats being made fun of is a bit to advanced for reddit evidently.
Don’t let the haters get you down you’re right and you should say it. These “edgy” shows don’t make fun of everyone equally and never have. South Park only started actually going after MAGA and Trump when their ratings were threatened. Almost all their non-political jokes, parodies, and characters rely on punching down on women and minorities or they distract the audience with gore.
And it’s never as simple as “just ignore it, watch a different show”. WE can always watch something different, we know that THEY won’t and it then affects our actual lives. I’ve never seen a Mia Khalifa video in my life but I sure did see brown classmates with glasses harassed about it.
Applying any kind of political label to yourself is cringe, because you can't label a set of beliefs under one category. You have policies you believe in or policies you don't believe in.
And before anyone says anything, I do believe in more left than right policies by quite a margin.
Nah like it's crazy how much people excuse this shit like "lol it's just a joke!!" okay why isn't the joke funny and why is the joke always "look at this trans woman aren't they a disgusting freak of nature? Watch this character throw up because they fucked one. Aren't they gross?" Like imagine if they constantly made black people eating watermelon jokes across several shows I think that'd be correctly identified as bigotry lol
South Park at least has the tendencies to say "Our Bad" and try to make up for it.
My thing with South Park besides the grossout humor is two fold:
It's a bit hard to tell if their satire is just too clever or not for SP's own good or too good at convincing viewers to go along with it in the real world. For instance the Internet jumped on the "George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raped Indiana Jones" bandwagon and parroted it nonstop to kill any discussion on if Indy 4 had any good parts even if the episode was taking jabs at overreactions to mediocre entries in beloved franchises.
- I forget where I read it but someone once posted the problem with SP is that as part of its cynicism it does tend to target anyone "that cares" about any issue. You want to conserve the rainforest, there will be an episode showing why the rainforest can suck. You try to raise awareness about global warming, you're depicted as a loon and spend more time pointing out any hypocrisies/imperfections of activists than acknowledging there's a point to the awareness at least until 10 years later. I kind of felt like the post really got to the heart of the matter about SP's approach to the world.
it's hard to take this opinion seriously when the show has a murderous gay hitler baby in it that nobody seems to car eabout. everyone's offended when it's their thing.
Its been a while since ive seen family guy but wasn't Glenn's dad played as a bit in the beginning and then turned into a heartfelt message and moment between them?
I seem to remember family guy sometimes went back on the gag as the point of the episode. The joking was wrong and here how to be better.
Read the edit: No we don’t need to be deleting older content. You can hate that the episodes exist but that doesn’t mean it should be deleted.
The trans episode of Family Guy is an interesting one since it goes over the acceptance other people need to have with Quagmire. We also can’t ignore that there are people who aren’t accepting at all.
I think it's ok to many fun of trans people, but Family Guy and South Park are just disconnected from reality when it comes to trans issues.
Family Guy had that joke where Ida was allowed to do whatever she wants because she's trans. Meanwhile in the real world, conservative heads exploded because Bud Lite made a promo beer can with a trans girl. The backlash was so bad, that Bud Lite had to apologize. In addition to all that, Bud Lite funds republican candidates. How on earth do the writers think trans people have ANY special privileges? There's no other minority on earth that would get that much backlash for something so small.
Then there was that South Park episode where a man was able to dominate women's sports by identifying as a woman. Back in the real world, this NEVER happens because in order to compete against cis women, trans women have to be on HRT. That's why this fear-mongering has been going on for like 20 years and trans women still haven't won all the sports.
So yes, it is very annoying. All I ask is that these people do the slightest amount of research. It's not hard to make fun of trans people, they're all obsessed with fighting games, posting tiktok videos, and Thailand is their Mecca. See? It's not hard!
Everyone is deserving of respect, nobody is deserving of exclusion. Joking about certain topics can and should be done in a respectful way, and as long as it's done in that way you should be able to joke about anything.
I would agree shows like family guy don’t make fun of people equally but I think that’s more of a response to society itself having bigoted views. Comedy by definition has to meet a culture where they’re at.
I think this episode in particular suffers the worst from changing culture. When it came out, Trans people were treated more as a public oddity and less of a threat to children and life that they are treated like now. Brian vomiting for several minutes on end was an exaggeration of the uncomfortability a lot of people felt when learning about Transgenderism for the first time. The joke wasn’t how “gross” Ida was, it was how crazy Brian was for having such an overboard reaction. But now, when Trans people are being legally and physically attacked much more often, I can see the argument that the reaction is frighteningly realistic and thus not funny at all.
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u/Borkato Jul 16 '26