Family Guy is an American animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane that premiered in 1999. It follows the dysfunctional Griffin family - parents Peter and Lois, children Meg, Chris, and Stewie, and their anthropomorphic dog Brian. Each episode's plot is standalone and focuses on the family's misadventures. The show utilizes heavy pop culture references, pastiche, and intertextuality for comedic effect. It targets audiences in their 20s to 40s who grew up in the 1980s due to its many references to that decade. Some characters employ stereotypes that can be seen as offensive. The show also engages in bricolage by loosely basing some characters on other animated works and parodying

1. How is it postmodern?

2. ABOUT THE TV SHOW
 Family guy is an American animated TV series
 Created by Seth McFarland for channel FOX
 It focuses on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family living in the fictional city Quahog.
 The pilot was first shown in 1998 before being given the green light for production
and it becoming hugely successful, despite being cancelled twice.
 The family consists of the parents- peter and Lois, the children- Chris and Meg,
The baby- Stewie, and the family dog- Brian.
 The narrative for each episode is stand-alone, usually about the family's mis-
happenings with each other, their friends, or neighbours. At the end of the
episode, the problem is solved and the family live on happily to suffer the next
episode.
 Family guy is full of media and pop culture references, pastiche and intertextuality
which are perhaps the most dominant postmodern traits within the show.
These postmodern aspects are used to create humour.

3. AUDIENCE
 Family Guy’s target audience is older teenagers and young adults, as it often
is inappropriate through taboo topics and jokes.
 However, it appears the key target audience of family guy is people who lived
in the 80’s, thus from around mid twenties to 40 year olds. Due to the
frequent 80’s pop culture references made in the series.

4. REPRESENTATION
 Family guy depicts a stereotypical nuclear, American working class family.
 The father is shown as economically and culturally low class. He appears to
adopt no clear political status.
This is postmodern as it acknowledges all political ideology to be essentially
relative and as a consequence, no one can claim pre-eminence.
 Many of the other characters are very stereotypical representations of
different groups, sometimes to the extent they can be deemed racist and
offensive to said groups.
An example of this can be seen in Peters references to Asian Women drives.
 The postmodern condition can be racist, sexist and homophobic, and all these
are represented in the show. However, they are shown as a light hearted
jokey manner, thus are not directly intended to cause offence but for humour.

5. BRICOLAGE
 It has been suggested that McFlands characters are loosely based upon other
animation characters. For example, Brian the dog is distinctly similar to the
famous character Snoopy. This is not only visually evident through his white fur
and black nose, but also in the way in which he interacts with people,
participating In human activities though he is a dog.
 The character Stewie has also been argued to be influenced by a comic strip
from 1991, as he bears a noticeable resemble to the character of Jimmy
Corrigan: The smartest Kid on Earth.
Again they don’t only look similar, particularly in their football shaped heads,
but also they share extreme intelligence and dislike towards their mothers.
 In addition, it has been speculated that Family Guy is a copy of the famous
cartoon The Simpsons, as they have a very similar set up and various other
factors. This includes the family, consisting of a clumsy stupid father, a mother,
a song, a daughter, and a baby child and also a dog.
 Furthermore, Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are very similar in their
personalities, being clumsy, lazy and dim witted. This means the postmodern
aspect of bricolage is featured in the TV series of Family Guy in every episode.

6.  Family guy is also well know for their parodies of the star wars franchise, with
movies Blue harvest, something something something dark side and it’s a
trap.
These still use the basic original story of star wars however feature the series
characters, mock it, and much is replaced with their media mocking humour.
All these movies are a pastiche of the original star wars films.