The American adult animated sitcom Family Guy has been the target of numerous taste and indecency complaints. The show is known to include offensive jokes including racial humor and violent, gory, and disturbing images.
Critics have targeted Family Guy reliance on cutaway gags, panning the show for its characterization, excessive pop culture references and writing outside of these gags, and have unfavorably compared the show to contemporaries such as The Simpsons and Comedy Central's South Park; the latter has also parodied and criticized Family Guy in several episodes throughout its run. The show's dark humor and sexual themes have also led to backlash from special interest groups. The Parents Television Council (PTC) has attacked the series since its premiere, deeming it the "Worst TV Show of the Week" on at least 40 occasions, and filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Moral controversy
Family Guys frequent use of offensive jokes and satire has led to controversy. The jokes that receive controversy are often found in the cutaway gags. For example, in the episode "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire", Peter and a barbershop quartet sing and dance around the bed of a man with end-stage AIDS. The airing of this episode led to immediate backlash. This cutaway angered audience members and led to protests by several AIDS service organizations. In his 2006 book The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture, author Frederick S. Lane described Family Guy as among several television sitcoms that he believed were "aimed at the darker side of family life."
Parents Television Council The Parents Television Council (PTC), a conservative non-profit watchdog group, has published critical views of Family Guy."David Goodman, executive producer of Family Guy, won't argue that the show is for kids. ... "I think it's absolutely for adults," he says. "I don't let my kids watch it. They're 8 and 6. " In May 2000, in an email, the PTC launched a letter-writing campaign to the Fox network to persuade the network to cancel Family Guy. This followed the show's return from a long hiatus in its second season, due to what the PTC claimed were "strong advertiser resistance and low ratings". Family Guy made the PTC's 2000, 2005, and 2006 lists of "worst prime-time shows for family viewing", with over forty Family Guy episodes listed as "Worst TV Show[s] of the Week". This was due to profanity, animated nudity, and violence. The series was also named the worst show of the 2006–2007 season by the PTC. In addition, a live-action special hosted by series creator Seth MacFarlane and fellow voice actress Alex Borstein titled Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show was also named "Worst TV Show of the Week" by the PTC due to what it said were "disgusting sex jokes, crass Holocaust humor, cruel impersonations of deaf people, and loads of bleeped profanity."
The PTC has targeted Fox, criticizing the network for failing to include "S" (sexual content) and "V" (violence) descriptors in content ratings for some Family Guy episodes. The council has cautioned parents that due to the animation style, children might get attracted to the adult show. In order to prevent child viewing, the PTC has objected to Fox scheduling Family Guy during early prime time hours. Additionally, the council has asked Family Guy sponsors such as Wrigley Company and Burger King to stop advertising during the show as their products appeal to kids, due to the show's sexual content."...anyone familiar with the content on this show knows that it is not appropriate for teens. The PTC president then became friends with Seth MacFarlane over a complaint about a 2015 episode.
FCC complaints The PTC, which has generated most of the indecency complaints received by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), (quoting an unidentified network Standards & Practices executive) has filed formal FCC complaints against Family Guy episodes. The first indecency complaint was reported following the January 2005 rebroadcast of "And the Wiener Is...". The complaint was denied by the FCC on the grounds "that because of the absence of explicit or graphic descriptions or depictions of any sexual organ, along with the absence of shocking, pandering, and/or titillating effect, the episode ... is not patently offensive." In November 2005, during "sweeps" period for the 2005–2006 television season, the PTC launched a campaign for its members to file indecency complaints for sexually explicit humor to the FCC for "PTV", the Family Guy episode that satirized the FCC. However, the PTC had expressed doubt over whether they would formally complain to the FCC over that episode, with the PTC not having logged any complaints filed through their website. In fact, that episode was highlighted in the Fox special TV's Funniest Moments that was broadcast on June 1, 2007. A rerun of the program on August 20 that year was named "Worst of the Week" by the PTC, noting that "PTV" was among the highlights in the special. On March 11, 2009, PTC filed complaints about the episode "Family Gay" over claims that the episode contained sexual content in violation of indecency law. On December 15, 2009, PTC filed an indecency complaint about the episode "Business Guy" two days after its air date, citing a scene that included a lap dance as a possible violation of federal law regarding broadcast decency. In 2010, PTC filed a complaint against the 150th episode of Family Guy, "Brian & Stewie", after taking offense at excretory references. PTC president Tim Winter was quoted saying, "It seems as though Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane carefully reviewed the legal definition of broadcast indecency and set out to violate it as literally as he could." On November 15, 2013, PTC filed an indecency enforcement over the episode "A Fistful of Meg" five days after its air date. The organization cited lewd sexual content and what it considered profane jokes on subjects such as child molestation, exploitation, rape, and sexualised use of food as well as the main plot of a boy bullying and physically attacking a female classmate. On February 12, 2015, PTC filed an indecency enforcement over the episode "Quagmire's Mom", citing sexually explicit dialogue and jokes about statutory rape, including a scene where Quagmire had sex with an underage teenage girl but did not know her age until after they'd already had sexual intercourse.
Accusations of anti-religious sentiments Family Guys dark humor commonly involves religious activity, and has received criticism from religious people and groups as a result. In 1999, during the show's second season, Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker criticized the show for being antisemitic."Racist, anti-Semitic, and AIDS jokes; shoddy animation; stolen ideas: the cartoon as vile swill." The same year, L. Brent Bozell III wrote that he believed the episode "Holy Crap" promoted anti-Catholicism, and was the only episode that was animated by Film Roman to face controversy. After that episode, Family Guy was pulled from the schedule, purportedly due to low ratings. The show briefly returned for one day in December with the following episode "Da Boom". The show was then dropped again for another few months, but returned in March to finish airing the second season. (episode cited: "Holy Crap")
The PTC has criticized what it perceives as Family Guys negative treatment of religion, particularly if they portray God or Jesus Christ in a negative, sacrilegious way, concluding in its 2006 report Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion 2005-2006 that "mockery of God is a constant" on the show. For example, in the episode "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", there is a cutaway gag depicting God as a dirty old man having sex with a prostitute all while brushing off a teen-aged Jesus, who was seeking some help with his quarrel with Joseph. The Media Research Center, also founded by Bozell, was strongly critical of the 2014 episode "The 2000-Year-Old Virgin" in which Jesus emotionally cons people to have sex with their wives. In the same episode, Peter directs people to complain to the "Family Television Council", a thinly disguised reference to the PTC.
On October 3, 2007, the Bourne Company publishing house, the sole copyright holder of the song "When You Wish Upon a Star", filed a lawsuit against the makers of Family Guy, claiming copyright infringement over their song "I Need a Jew". The suit claimed harm to the value of the original song due to the offensive lyrics of the parody. On March 16, 2009, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Family Guy did not infringe Copyright when they transformed the song "When You Wish Upon a Star" for comical use in an episode.
Australian Jewish studies columnist Dvir Abramovich accused a number of Family Guy episodes of ridiculing Jews and Judaism and reinforcing the stereotypes of Jews. In 2014, a writer in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz claimed that a scene in the episode "3 Acts of God" was evidence of long-held antisemitism by MacFarlane.
Allegations of insensitivity towards transgender people In May 2010, Family Guy gained negative reception after the episode "Quagmire's Dad" was broadcast. Many people felt this episode was offensive to transgender people. AfterElton.com writer Brent Hartinger gave a negative grade to the episode "Quagmire's Dad", in which Dan Quagmire (Glenn Quagmire's father) comes out as a trans woman, undergoes sex reassignment surgery and adopts the name Ida. While noting that the episode deserves credit for making important points about transgender people, he found its inclusion of a scene where Brian vomits after learning that he had sex with Ida, as well as Lois and Peter's transphobic remarks about her, to be "shockingly insensitive." Hartinger continued, "Frankly, it's literally impossible for me to reconcile last night's episode with MacFarlane's words, unless I come to the conclusion that the man is pretty much a complete idiot." The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, an LGBT media watchdog organization, released a statement about the episode, noting that "GLAAD shares the serious concerns being voiced from members of the community and GLAAD's Entertainment Media Team is addressing these with Fox."
Sarah Palin's son controversy
In February 2010, the episode "Extra Large Medium," aired in which Ellen, a female character with Down syndrome, mentions that her mother is a former governor of Alaska. Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, criticized the show for mocking her brother Trig, who has Down syndrome. She wrote a piece on her mother's Facebook page stating, "If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they're heartless jerks." Sarah Palin herself also criticized the episode in an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, calling those who made the show "cruel, cold hearted people."
MacFarlane responded that the series uses biting satire as the basis of its humor and that it was an "equal-opportunity offender." Andrea Fay Friedman, the actress and public speaker who voiced Ellen and who herself has Down syndrome, responded to the criticism, saying that the Palin joke in the show was aimed at Sarah and not her son. She ended this statement concluding that "former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor." In a subsequent interview, Friedman rebuked Palin personally, saying she was angry with Sarah Palin for using her son Trig as a political prop to pander for votes, explaining that she has a normal life and that Palin's son Trig should be treated as normal rather than like a "loaf of bread."