Seth MacFarlane

The TV Icon that I researched is Seth MacFarlane. Seth McFarlane is the creator of famous adult cartoons and comedies that include Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show. His accomplishments and skills have made a huge impact a television in the last twenty years. He’s also made an impact on the culture and on other cartoon artists that are making shows not only for adults but for kids. His style of animation was also very similar to an early style called limited animation.

            Seth MacFarlane grew up in Kent, Connecticut, both his parents worked at Kent School his mom as a Guidance Counselor and his dad was a teacher. Interest in his career goes back to when he was two years old, he started to draw cartoon characters, then by the age of five he knew that he would pursue a career in animation (biography.com). During this age he was drawing cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker and by nine years old he began publishing a weekly comic strip called “Walter Crouton” part of the local newspaper Kent Good Times Dispatch. In 1991 he graduated from Kent School and studied film, video and animation at Rhode Island School of Design and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts and intended to work for Disney but changed his mind after graduating. For his senior year thesis, he made a film titled The Life of Larry, which inspired him to make Family Guy. With this his professor submitted this to a station and MacFarlane was later hired, that station was Hanna-Barbera animation studios.

            During his time at Hanna-Barbera he worked as a writing consultant for the cartoon The Life of Larry. He was one of only a select few who wrote and animated this cartoon based on his talent. MacFarlane described his time there as “old-fashioned Hollywood, where you move from one show to another or you jump from a writing job on one show to a storyboard job on another” (Stay out of the Casino). What he means by this is while he was working there, he took many different roles in the station and not just one. First you are preparing and writing a show then the next thing you know you’re a writer, and you’ll never know what you’ll be put on next. He also worked on different television shows that include Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, I am Weasel and Johnny Bravo. Working on Johnny Bravo was easier for him than other shows because he had his own freedom to develop his own style of not just limited animation, which involved less storyboarding and keeping the character in on place for a whole scene but he was able to do it not just for one scene but numerous settings with the characters doing the same movements and gestures. During his time as part of the Johnny Bravo crew he met two actors Adam West and Jack Sheldon, who would help in his next successful TV show Family Guy.

            Family Guy was his big major series. It debuted in January 1999, after Fox purchased the series in 1998. This show has been influenced by previous television shows that include Jackie Gleason, Hanna-Barbera shows, The Simpsons and All in the Family. Most of his work was influenced by these shows in many ways (Stay out of the Casino). The Simpsons influenced Family Guy in different styles, themes and narratives. Peter Griffin being the lazy, unintelligent and an obese father in the Griffin household, whereas Homer Simpson is lazy, clumsy and dim-witted father. For the wives Lois is the passionate, heartwarming and caring housewife to her husband and kids. For Marge she is also the same way to Homer as Lois is to Peter (Can’t Touch Me). The kids are both very similar in their attitudes and characteristics. All in the Family influenced Family Guy in many different ways that include the opening song where Peter and Lois sing a song on the piano, as Archie and Edith play the piano in All in the Family. In all three of the television show they show many different portrayals of family lifestyles or average families. In All in the Family it’s a mixed family husband and wife daughter and son in law (later seasons a grandchild); The Simpsons your typical average family two daughters and a son and in Family Guy an average family with two sons and a daughter.

His show Family Guy has always impacted television in numerous ways in popular culture and television. Fan Fiction has definitely been really had a huge impact because of Family Guy fans have tried to dress like the characters act like them and even sell action figures (Stay out of the Casino). During comic cons every year people will dress up like the Griffins because of how much people love the show. There is also a guy on YouTube that dresses up, talks, acts and is a “real life” Peter Griffin, there are many videos on YouTube of him doing clips from some of the scenes including the skit in the show “What Really Grinds my Gears.” When the show first started to air it was very controversial and offensive to numerous minorities on the basis of religion, sexuality, age groups and the crude humor. Even though this happen in its history the show has been cancelled twice but fans brought it back because of how much they loved it. After this due to the fan’s strong response reruns, DVD releases and straight to DVD movies strongly made an interest in the show (Film and TV Analysis). When this happen, fans were very disappointed about the show being cancelled but it wasn’t until the DVD movie Stewie Griffin the Untold Story and the Star Wars parody Blue Harvest during this hiatus. It shows that the show was still going strong despite it being off the air and showing reruns. Another influence this show made was the use of its cutaways, where the characters would talk about a flashback or make fun of a pop culture icon. For example in an episode called North by North Quahog, Lois comes back from Bed Bath and Beyond, Peter mentions to Lois I hope you stayed away from the Beyond section it cuts to Peter shopping he goes through a door that says Beyond and starts floating through space and yells. He then stops and there’s a table of coffee mugs, “Oh here are the coffee mugs.” he says. Another example in an episode called Let’s Go to the Hop where Peter goes in disguise as a different name Lando (Star Wars reference) Griffin and gets detention. He opens the door and he says, “crap it’s the Breakfast Club,” and cereal mascots are sitting just as the characters in the movie sit in the upstairs of the library. The cereal mascots shown are Sam Toucan (Fruit Loops); Tony the Tiger (Frosted Flakes); Silly Rabbit (Trix); Lucky (Lucky Charms) and Captain (Captain Crunch). His show has also influenced videogames and different board games like a Family Guy Monopoly game and The Game of Life (which I own). Seth has not only influenced pop culture, but he still continued to expand and create other shows as well.

This show has also gain Seth MacFarlane huge success in TV history and has opened his career to making other shows. This gave him the freedom to make whatever he wanted. He then made other animated television shows that include American Dad which all were very successful, and The Cleveland Show, which was okay but didn’t last and ended up being cancelled. These shows have also contributed to pop culture as well, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show follow the same criteria as Family Guy, both these shows center around family American Dad a very conservative CIA agent father Stan Smith and his wife Francine, who is a housewife who tries to keep the family together with certain morals and virtues. They also have a nerdy son Steve, a rebellious liberal teenage daughter Hayley, a talking goldfish name Klaus and an alien named Roger. American Dad! Does not lean as heavily on the use of cutaway gags, and is less concerned with conventional “setup-punchline” jokes, unlike Family Guy instead deriving its humor mostly from the quirky characters, the relationships between family members and the relatively relatable plots (Click Culture: The Perils and Possibilities of Family Guy and Convergence-Era Television). This show focuses more on family stories and real-world issues, whereas Family Guy focuses more on jokes, humor and situations within that world. This show is very subtle compared to Family Guy. The Cleveland Show though is just an exact copy of Family Guy, although it’s based off one of their secondary characters, Cleveland Brown and his new family. The only difference is it’s an African American family in Virginia. The show however focuses on racism and issues with his family. All these animation shows have also influenced pop culture as well with action figures, board games and videogames. The fan culture has had an impact with these shows as well. The success of these shows gave MacFarlane the opportunity to create what he wanted so he then looked at going into film. He then started working on his first project Ted (2012).

Ted is a comedy film that stars Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Seth MacFarlane, that’s about a young boy who wishes for a talking teddy bear. On Christmas the bear starts talking, so then the bear named Ted and the little boy grew up together in an apartment in Boston, Massachusetts. They start going their different ways Wahlberg’s character John is dating a girl for four years named Lori Collins (Mila Kunis) who wants to get married. John is hesitant about leaving Ted. Ted feels he can’t move forward and go on with life and wants to stay in the lifestyle he’s in. Seth MacFarlane’s directorial debut is a live action effort, that after his success in television allowed him to pursue Ted (Biography.com). For this film MacFarlane was able to write, produce, direct, provide the motion capture and the voice of Ted. The movie was another milestone in his film career, it was the 12th highest grossing film of 2012, the 21st highest grossing film for Universal and made just over 549 million. With that magnitude of a success under his belt, MacFarlane decided to strap on a holster and try his hand at a parody subgenre (A Million Ways to Die in the West). He went a different approach in film and decided to shoot a comedic western film, A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014). This film stars Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson, takes place in 1882 Arizona and it’s about a farmer Albert (MacFarlane) who plans on leaving the frontier because he sees nothing in it. He goes to the local fair and meets a girl named Anna (Theron) who unknowingly to him is a wife to an outlaw Leatherwood (Neeson). Leatherwood hears about Albert and Anna’s relationship by one of his right-hand men and challenges in person a duel to Albert. Albert then gets trained by Anna to help him learn how to shoot a gun and tries to fight for himself. This film began immediately after Ted but didn’t seem to be a big hit as Ted and end up getting negative reviews. It grossed over 87 million and end up being a flop and as the Washington Post stated, it’s broad, wildly hit or miss satire,” which means it was a movie that didn’t serve a purpose. Although according to an article by Variety, it was more an inside joke film between MacFarlane and the crew. Then a couple months later after his success with Ted, he announced that he would work on Ted 2 (2015). Ted 2 continues on where the first one left off, Ted gets married John has been divorced for six months and Ted and his wife decide to have a child. Ted though isn’t able to have children and his wife unable to either, they decide to adopt. Although, the state of Massachusetts denies this and says he’s property. They have to then take the case to court to prove that Ted is a person. This film however wasn’t successful and only made 216 million and wasn’t as good as Ted. These films overall however influenced many fans in the past from Family Guy, American Dad! And the Cleveland Show.

Seth Macfarlane was able to use his same talents into the film world and make a successful film thus giving free reign again in television and film. The films had the same kind of theme, satire and comedy of his television shows. An example is the relationship between John and Ted is about the same as Brian and Peters in Family Guy or Stan and Klaus the fishes relationship in American Dad!. They have also influenced many mobile apps, games and pop culture things. The films also share the same cutaway scenes, animation and comedic styles as the television show, most of the cast in his films too are voice or actors from his previous works. The Comic-con scene in Ted 2 was definitely a nod to pop culture because they had so many references from Back to the Future (Spielberg, 1985); Star Trek series (1966); Godzilla (Honda, 1954) and various pop culture characters.

After looking over Seth McFarlane. It seems he has made a huge impact in popular culture. His films and television shows all have the same if not similar styles of animation and humor. He has not only made an impact in television and animation; he was able to make an impact on pop culture. He started a new fan culture with his shows by people dressing up and relating to his characters. Also, his products have been turned into action figures, playsets, board games, videogames, cosplay, pinball machines, fan magazines, books, DVDs and merchandise. Seth MacFarlane has also influenced many other animators that include J.G. Quintel (Regular Show, Camp Lazlo and Marvelus Misadventures of Flapjack); Seth Green (Robot Chicken, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and Pendelton Ward (Adventure Time and Flapjack). Seth MacFarlane continues still today making episodes for Family Guy and American Dad!, they still continue to make an impact on pop culture even today.

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry M. Film and Television Analysis: An Introduction to Methods, Theories, and Approaches. Routledge, 2016.

Kahler, Bruce R. “A Million Ways to Die in the West.” Kansas History, vol. 38, no. 2, Summer 2015, pp. 120–121. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=113584433&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Orosz, Jeremy W. “‘Can’t Touch Me’: Television Cartoons and the Paraphrase of Popular Music.” Contemporary Music Review, vol. 33, no. 2, Apr. 2014, p. 223. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/07494467.2014.959278.

“Seth MacFarlane.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 2 Apr. 2014, www.biography.com/filmmaker/seth-macfarlane.

Sienkiewicz, Matt, and Nick Marx. “Click Culture: The Perils and Possibilities of Family Guy and Convergence-Era Television.” Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, June 2014, pp. 103–119. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14791420.2013.873943.

“‘Stay out of the Casino’: Legitimacy, Value and Significance in Animation.” Animation Practice, Process & Production, vol. 2, no. 1/2, Dec. 2012, pp. 3–9. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/ap3.2.1-2.3_2.