Do 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' offer stereotypical representations of ethnic identity?

There are multiple, vast diversities of ethnic and racial identities presented in the media where common media often contain stereotypes, “The mediation of racism via mass media of all kinds is not the only source of its devastation impact, but it also operates in a molecular and penetrative fashion throughout the capillaries and pores of today’s world” [1]. This causes one to make certain judgments and assumptions of ethnicity based on their representation. I will be exploring this subject matter through my research investigation focusing on two animated texts, 'Family guy' and 'American Dad' to present what effect the programs may have on the audience such as creating misconception of ethnicity, assigning and reinforcing preconceived notices which may influence passive audience. 

I will be focusing on the possible effects of the episode from family guy ‘Turban Cowboy’ [2] may cause when representing the racial identity of a Muslim individual and the possible provocative link it has reported to have towards the Boston Marathon Bombing event [3] where it has been conspired to be a ‘hoax’. This will then lead to further investigation of the hyper-reality of the stereotypes in the media today and how different audience, passive and active, perceive the ethnic stereotypes portrayed within. The theories I plan to apply to aid to the research investigation is the use of the hyper-dermic needle theory with how the audiences are influenced through the messages media sets to input into the individual’s mind. Another theory I will specifically include is the Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyper-reality, which discusses constructed representations and mediated ethnic and racial stereotypes and how this can affect the fine line from fiction to reality and whether what is presented is true or false.

Media is the main source of factor for the cause of the specific stereotypes delivered through visual aspects to the audience with control over their thoughts and ‘injecting’ such ideas on their minds making viewers - passive, accept and believe the presented media texts following the Hyper-dermic Needle theory formulate by Katz and Lazarsfeld. “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” [4]

There are two different types of audiences when viewing a media source: Passive and Active. 
Passive audiences openly accepts and observes the words and ideas of the media, influencing their way of thinking and changing their attitude all via the media’s power without contemplating the issue. Whereas an active audience differs from the passive audience as they intend to examine the media text, contemplating the information presented by understanding the meaning of the text and whether it is true or not. The majority of audiences are distributed as a ‘passive’ audience thus being easily influenced into idea of the media’s representation on different ethnic and racial identities. This causes many people to fear or judge certain individuals based upon how the media has negatively represented them delivering the effect of misrepresentation. “With similarly emotive imagery the hypodermic needle model suggests that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message.” [5]

Family Guy & American Dad

The texts I will be focusing vastly on is 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' both animated texts conveying a common context of the representations of ethnic stereotypes throughout almost every episodes. Both programmes are found during prime time in the end of the day at 11pm specifically for the demographic audience of the age range 18 - 49 year olds. 'Family Guy' is a TV-14 programme which is inappropriate to children under 14 and is vastly targeting an older audience of 18 - 38. With multiple various examples of ethnic and racial stereotypes portrayed produces perpetual racism and negative  representations for the passive viewers even if it is argued that is it only for comical purposes, this creates an idea for the viewers that racism is a light topic of a laughing matter creating fixed presentations of the different races they meet in reality based on the media source.

The 15^th episode of season 11 of ‘Family Guy’ created an issue due to the relations it depicted towards the tragic Boston Marathon event, which occurred after a week when it aired, it is interpreted to have predicted the incidence through the similar portrayal of the event. This has caused Fox to take down the episode “Rupert Murdoch's Fox network has pulled an episode of animated series Family Guy, after a series of clips from the show were edited and put online that appeared to depict parallels with the fatal attacks at Monday's Boston Marathon.” [6] To this Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy responds towards this incident through twitter “The edited Family Guy clip currently circulating is abhorrent," he tweeted. "The event was a crime and a tragedy, and my thoughts are with the victims.” [6] 

http://steve-blogspot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/racial-stereotypes-in-tvs-family-guy.html
http://racismandthemedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/family-guy-consuela.html