Full Analysis of The Family Guy

Introduction

Aim of this analysis is to check if and in what parts The Family Guy resembles transmedia project. Why are we interested whether this project is an actual transmedia example?

Introduction

Aim of this analysis is to check if and in what parts The Family Guy resembles transmedia project. Why are we interested whether this project is an actual transmedia example? Well, “Let's face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow of content across multiple media channels almost inevitable” and the analysis goal is to check how well the content flow is planned in The Family Guy (Jenkins, 2003). If we then look at the content we should also assess its proper use on different platforms and adjustment of several projects to the story world. Because there are many series extensions only most relevant ones were selected for this analysis.

In order to check The Family Guy we will use academic sources balanced with audience and reviewers opinions to have a clear insight of the project. The Family Guy will be checked according to Jenkins’ 7 concepts of transmedia to have a general overview if we can actually say about The Family Guy transmediation.

What is Family Guy?

• Fox production created by Seth MacFarlane;
• animated series for adults;
• presents dysfunctional family of the Griffins and their friends;
• narration takes place in fictional city of Quahog;
• first aired in 1998: 10 series, 173 episodes;
• loaded with pop cultural references, gags, flashbacks (usually self-referentail humour);
• entertainment for adults;
• criticised for racist and sexists jokes, presenting religion in a negative way and family as dysfuncional unit of the society;
• low artistic value.

Spreadability

"The ability and degree to which content is shareable and the motivating factors for a person to share that content [...]."

Caddell, 2009

The fact is, that the programme has its Twitter and Facebook official and unofficial profiles, YouTube is loaded with UGC and clips from the show, and there are 19 podcasts on iTunes to listen or download. 

The Family Guy also appears on different media platforms, besides television series and its spin-off The Cleveland Show there are comic books, flash games, video games and live performances, collectibles, costumes, etc. Therefore, spreadability of the programme may be acknowledged.

Drillability

"[...] the ability for a person to explore, in-depth, a deep well of narrative extensions when they stumble upon a fiction that truly captures their attention."

Caddell, 2009

Fan pages of the show consist usually of episodes’ descriptions, transcripts, quotes or flash games but it does not really contribute to drilling into the story. It is the same with comic books, video games or books. 

There are only few things that may contribute to the show drillability and it is its spin-off, live performances or a book called Stewie’s Guide to World Domination (and those three examples presented will be argued as well), albeit there is a great amount of other products with a total lack of drillability that will be presented in the following chapters. It was predicted by Mittell who stated that sometimes the franchise sustains spreadability but does not offer any real depth to drill at the same time which in this case fully apply to The Family Guy (Mittell cited in Jenkins, 2009a).

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Continuity

"Some transmedia franchises foster an ongoing coherence to a cannon in order to ensure maximum plausibility among all extensions."

Caddell, 2009

Unfortunately, on fun forums dedicated for The Family Guy people complain about certain lacks in the story world, “This is kind of to my point, which is people placing expectations on Family Guy of having a coherent plot and universe” (Nohomers, 2010). Brickrd suggests that the show’s universe is not coherent, thus, not plausible for viewers. It is not a problem of the program only as on web sites dedicated to review games the same voices rose about the franchise game with 3 different plots of 3 characters from The Family Guy, “The game only attempts to tie these storylines together in the loosest way possible, but lack of coherence aside, it's still pretty funny stuff.” (Navarro, 2006). 

  

The same problem exists in the Star Wars Trilogy mentioned in the subchapter about feature films where it was pointed out that the family relations of the show characters are violated. As Long writes, “Special attention must be paid to developing a stage upon which multiple storylines (often in different media types) can unfurl, and every story must maintain the consistency of that world”, what in The Family Guy case do not exist (Long, 2007:48).  

It is even more complicated with all sorts of mobile or games where the family relations are not maintained, locations or events are different to the main narration and not only they have not influence on the main narrative but are irrelevant and not correlated with each other at all. iPhone game Family Guy Time Warped Review presents that lack of consistency, “They also encounter historical versions of other Family Guy characters, like Lois as a sultry saloon girl and Quagmire as a deviant Roman emperor named Quagligula” (Podolsky,2010 ). 

That lack of coherency contributes to decrease in plausibility in The Family Guy products’ consumption especially by fans and the story may become incomprehensible for other viewers in the future due to the enhancement of a wide variety of The Family Guy products.

Multiplicity

"Others routinely use alternate versions of characters or parallel universe version of their stories to reward mastery over the source material."

Caddell, 2009

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YouTube clips that present Peter’s Griffin family as Sonic characters, numerous mash-ups with American Dad, Gears of War or Star Wars, people dressing up as the series characters and many others. The Family Guy fans like to retell the stories in alternative ways, from different points of view and these stories are usually kept in the frames of the story so e.g. relationships between the characters are preserved, the places where the story may happen, as well. Multiplicity of content produced by Fox is enormous as well, we may read the family story in comic books, books, we may play various mobile, video, board or card games, play with The Family Guy toys, etc. Multiplicity of content would be also confirmed, then.

Immersion

"In immersion, the consumer enters into the world of the story (e.g. theme parks), [...]"

Caddell, 2009

Family Guy Live!

The fans entrance into the story of The Family Guy was only symbolic, two performances of Family Guy Life! were limited only to reading old episodes aloud by the cast members from the stage. The audience did not acquire any new knowledge about the story nor took part in the show so unique and personal experience of a viewer may be arguable.

 

On the other hand, we may argue like Scolari does, “If we consider that every translation is a process of text transformation, in which you  always lose and win something, maybe the adaptations could be incorporated as one of the possible strategies of transmedia narratives” and perceive adaptation as a way to enhance the well known universe by its new discriminants (Scolari, 2011).

Extractability

"[...] the fan takes aspects of the story away with them as resources they deploy in the spaces of their everyday life (e.g. items from the gift shop)."

Caddell, 2009

First of all, due to the wide variety of products, the universe coherency is arguable, which influences negatively the fans reception of the story. The relations between characters, locations and events are changeable though, may not be clear to a common viewer.

 

Secondly, many projects to supervise result in a weak preparation of the final product. As Bromley says about MacFarlane’s work, “I know that will rub some people the wrong way, because Seth Macfarlane has a ton of money and doesn't always put out the best product, but I calls it like I sees it” (Bromley, 2011). 

 

Unfortunately, the lack of proper work on each project and the amount of badly prepared products creates a belief that the story itself is not the most important part but selling it to as many and in as many different ways as possible. It is believed that every weak project can be sold if it has a brand’s logo on it what many think is the case of The Family Guy franchising.

Worldbuilding

"Transmedia extensions, often not central to the core narrative, that give a richer depiction of the world in which the narrative plays out. Franchises can exploit both real-world and digital experiences. These extensions often lead to fan behaviors of capturing and cataloging the many disparate elements."

Caddell, 2009

The Cleveland Show is a spin-off where the minor character from The Family Guy show is a protagonist. Peter’s friend, Cleveland, moved to Virginia in order to set up a new family. There are not much references about each others in the shows, sometimes Peter and Cleveland call each other however, no common plot or events were created yet to bind those two shows together.

Roberto Bianco in USA Today said, “The characters here creak, including the talking bear who mirrors the alien in American Dad [another MacFarlane’s cartoon] and the dog in Family Guy, and the watered-down setup now feels like a copy of a copy of a copy” (Bianco, 2010).

 

”But Cleveland pretty quickly became Family Guy II, with similar characters and dynamics (Cleveland's toddler stepson Rallo is essentially Black Stewie) and the same taste for quick-fire cutaway jokes and pop-culture references (including self-conscious ones about white writers making sitcoms about black people)”

                                                                                (Poniewozik, 2009)

Furthermore, the story enhancement, its spin-off called The Cleveland Show had a great potential of being a real unfolding piece of transmedia project for The Family Guy. Unfortunately, instead of creating something new and meaningful the show happens to be The Family Guy black repetition. It occurred that the show concept is not flexible enough to absorb other ideas of presenting the universe. Well known patterns of characters, relations, show’s dynamics and construction were repeated and instead of other point of view, point of view of Afro-American family, with different ethnical, ideological and geographical background, we have a takeoff on The Family Guy. That kind of repetition is hard to call a real enhancement of the universe however, from the audience’s point of view it is a parallel story in the same storyworld. The question is:  if this universe is constructed well enough to support other stories creating a real transmediatic production?


 In spite of the fact, that some signs of negative capability exist (utterly insufficient as for such a complex project) migratory cues are not its implication. There are no intermedial hooks that would entertain audience, create mystery and make the story more enjoyable, which in the end makes the story world quite poor in audience’s reception as we are limited to one location, the same family members and friends.

Seriality

"Transmedia storytelling has taken the notion of breaking up a narrative arc into multiple discrete chunks or installments within a single medium and instead has spread those disparate ideas or story chunks across multiple media systems."

Caddell, 2009

Family Guy Uncensored is a mobile game where you explore multiple levels and 7 mini-games as one of five playable characters. Player can visit familiar places in Quahog, meet Peter’s friends like Joe, Cleveland or Opie, the game is coherent to the main narration and you can take part in Quahog’s life however, it does not enhance the story world by new characters, locations or events that would be included in the main story line. 

 

Laugh it up, Fuzzball: The Family Guy Trilogy is a parody of 3 original Star Wars movies with characters from The Family Guy on 30^th Star Wars’ anniversary. It was aired in on television and released on  DVD and Blu-ray. The trilogy was not a continuation of The Family Guy story and it was not coherent to the main narrative as e.g. the family relations changed, Stewie was Dart Wader so he was Chris’ father, thus the movies were not entry points to The Family Guy world.

On one hand, we have video games and comics that engage people with other platforms than the television series only. On the other hand, those are not meaningful chunks that help us to get some additional information of the story world connected with the main narrative. The story’s extensions are not coherent to the main narration and do not expand the story world with some new characters, events or locations. Those are just pieces of stories placed in the story world that do not have any relation to what happens in the series, the main narration plot. Thus, we cannot perceive them as enriching pieces of the story that in turns questions the seriality notion in the case of The Family Guy.

Subjectivity

"Transmedia extensions often explore the central narrative through new eyes; such as secondary characters or third parties. This diversity of perspective often leads fans to more greatly consider who is speaking and who they are speaking for."

Caddell, 2009

-no mobisodes

-no webisodes

-flashbacks*

*The back stories create a bit more complex vision of the story however, usually the past events do not influence on the ‘recent’ plot thus, their meaningfulness is rather minimal. They are used as a self-referential humour that enriches the plot but not the story world itself.

 

Family Guy: Stewie’s Guide to World Domination a graphic novel was published in 2005 and written by the show producer Steve Callaghan. It presents the story of the youngest family member in Griffin’s family, Stewie who is willing to rule the world and due to that he storages weapons, time machine and other appliances empowering him to gain success.

The guns Stewie created and collected as well as the time machine is presented in the series and used from time to time, e.g. in series 10 episode 5 Stewie and Brian (the dog) come back to the pilot episode of the series using the time machine. The world enhancement by this book may then acknowledged as it presents the minor story of one of the family members, it expands the story world and there are references to it in the main narrative.

Performance (UGC)

"The ability of transmedia extensions to lead to fan produced performances that can become part of the transmedia narrative itself. Some performances are invited by the creator while others are not; fans actively search for sites of potential performance."

Caddell, 2009