An example of race in satire

Upon reading this week’s chapters from the course book, I was reminded (as I frequently am) of an situation in Seth MacFarlane’s “Family Guy”, in which Peter Griffin is placed in a similar position to that of Susie Guillory Phipps of Michael Omni & Howard Winant’s chapter titled ‘Racial Formation’.

The reading tells of Phipps discovering her official racial identity to be that of African American/Black, as well as briefly highlighting legal efforts to rectify what was for Phipps, a “problem”. What is not clarified is whether Phipps’ found her black heritage to be specifically undesirable, or that it was the sudden displacement of her ready established racial identity that spurred Phipps to try and correct what the State had her documented as in terms of race.

In said Family Guy episode, titled “Peter Griffin: Husband, Father… Brother?” Peter is similarly shocked to find in a local genealogical record that he had a Black relative, living some hundreds of years prior. Being the satirical cartoon that Family Guy is (and the blundering idiot that Peter Griffin embodies) Peter presents himself with the dilemma of how to go about embracing what he soon considers to be his new Black identity. Like Phipps from Louisiana, Peter’s Black heritage may well have gone unnoticed for all his life had he not found it documented, although unlike Phipps, he embraces it with a sense of excitement after over-coming his problem of figuring out “how to be Black”. Peter follows his Black neighbour - Cleveland’s advice to mingle with other Black people as a way of aiding integration into his new racial group, to which Peter agrees, he “should be hanging around more Black people like [him]self”.

For anyone who has seen an episode of Family Guy, the irony of this narrative will be fairly evident. Peters understanding of race, identity and culture is that of them being thrown into one and rightfully inseparable. His failure to see genetics and culture as unrelated, illustrates a misconception of race as one’s biological traits determining behaviour, expectations etc. The point of this episode I believe is to draw attention to the ridiculous stereotyping that is bound up with common addresses to race. This is communicated through Peter’s insistence on a new found aspect of his genealogical heritage completely restructuring exactly who he is and what he is entitled to. The remainder of the episode sees Peter generously compensated for the slavery of his Black ancestor by his Father in law’s early colonial family, a storyline providing great satire while raising further questions on the unsteady ‘boundaries’ of race as a concept.