I was told by my housemate a few days ago that the latest episode of Family Guy contained a brilliant Sarah Palin joke. Well I watched said episode yesterday and it does contain a pretty funny (and maybe offensive) Sarah Palin joke. The plot of the story is that Chris dates a girl with Down syndrome and in conversation she mentions:
“My dad is an accountant and my mum is the former governor of Alaska”
I like my humour on the dark side so I of course found it funny. However the1 woman in question didn’t. Her daughter was much more disgusted however 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.”
I don’t really understand why the Palin family thought it was an attack on them. The only reference is that one line and the rest of the episode goes from peak to trough of offensiveness, that line being a trough. I know that Palin’s daughter, Bristol2, mentions the entire episode but if I were her I’d have probably kicked up more of a fuss about the 3 minute song and dance number, featuring Stewie and Chris, about the appearance and actions about Down syndrome sufferers3.
A rebuttal was made by Seth McFarlane and by the actress who played Chris’ love interest – Andrea Fay Friedman. She personally found the whole episode hilarious, and why shouldn’t she? She hasn’t lead a normal life but she’s managed to achieve something out of it: she’s a Down syndrome actress. That’s right; the actress playing the character does in fact have Down syndrome. Surely that shows that McFarlane does have a shred of dignity, and he didn’t just get a current voice actor to put on a voice.
Now surely that is the definition of equal opportunities? You could say it is unfair to mock people who have special needs but then is it unfair to not mock them when everyone else is being mocked? Black, White, Aisan, Blonde, Ginger (etc.) all get mocked every day, but why not people with special needs? A great pet peeve of mine is the misconception of racism. Racism isn’t just purely putting someone down from a different race to you. Racism is putting someone down from a different race to you because they are from a different race. Surely not mocking them is offensive if you are willing to mock other people? Like the comic Brendon Burns said in one of his stand-up routines to a heckler: “maybe I am being racist because if you were a white chick I would have tore you a new one”.
“It’s not really an insult. I was doing my role, I’m an actor. I’m entitled to say something. It was really funny. I was laughing at it.”
Going back to Andrea Fay Friedman she said that she is proud to be an actress with Down syndrome, and good for her. The correct way to deal with something like this disease is to have it out in the open. It’s good that she is an actress with Down syndrome. As a script writer you shouldn’t feel that you have to avoid certain characters just because of a social convention. What would be even worse was to make someone look like they have Down syndrome by having them spend a few hours in make-up. In my eyes that’s just as bad as “blacking-up”.
However the biggest point that the Palin’s missed, which is worrying because it hits you across the face harder than Mike Tyson, is that Friedman’s character is a bitch. She’s a horrible, selfish person. The episode in no way states that all people with Down syndrome are like this, but just her4. Does that not show the producers diversity that they are willing differentiate between people with Down syndrome rather than just people with and people without the disease. The fact that they missed that is really a big thing to me – probably the most important part of the whole episode.
I understand that this is a tricky subject and if I have genuinely offended someone by what I’ve said or any of my terminology I apologise. I just wanted to get my views across. If I’m wrong then please tell me, I’d love to see it from a different perspective.
Nick
Continue reading Should we take offence?
- idiot [↩]
- really?! That’s what you’ve called your kid? [↩]
- my apologies if that isn’t the correct terminology [↩]
- in fact Friedman said she didn’t want to be bossy [↩]
