“Family Guy” is a pretty unique animated show that awakes many different emotions in me– some very good, some very bad. The show is a true, surrealistic rollercoaster. I enjoyed the shows first couple of seasons, but honestly have hated the last couple of seasons, due to repetitive nasty hits at overweight women and badly written characters. I digress though.
The series centers on the Family Griffith, who is contain of Peter, the usually dimwitted, politically incorrect, child-like, and spiteful main star, his phenomenally beautiful wife Lois, and their three children. The oldest is the outcast, brutally bullied teenage daughter Meg, the early teen Chris who like his father is a bit slow, and the evil genius infant Stewie. The family also has, of course, a pet: the talking, wise human-like dog Brian, who this post will be about.
Brian, despite being the pet of the family, functioned as the voice of reason for the earlier years of the show. He was portrayed as a liberal, reasonable and unhappily in love with Lois as well as a bit of a drinker, though intermittently. Brian was shown on several occasions as being critical of religion, but it wasn’t until the seventh season, in the episode “Not all dogs go to heaven”, when the series finally “outed” Brian as an atheist. In the Episode, Brian, due to Meg’s sudden conversion to Christianity and attempt push to bring Brian into the “flock” of her church (and their form of Christianity), gently laughs and states: “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Meg. I’m an atheist”. When watching this episode, I was at first blush overjoyed at first at this radical act (seeing how being non-religious is still taboo on TV), but then began to reconsider what this act would mean and my first hesitations seem born out after the show’s recent episodes featuring Brian as the main protagonist which show character flaws wildly out of synch even for this genre. I cannot but wonder: is Brian really a positive portrayal of atheism? Or does his character just re-enforce negative stereotypes or images of us non-believers?
***Spoilers may be below!***
Let’s first look at how the writers of “Family Guy” talk about the experience of being an atheist in the States. “Not all dogs go to heaven” was a brilliant episode in this case, showing all the prejudice Brian meets after Meg gossips to the whole town about his atheism. Brian is not allowed to go to from such divergent venues as liquor stores to libraries, and is ridiculed on TV for being “worse than Hitler”. Admittedly, some of the discrimination may seem exaggerated; however there is something unsettlingly true in the depiction as well. To some religious folks, not believing in god is the worst possible sin, making us even worse than serial killers or mass murderers (especially if the criminals happen to believe in god). This is a pretty extreme belief and actively held by some, and which is portrayed comically in “Family Guy” when the intensely religious News-People announce Brian to be by far worse than Hitler.
Brian also gets brutally (yet only verbally) attacked by Lois and Peter after his confession. Lois states: “We believe in god in this family!” which showed how sometimes even people close to non-believers can be unsympathetic and dismissive to a theoretical structure struggled to be achieved. Brian gives even in to this pressure to “believe” temporarily, pretending to have “found god”, since he can’t take the peer pressure. But after witnessing Meg burning books about science (since she feels they are contrary to the “statements of God”) Brian gives a harsh talk to Meg, crushing her belief. The speech is devastating to Meg, since Brian points out some painful things to Meg about her life and how that is really what has spawned her beliefs. To this Brian then gives a more hopeful, comforting speech. The whole episode, in my opinion, is a perfect way of telling not only what it can sometimes feel like to be an atheist, as one can in a cartoon, but also is good in showing that Brian is a caring person, crushing the stereotype of the heartless cold atheist.
Brian was portrayed in a positive light during most of the output of the show. He had his flaws, but always came through with reason, compassion, and self-reflection underlying his thoughts and actions. It was in Season Eight where Brian started to become decidedly more odd and began a run of doing questionable things with little intellectual nuance or moral underpinnings. Take as an example of this the Episode “Brian writes a bestseller”, from Season Nine. In this episode Brian is depressed over his published novel doing so poorly, stating to Stewie that only trash literature and phony self-help books make it big. To prove his point he writes one himself and publishes it. It becomes a bestseller, making Brian famous and rich, sweaping him away to the hinterlands of fame, recognition and media adulation, and making him along the way into an arrogant, megalomaniac and mean spirited person. He comes to treat those around him as mere props to his existence (including Stewie who has facilitated his empty rise) and who seem to be considered by him now mere objects to satisfy his random and arbitrary desires. In particular harsh scenes, Brian is shown yelling at Stewie and verbally abusing him for anything that annoys him. This, in a number of painful scenes brings Stewie to tears and self doubt over his supposed lack of abilities to gratify the chance cravings of Brian.
The episode’s climax comes when Brian is invited onto “Real Time with Bill Maher”, a real show hosted by one of Americas most famous non-believers. Maher trashes the book heavily, making Brian confess that he wrote the best seller in a day, and that he doesn’t really believe in anything written in the book. Maher then tells Brian that he is the lowest of the low, since if one is going to bullshit; they should have the “honesty to stand by their bullshit”. Brian, coming somewhat back to his normal self after the harsh critique returns home where he talks a little to Stewie saying that he knows the book was dumb and his behavior inappropriate in extreme.
However, even at this point of the narrative – where a reasonable lesson has been learn and self-reflection is re-imposed by the awareness of the emptiness of his fame – Brian openly admits he will not apologize to Stewie for mistreating him. Here Brian is made into a truly horrible person, who not only doesn’t apologize after treating someone so poorly, but also a person who is actually so arrogant he refuses to learn from mistakes.
Brian at this juncture of the show (and others which are embed in these later seasons, and which can be recounted, but will merely “add” to the direction being taken in this case episode presented here) is made into such a terrible person that it is quiet imperative to reconsidered whether it is good his character is one of the few out-ted atheist characters on TV or not. Since there are so few atheist protagonists around, it is important that at least some of the more famous ones would not strengthen the stereotype that we’re morally-vacuous, empty-elitists, and intellectually-devious self-gratifies which no genuine concern for others beyond the narrowest of evil self-interest who wish to contaminate and spoil. Brian, in this episode, in bodied the stereotype to a max.
Brian was also shown to perhaps not truly stand for any of the opinions he’s expressed in the show, since he abandoned them all in the episode “Excellence in Broadcasting”. Brian, in the episode, becomes a republican and so conservative, he actually tries to go and waterboard – torture – a Democrat (the” supposedly” more left-leaning, worker-supporting party in the United States). Lois pinpoints in the episode that Brian has a need to go against the stream, to always have the more “unpopular” opinion. If that is the case, and Brian really gets all his opinions that way, does that mean he is only an atheist since they are a minority? Not only does this make Brian seem childish, but makes everything he said in previous episodes unimportant. So it is impossible to take his atheism seriously.
There was also the misfortune of Brian actually trying to force Lois to kiss him (maybe even more) in “Play it again, Brian”, a episode from season six. This act of creepiness and slight (though significant) violence towards a woman was before he was outed as an atheist (in a later season), which in a way makes him a lost case as a “model” for an acceptable and representative non-believer from the start.
I want to like Brian’s character. Aside from Dr. House from “House” (who is a total stereotype of the mean, miserable atheist) and Dr. Temperance Brennan from “Bones”, Brian is one of the most mainstream portrayals of atheist in popular culture. Yet his character was made so completely unlikeable and unreliable in the later seasons of the show, it feels like a disfavor for non-religious people that Brian was ever made a openly atheist character.
Seth Macfarlane, the creator of “Family Guy” and voice talent of Brian, also made his other characters, Haylee Smith and Roger the alien from “American Dad!”, atheist. But even these characters don’t really do much for the atheist community. Haylee is bland and hardly does anything memorable, and Roger is a sociopath who seems able to be anything which can temporary satisfaction.
What is lacking from popular culture is an atheist character that is portrayed as likeable. Few Medias have done this.
Daria Morgendorffer, from the animated series “Daria”, was done well, and somewhat outed as an atheist in the last season. Also Mal from “Firefly” was a good atheist character: anti-hero who despite some flaws was a good person. However, these shows have been cancelled or are off the air now. I was hopeful Brian would be the next Daria or Mal, but no such luck. Seems like we atheists have to wait a little longer for a more positive depiction.
Mycket intressant inlägg. Jag har själv inte sett så mycket “Family Guy” . Har typ bara sett slutet på något avsnitt nån gång på tv och så där… Vore kul att se några av de bra avsnitten!
Det är verkligen tråkigt när serier blir sämre eller karaktärer förändras och de förlorar det man gillade med dem. Det är alltid en sån besvikelse och frustration.
Synd att de inte framställt Brian bättre. Extra tråkigt eftersom de nu valt att göra honom till ateist.
Har faktiskt inte tänkt på det förrän du sa det att det verkligen finns en negativ steriotyp vad det gäller ateistiska karaktärer. Det är verkligen tråkigt. Hoppas det snart dyker upp någon bra! 🙂
Ja, det är alltid synd när karaktärer förändras och kvalitén på tv serier sjunker… Speciellt när “Family Guy” var rätt unik serie!
Och ja, det var väldigt synd hur de hanterade Brian i serien. Man älskade honom i de första säsongerna och sen blev han hemsk! Det verkar att de nu inom serien skriver honom ett smyla bättre, men man vet inte hur länge det kommer att hålla.
Ateister framställs ofta rätt negativt eftersom våra samhäller har byggs och är så starkt påverkade av religion. Men tider förändras sakta, och jag är rätt optimistisk att någon dag kommer vi se igen ett bra ateistisk karaktär! (Som Daria var ^^)
lets hope Brian grows up . i like Your critic of how the non believers are shown in the media.The same is true for a lot of other groups too,media is not preaching for open mindness or
understanding of others of different oppinions.
True! In popular culture many groups become victims of offensive stereotyping. Old, unfair tropes and idioms are used to simplify those who are different or otherwise outside of the norm. Or for some reason not valued as much as a other group – this includes atheist, middle eastern people, women in general etc. Shame that.
Yes, it looks like the writers are getting better at writing Brian’s character again. But I’m not sure if it can save the character anymore…
Sorry have I missed something here, Brian’s horrible after Series 8. What?!? What about the episode “Brian and Stewie”, one of the most touching episodes in the show’s history – where Brian and Stewie reveal so many deep emotions about each other.
Or the episode “Dial Meg for Murder”, Brian writes a really nice article about Meg which turns her back to being a nice person from being a thug in that episode.
What about in “New Kidney in Town” Brian was prepared to give up his kidneys (and his life) to save Peter, as a token of gratitude for giving him a home.
Or finally in Season 10, “Forget-me-Not” – Brian sacrifices himself by taking a bullet for Peter because he is his best friend (although it was in a virtual world created by Stewie).
Also in these latest three seasons, there are more touching episodes about Brian and Stewie’s hilariously poignant relationship, “Brian and Stewie”, “The Big Bang Theory” and “Mr and Mrs Stewie”.
Brian does have a couple of episodes in these three seasons where he is a bit of an asshole, but only 2-3, characters like Quagmire, Meg and even Stewie have plenty of these also. It’s just because of Brian’s important role in the series and the complexity, poignancy and diversity of his character that his faults are noticed more than others’. But at the end of the day Brian (along with Stewie) is probably the show’s best character. Who cares if he gives atheists a bad image, Quagmire gives sex-offenders a bad image, but Brian can counter this by the episodes where he is unbelievably kind and generous.
Brian has had a few episodes in the last 2-3 seasons that have given him a tarnished image, but his character of the first 7 seasons and the good episodes in the latest seasons, still makes him a great character.
And let’s be honest, his atheism is hardly ever brought up.
I agree that Brian is a complex character, but unfortunately his behaviour was pretty problematic for a while. If I may step out of the subject of Brian for a moment and critic “Family Guy” as a series in whole for a minute, it always seems to me that the characters personalities change drastically all the time. For instance Lois was first a loving mother towards all three of her children when the show started and nowadays is just abusive to Meg. Then their was that episode where Quagmire tried to seduce Meg, and low and behold! Lois is a caring parent again suddenly! The writers don’t really handle characters very well, since they can’t decide what their characters personalities really are. Making complex characters is when you have a character who behaves a certain way most of the time, but has one or two so-called “blindspots”, or is constantly shown to not know how to react to a certain thing or moment. Not that the character becomes an entirely different person per episode – a problem the show has with Brian.
The thing about Brian is that as what happened in “Excellent in Broadcasting”, Brian even admits at the very end that he chooses all of his opinions and beliefs according to what’s “nt popular”. So it sets up his atheism as something he only has because it is, after all, not a belief shared with a majority. Brian as a character does make atheism look like something people only do out of pointless rebellion. Which may be true for a few atheist, but certainly is far off when it comes to atheist in a whole. Since Brian is the only atheist character in “Family Guy”, he represents what the show wants to say about non-believers. And due to how few non-religious characters there is in popular media, this image is pretty damaging in a whole.
When you say that Quagmire gives a bad image to sex offenders, do you mean he is a bad image because of how the show glorifies his predatory behavior? In that cause I agree with you totally. If not, well, he is a sex offender – kind of can’t give a good image of people who are.
Brian has also in many episodes shown to have very racist attitudes, which makes him actually a asshole in more than one episode. It is unfortunate that the only atheist character is prejudice towards African- Americans, since the implication could be atheist are just prejudice people, making any critic Brian has about religion or politics seem like nothing but prejudice. The thing is that the episodes portrayed him as such an unpleasant person it was hard to believe any of the other episodes where he suddenly was nice again. This could have been fixed if like in “Brian writes a bestseller” Brian would have apologized to Stewie. Since he did not, it is hard to buy into any kindness he displays later on. Some writing does stain the characters.
Brian is not always so kind to Mag either. Can’t remember what episode it was in, but when Brian returns from a trip and is complaining that no one wants to know about his trip, Meg politely says “Hey Brian, how was our trip?” to which he angrily replies: “Meg! Please!”. Also, it is not worthy that he never defends Meg or comforts her when she’s being verbally and sometimes physically abused by her family. I understand he maybe can’t say anything to Peter, but why not Lois and Chris?
But otherwise, yeah, Brian and Stewie were the best characters in “Family Guy”. They did have some good episodes, no doubt.
Thanks for commenting! (and if I have some spelling mistakes, Sorry!)
P.s. the “not” in “Also, it is not worthy” is suppose to be “note worthy”. 🙂
No problem for the reply, and no major spelling mistakes 🙂
Anyway, I agree that Brian (as a character) changes a lot in between certain episodes. But generally he is nice and is like by most of the other characters.
I think that his racism is another joke about Brian’s dog-like behaviour, he even says “Sorry I get that from my father” (who as far as we know was a normal dog). Dogs have a tendency to get scared by people of a different ethnicity from their owners. My dog for instance is owned by people who are white (my family and I). But occasionally when he sees black people, he barks and growls at them. This is because dogs don’t understand ‘what’ they are and why they are different so they can get scared of them. The Griffin family and most of the main characters on Family Guy are white – so Brian barking or mistreating some black people in the show is just normal dog behaviour, adding to the recurring joke of Brian acting like a normal dog. However like his atheism, his alleged racism is rarely noted during the series.
His racism and atheism are also, completely unrelated. Brian’s atheism is a conscious choice that Brian had made whilst he is acting intelligently, like a human. Brian’s racism is generally only noted when Brian is acting like a normal dog (which is why he barks instead of speaking about black people).
And I don’t like how Brian and Stewie’s good episodes are referred to in the past tense. No doubt in Season 11, they’ll have several good episodes between them, like they always have had. In most seasons, there has been a “Road to..” episode, where Brian and Stewie play a major role, exchange many funny moments and usually a well-written musical number too. As well as these episodes they have had some other great episodes in the latter seasons. “Brian and Stewie”, “Leggo My Meg-O”, “Mr. and Mrs. Stewie”, the list goes on. They are the show’s best characters.
Brian has also had some episodes recently where he gives an honorable and respectable image of himself. For instance in “New Kidney in Town” and “Forget me Not” (as I said above) he would have sacrificed his own life to save his best friend, Peter.
The reason I brought Quagmire into this argument is because there is a well-known scene where Quagmire starts yelling at Brian for a number of things. One of these is that Quagmire says Brian “constantly hits on his best friend’s wife” (Lois). This was annoying for me as Brian, in recent seasons, has not tried to get on Lois. In fact the last time he tried anything major was in the episode “Play it again Brian”, where Brian attempted to kiss Lois at Martha’s Vineyard. Quagmire on the other hand continues to do this through recent seasons. This is why I brought in the idea of him being a sex offender, because it was something that he tried to have a go at Brian for, when he is ten times worse for that anyway.
Hi,
I think Brian’s racist tendencies could have been used as just a characteristic of his “dog-like” behavior if the show would not have made him so fully human-like – he quite quickly became so fully human like by driving cares and dating human women that it’s hard to see he’s racist behavior as dog-like. For instance, Luckily, this trait in Brian has been toned down. I think if Brian would have been singly shown only barking, it could have worked as a “dog-like trait”. Unfortunately he also said couple of pretty horribly racist things while in (how should I saw it?) human mode.
And yes, he’s atheism is unrelated, I just mentioned it since I considered it a characteristic that made Brian a character that’s opinions/beliefs as something not to be seen as serious/positive.
Well, Stewie and Brian are definitely, despite the shaky writing at times, the most entertaining and funniest characters on the show. The episodes focusing on them are the best ones. Yet I still have trouble with Brian by the way he’s written.
Whenever he sacrifices himself for Peter, I do think it’s showing Brian’s better sides as a character, however it still seems mostly that Brian maybe is just that kind of character that’s written as a good friend. That is one trait in Brian the writers have established well in Brian, but however since they sometimes give Brian such unlikeable personality traits, it’s still hard to make sense of Brian’s character. (Even if I kind of think it might be due to sloppy writing, not intended characterizing).
However, I continue to think that the show was quite clumsy with Brian’s character. And the writers pretty much have made Brian’s atheism look like something to be ridiculed by the episode “Excellence in Broadcasting”, and another episode, where Brian is spotted praying during a deadly storm. After surviving the storm, he heads out saying he made “a promise to someone” to which Stewie replies: “it’s to god!”. In that scene for instance, Brian’s shown suddenly acting religious and he is shamed for previously being non-believing. It’s also a way for the writers to (unintentionally, perhaps, but still unfortunately) depict atheism as a not-to-be-taken-seriously opinion. Therefore I see Brian as a pretty indecent portrayal of non-believers, since even if he’s atheism may not be mentioned that much, it is still deeply shown as something negative.
The episode where Quagmire yells at Brian maybe could have worked if the person to point out Brian’s “flaws” would have been someone else but Quagmire. Indeed, when Quagmire accused Brian of “constantly hitting on Louis” he did come of as a hypocrite. Quagmire’s flaws are indeed ten times more worst than Brian’s and it did puzzle me why they chose Quagmire to critic Brian if they wanted to present an alternative interpretation of Brian. I’m all for alternative interpretation of characters, but Quagmire actually is written as a fairly awful human being. So yeah, that scene was baffling. I agree totally, Quagmire is worst then Brian when it comes to treatment of women. However Brian did act pretty disturbingly in “Play it again, Brian”.
Well, thanks for the reply! 🙂
Oh! Sorry for more response, but I just thought of the episode “Be careful what you fish for” from season 10. In it Brian is aware of a neglectful daycare taker, Miss Emily, but doesn’t report her or let Stewie report her since he finds her attractive (despite how much the children suffer from the neglect). There’s even a scene where Stewie, due to the neglect, has his arm dislocated. Brian goes out of his way to prevent Stewie from going to the hospital, solely since he wants to date her. In the end he only reports her to the authorities because it turns out she already has a boyfriend. Once again, Brian was painted up as a completely immoral person (another negative stereotype that has been associated with atheist). That episode totally stains Brian again, and makes him again a unfortunate portrayal of non-theist.
Sorry for that, I just remembered that episode and thought I should mention it!
Take care, Maaretta.
I know this is an old entry but I wanted to point out that it is not a character’s responsibility to paint a politically useful picture of themselves. Brian is a self serving, hypocritical pseudo-intellectual who happens not to believe in a god, that is his character and he’s not there to make atheists look good because being an atheist is not his only defining characteristic.
No problem about this being an old entry, comments are always welcome. A character by itself does not need to be politically important, however how a character is written becomes significant when that character represents minorities, marginalized, oppressed or otherwise less represented groups. Atheist, while not the most marginalized group, are targeted when it comes to negative stereotypes. There are people that are prejudice against non-believers and still remains societies where being an atheist is looked down upon (The US being one of them). Atheism may not be Brian’s only characteristic, but it is a significant characteristics that the show decided to highlight. Since no other character has been described as a non-believer, Brian being an atheist becomes a crucial point of his character. And since atheism is still such a taboo topic in society and popular culture, especially television, Brian as an atheist character does become politically important. What images and ideas are given through popular culture reflects our societies common beliefs and views, as well as sends messages to the common person. So Brian as an atheist character reflects the writing staffs ideas of an atheist and also sends a message of what to think of atheist: that their immoral, hypocritical pseudo-intellectuals. “Family Guy” is by fair not the only Television show that sends the message that atheist are immoral, which even makes their decisions with Brian even worse. By making Brian such an awful character, they reinforce prejudices that exist in our society as well as add another nasty non-believing character on TV.
Problem solved, he’s dead 😦
Really? Haven’t seen that episode yet. Surprising!
the family’s name is GRIFFIN, not GRIFFITH.. thanks
Ok 🙂
https://www.reddit.com/3d2kf7/