by Pierre Roustan

Created on: September 16, 2008

I remember the days when we could watch Japanese anime and see the blood and guts and sexy legs and sweet lips practically every ten seconds, practicing a form of skin friction or violent surgery overblown by the rancid colors and darkened shades. MAN, I love anime! Some of it was way out there, too.

Those were the days. And that only used to be the rage we'd find overseas. Our cartoons back then weren't known for that kind of subject matter. All we had were shows like "Thundercats", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Tom and Jerry" (although we held our own, I think, when it came to TV violence-where else could you see a coyote get squashed by a boulder every ten seconds except here in the good ol' U.S. of A.?).

Nowadays, though, riskier subject matter has invaded our color palettes! We had those shows like "Married with Children", satirical with the best of them, and plenty of others that escape my attention, plenty of others that stretched the comfort zone of acceptability and what was taboo on TV.

Now we have the show "Family Guy", virtually like a "Married With Children", only riskier, the reason being that it's animated. It's satirizing a satire with water colors, basically.

I can understand why this show is so controversial. The whole scope of animation has seen its share of risk. We saw it at times with "Ren and Stimpy", although tame. But it made a slit in that forbidden abode. Remember the show on MTV called "Liquid Television"? Remarkably 'adult' in content, but also a far cry from the stuff of anime. Then there was "Beavis and Butthead." By far the riskiest, most offensively funny show. American networks, however, really pushed that adult envelope with the show "South Park" and "Drawn Together".

They are, however, NOT like "Family Guy" at all. It's a show about a family. It deals with family issues. It deals with REAL issues, too. That's what makes it so controversial, even moreso than those other animated shows. It's an anti-family family show.

Let's get one thing straight here, though: when I say "family" show, I don't mean "family friendly." With the exception of "South Park", which (and let's be honest here) has some really smart, supercharged, topical writing (where else do you get to see Santa Claus armed with machine guns, taking out demon-possessed wilderness animals to save a captive Jesus Christ? Only on "South Park"), the shows "Beavis and Butthead" and "Drawn Together" couldn't be more raunchy and sick with sloppy, slapstick humor. Absolutely no point to it. But that's the beauty of it.

But "Family Guy" has a point to it. It's a satire. An extreme satire.

I define "family show" not inclusive to kids. Let me make that clear. That's why we have "kids shows". A "family show" CAN and most of the time DOES include kids. But it doesn't have to in order for it to be a "family show". Hence, without a doubt, "Family Guy" is indeed a "family show". Just not for kids.

It kills me, though, that certain ages can get away with watching shows like "Power Rangers" and even some of those JETIX shows with the high-octane action, some of them actually being, yes, you guessed it, ANIME, and a lot of them I could argue as being even more violent than some of the more adult-themed drama shows out there ("24", "The Unit", "NCIS", the list goes on and on)...and yet, we freak out whenever "Family Guy" comes on simply because we're seeing naked animated bodies. It's better than REAL naked bodies, I tell you! But that's a moot point. Naked is naked. That's worse than blood, though. Yeah, definitely worse.

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