When you make a bunch of music that people like, use the fame and fortune you've acquired to become a decadent and self-destructive twat, and get yourself killed at the age of 27, you're revered as a hero. When you make a bunch of music that people like, maintain self-discipline, and continue to make music and tour even when you aren't quite what you once were because you care enough about your fans to give them more of what they want, you're mocked as uncool.
Folks, this is insane.
For those of you who spend less time on Wikipedia than I, the 27 Club is the name for musicians who died at the age of 27. The most notable members of this group include Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Robert Johnson (Clapton tells me he's good), and the guy from Canned Heat that I assumed was actually an unattractive woman until I was probably a sophomore in college. What do these people (and by these people, I mean the three that you have seen more than two pictures of in your life, lookin at you 'Picture of Robert Johnson in a black suit and fedora holding his guitar') have in common? They're musical icons, of course! Each of these men have impressive musical resumes, to be sure, but they're also viewed as almost God-like figures (or in the case of Jim Morrison, scratch out the words almost, like, and figures when making reference to Oliver Stone). Not a lot of people enjoy this reputation--I would argue that of the ten most insanely revered rock stars ever, these three are at least in the top ten if not the top five.
But while these men deserve acknowledgement, why do we as a society celebrate dying at 27? Morrison and Hendrix died because of drugs; Cobain died because of a suicide that he was even more directly responsible for. I know Pete Townshend wrote "I hope I die before I get old" in 1965, but the old bastard is still performing! Why is it a virtue to freaking die at or before your creative peak? So you don't tarnish your reputation by touring forever like the Rolling Stones?
Now, I've mentioned The Rolling Stones in several blog entries before because frankly I find them to be more fascinating cultural institutions than The Beatles. The Beatles are fascinating because of the way they were famous in the 1960s, but the Stones have toured constantly since the 1960s and have had enormous highs and lows during the time period. But part of the fascination is that the Rolling Stones have been largely irrelevant for almost thirty years. Let's put it this way--if you look up the Artist Essentials of the Rolling Stones, the newest song you will find on the list of 25 huge Stones hits is "Waiting for a Friend." This song was released in 1981. I was negative-eight.
The Rolling Stones, though by all accounts quite a stage presence given their advanced ages (I haven't seen them live, though there was still definite charisma in Shine a Light), are no longer a great band. They just aren't--their live performances can't compare to the best live bands of today or even to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, who although not contemporaries might as well be by revisionist standards. But in what way does a few decades of mediocrity matter? Maybe you don't want to shell over a couple hundred bucks to see a man old enough to be your grandfather strut around stage singing about how he can't get no satisfaction, but it's not like if you look at videos or listen to records of them in the 60s or 70s, they aren't evoking the same youthful exuberance they did at the time.
Several bands are going a lesser Stonesy path (lesser not because they aren't trying, but because they're younger bands and inherently aren't comparable to their elders). The aforementioned E Street Band has had a few lesser hits in the last decade ("The Rising", "My City of Ruins"), but nobody's confusing these songs with "Born to Run." U2 got back on modern rock radio with "Get On Your Boots", but it's not even as good as "Discotheque", much less "Mysterious Ways" or much less "Sunday Bloody (F***ing) Sunday". But you know this already. I don't like The Boss enough that I wanna pay a lot of money to hear him play maybe a couple of songs I like, because while I'd love to hear him do "Pink Cadillac" or "Cover Me", I know the odds of this realistically happening are extremely low. I don't wanna pay to see him play, but a lot of people do. If you're 35 today and were born in 1976, you were thirteen when the E Street Band broke up and therefore probably never saw them play in their original run. But because they care enough about their fans to keep on plugging along, you can go see them today!
So I want to offer a challenge right here and now. Rather than spend the next couple days as most will, talking about how the legendary 27 Club has added another legend lost too soon, let's start the 97 Club. I like the idea of being able to take my children to a Rolling Stones concert when Mick, Keith, and Charlie are 97 years old--they might be in it for the money, but Goddammit, I'm a Rolling Stones fan and I want to see that concert. I don't care if they aren't the same band that was frightening my grandparents in the sixties; I'll give them credit for every year they soldier on out there.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Five Most Overrated Days of My Life (So Far)
I am nearly twenty-two and a half years old, and I've realized two important things. One, there are certain benchmarks you're told throughout your life are important. Two, most of them don't matter at all. They are merely artificial barometers of your life, considered important not because they actually matter but because they're experienced by everybody. Also experienced by everybody--breathing. Since I've yet to marry or have children, I won't claim these are the five most overrated days of any life, but here's my list to date of days that don't matter.
5. First Job--To people who experience their first job, usually while in high school, it's considered a big landmark because, well, you make money. Which is nice, even though the average high schooler doesn't really need to spend a ton of money. But the reason it's overrated is because it's actually the first steps to you becoming a boring and jaded person like everybody else. In fact, the worst thing that could happen at your first part-time job isn't that you suck at it so bad that you get fired, but rather that you're so damn good at it that you make the brilliant decision "I'm going to focus more on this than I will on school." The fact is the most lucrative of jobs to a high schooler is paltry to almost all adults. Work experience is good, but it's actually quite dangerous for your life if your first job sets the foundation for your future.
4. First Day of High School--I was convinced in middle school by teachers and by parents and by others of this sort that the first day of high school matters. Why? Because high school matters, of course! High school is, after all, the best time of your life. While this may have seemed true when this expression was founded (in an era when the only real alternative to education was going to war), how many people really consider high school the best time of their life? Everybody is awkward; people are pretentious assholes about how much money they (their parents) have; you are literally told when you can go to the bathroom and when you can go from room to room. Barring a prison sentence, high school shouldn't be the highlight of your life.
3. Graduation Ceremonies--They get more overrated as they go along because they're equally useless. This isn't to say that the act of graduating is useless--it isn't--but to hear people give cliche-loaded speeches about following your dreams and working hard and being the future isn't going to change anyone's life. For instance, when I graduated from high school, my commencement speaker (I won't say who it was, but it was either a notable alumni who created a strong remedy for malaria which is used today in sub-Saharan Africa, or it was my superintendent) told us we were the future. Okay. Does anyone think anyone heard that and all of a sudden felt compelled to turn their life around? "You know, I was gonna take my diploma and then go shoot heroin in the woods for the rest of my life, but I think I'm going to go to law school now."
2. 21st Birthday--There are essentially three types of people when it comes to drinking alcohol. Type One drank well before they were twenty-one, so turning 21 wasn't really a new thing, other than you can now buy alcohol in a bar and pay way too much for it. These people had no problem finding a highly responsible adult to purchase alcohol for them. Type Two didn't drink and still doesn't drink once they turned 21--turning 21 is even more irrelevant for them. Type Three only started drinking upon turning twenty-one, in which case the odds are fairly good you don't care enough about drinking that your 21st birthday was a legitimately significant life milestone.
1. Prom--Here are the differences between going to prom and just hanging out with friends of yours. If you go to prom, you will have rules enforced by the same people who make you do pointless BS all day for four years. If you don't, you can pretty much do as you wish. If you go to prom, you must dress up. If you don't go, you can dress up if you want, but there is no mandate. If you go to prom, you get a solid dinner. If you don't go to prom, you can go to get a far better dinner and for far less money than the fifty bucks or so you dropped for a prom ticket. Prom exists as a money gouger because it's "tradition", just as owning human beings as property was once considered tradition in the American South. I'm not saying people should necessarily skip it--just don't expect it to be the peak of your life. Because a majority of the people you see there you will never see again in three weeks.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Ten Biggest Sellouts in the History of the Galaxy
10. Nicolas Cage--Part of the legendary Coppola family (and by legendary, I mean Francis Ford Coppola is legendary), Nicolas Cage began his career in fairly good movies like Raising Arizona while playing weirdos which matched his natural awkwardness. Guys make careers out of this, like Sean Penn. But the devilishly handsome Cage apparently saw a movie star in the mirror, so rather than making Leaving Las Vegas types of movies, his career now consists of being the relative bright spot in terrible movies with insane premises (National Treasure 2, with Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight and Helen Mirren, has as many Oscar winners as The Godfather; make sense?).
9. The Rolling Stones--The band who has probably made more songs I consider absolute all-time classics than any other, I don't fault the Stones for getting worse in their older age because I'm pretty sure that had he lived, Jimi Hendrix would have made a Bach tribute album by 1973 and would have done a duet with ABBA at some point as well. But, seriously, a band that was just about the coolest thing ever when they came out is selling their music to be used by Microsoft. They also have a shitload of merch available (I don't blame KISS for this, because KISS did not sell out: they were merely designed to be a brand more than a band). Worse though was their willing self-censorship during their tepid Super Bowl XL halftime show (and the fact that the band that made "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" played "Rough Justice" instead).
8. Steven Tyler--For those unfamiliar with the work of Steven Tyler or Aerosmith, it's basically like The Rolling Stones but slightly worse. Slightly worse made them one of the best bands of the 1970s, mind you. And they had some decent fun rock songs when they made a comeback in the late 80s. And then they recorded "Angel." And then Michael Bay (a pure moneymaker from the beginning, like KISS, who is ineligible for this list) threw money at them for the awful power ballad "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing". And then, in order to leave no doubts in the minds of the world that he's the reason Aerosmith sold out, Steven Tyler joined the judging panel on American Idol. It's a sellout move so bad that even Kid F***ing Rock (an honorable mention for the list, but he wasn't good enough to begin with to justify listing him) has chastised him.
7. Christopher Nolan--Most directors, as they get more experienced, do bigger movies, and this itself is not a sellout move. Some guys like Scorsese go from nice little neighborhood art movies like "Who's That Knocking At My Door" and use new funds to make "Goodfellas." Others, like Nolan, go from making arguably the greatest movie of the 2000s in his debut with Memento to Insomnia to, um, Batman movies? To his credit, his Batman movies are the most acclaimed of the group, but to his fault, they're still midnight movie types of releases which cater primarily to those under the age of 25 (David Fincher makes these kind of movies, too, but at least he's never spearheaded an advertising campaign used to exploit the death of one of his stars).
6. Flavor Flav--Let's put it this way: My mother knows who Flavor Flav is, but there is a zero percent chance she could name the group where he got his fame. This probably has at least something to do with the fact that Flavor Flav is by far the second banana in Public Enemy, but Flavor Flav I can guarantee has a far higher Q rating than Chuck D, who wrote and was the primary performer on pretty much every Public Enemy song that wasn't "911 is a Joke", a song which I maintain somehow improved when Duran Duran covered it because Flavor Flav is that much of a hack. But being a hack doesn't make one a sellout because at least hacks can try to do well. Doing multiple VH1 reality shows makes one a sellout.
5. Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney began his political career as the kind of Republican I would consider voting for--socially moderate, relatively conservative fiscally, and generally sane. Except arguably for the issue of abortion, where his insanity came from being too liberal (he claimed when running for governor of Massachusetts that he was more pro-choice than Ted Kennedy). One would think that after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the GOP would seek out a candidate who can seduce independents with the ability of Obama, and late 1990s Romney would be a tremendous example of this kind of moderate. But instead, he has flipped many positions, ran away from his UHC plan, and has somehow become less popular as a result of his insincerity, hurting Romney's status as a sellout because he wasn't even good at it.
4. Jaenene Garofalo--Garofalo, for those of you who do not know (she's probably the least successful person on this list, so you get a pass if you don't know), is a marginally talented actress/stand-up comedian who is best known for being a sanctimonious bleeding-heart liberal that even left-leaners such as myself can't stand. But while I can't stand her, I always had tremendous respect for her gumption--unlike most of the politically correct society, she was willing to take a stand for what she believed in. So what's the ideal job for a lefty? Why, acting on 24, the conservative wet dream of a show based on unsubstantiated notions like "torture has, at some point, worked" and "the best military-style approach isn't strategy but is rather just running and shooting when you see anybody". She has even admitted to selling out by doing 24, but she still did it. Self-awareness counts for something, but not much.
3. Bob Seger--If you are not familiar with Seger's songs "Ramblin Gamblin Man" (there's a decent chance you know this one) or "2+2 Is On My Mind" (less popular, but far more prolific in terms of having alternate spellings for the song title), consult YouTube or some other music player. Pretty damn good, right? The former song being along the lines of a Rolling Stones or Creedence Clearwater Revival classic. The latter being even heavier, a slightly more mainstream version of the kinds of music being made in Seger's metro at the time by such greats as The MC5 and The Stooges. Now listen to "Night Moves"--or don't. Now, making awful music meant to appease the masses is common, but what makes Seger stand out is just how much effort he makes to keep you from listening to his late 60s works with The Bob Seger System. Note that Bob Seger, an extremely popular musician who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has his first SEVEN albums out of print. He doesn't get higher because I have a soft spot for "Her Strut".
2. Alex Rodriguez--It's hard to evaluate sportsmen as sellouts most of the time, especially in baseball, because it usually consists of a case like Carl Crawford, who not only got more money from going to Tampa Bay to Boston but also got on a far better team with far better fans and far more long-term job security. But to claim Alex Rodriguez's departure from Seattle was based on anything other than money is utterly asinine. He left Seattle, a very good baseball team with a solid fan base and a new stadium opening, for Texas, a last-place club with fickle fans, an ugly stadium, and 252 million reasons to show up. He could have settled for being a big fish in a small pond in Texas, but then he realized that even when he was putting up MVP-caliber numbers, one good player isn't enough to make the playoffs and manipulated his way to New York. Formerly one of the most liked players in baseball in the late 1990s, A-Rod now enjoys a reputation as one of the sport's whiniest stars.
1. Will Smith--The best actor of the many rapper-turned-actors (I suppose it's a balancing act where if your'e an awful rapper, it helps your thespian skills), but has had a propensity for being in awful, awful movies. I'll give him credit for Six Degrees of Separation and Ali, but his movies tend to be innocuous fluff or enormous action movies. Which is what makes him arguably the biggest movie star in the world. It's one thing if you make mindless entertainment like I Am Legend, a miserable corruption of a solid story by the way, if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, a non-actor whose best movie remains one in which he barely speaks (The Terminator). But Will Smith has talent; he just happens to completely ignore it. Yet for some reason he is given a pass--I've even seen people call him the greatest African-American actor working today. This is frankly laughable. Denzel Washington was willing to play an insane cop in Training Day. Samuel L. Jackson has almost always played complex characters. Even Morgan Freeman, who normally plays saintly characters (or occasionally God), played a kidnapping cop in Gone Baby Gone. Though Will Smith is almost certainly richer than these three far more accomplished actors. I leave you with this statistic: Will Smith has never appeared in a Best Picture nominated film; John Cazale appeared in five films in his life, three of which won the award and the other two of which were merely nominated).
9. The Rolling Stones--The band who has probably made more songs I consider absolute all-time classics than any other, I don't fault the Stones for getting worse in their older age because I'm pretty sure that had he lived, Jimi Hendrix would have made a Bach tribute album by 1973 and would have done a duet with ABBA at some point as well. But, seriously, a band that was just about the coolest thing ever when they came out is selling their music to be used by Microsoft. They also have a shitload of merch available (I don't blame KISS for this, because KISS did not sell out: they were merely designed to be a brand more than a band). Worse though was their willing self-censorship during their tepid Super Bowl XL halftime show (and the fact that the band that made "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" played "Rough Justice" instead).
8. Steven Tyler--For those unfamiliar with the work of Steven Tyler or Aerosmith, it's basically like The Rolling Stones but slightly worse. Slightly worse made them one of the best bands of the 1970s, mind you. And they had some decent fun rock songs when they made a comeback in the late 80s. And then they recorded "Angel." And then Michael Bay (a pure moneymaker from the beginning, like KISS, who is ineligible for this list) threw money at them for the awful power ballad "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing". And then, in order to leave no doubts in the minds of the world that he's the reason Aerosmith sold out, Steven Tyler joined the judging panel on American Idol. It's a sellout move so bad that even Kid F***ing Rock (an honorable mention for the list, but he wasn't good enough to begin with to justify listing him) has chastised him.
7. Christopher Nolan--Most directors, as they get more experienced, do bigger movies, and this itself is not a sellout move. Some guys like Scorsese go from nice little neighborhood art movies like "Who's That Knocking At My Door" and use new funds to make "Goodfellas." Others, like Nolan, go from making arguably the greatest movie of the 2000s in his debut with Memento to Insomnia to, um, Batman movies? To his credit, his Batman movies are the most acclaimed of the group, but to his fault, they're still midnight movie types of releases which cater primarily to those under the age of 25 (David Fincher makes these kind of movies, too, but at least he's never spearheaded an advertising campaign used to exploit the death of one of his stars).
6. Flavor Flav--Let's put it this way: My mother knows who Flavor Flav is, but there is a zero percent chance she could name the group where he got his fame. This probably has at least something to do with the fact that Flavor Flav is by far the second banana in Public Enemy, but Flavor Flav I can guarantee has a far higher Q rating than Chuck D, who wrote and was the primary performer on pretty much every Public Enemy song that wasn't "911 is a Joke", a song which I maintain somehow improved when Duran Duran covered it because Flavor Flav is that much of a hack. But being a hack doesn't make one a sellout because at least hacks can try to do well. Doing multiple VH1 reality shows makes one a sellout.
5. Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney began his political career as the kind of Republican I would consider voting for--socially moderate, relatively conservative fiscally, and generally sane. Except arguably for the issue of abortion, where his insanity came from being too liberal (he claimed when running for governor of Massachusetts that he was more pro-choice than Ted Kennedy). One would think that after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the GOP would seek out a candidate who can seduce independents with the ability of Obama, and late 1990s Romney would be a tremendous example of this kind of moderate. But instead, he has flipped many positions, ran away from his UHC plan, and has somehow become less popular as a result of his insincerity, hurting Romney's status as a sellout because he wasn't even good at it.
4. Jaenene Garofalo--Garofalo, for those of you who do not know (she's probably the least successful person on this list, so you get a pass if you don't know), is a marginally talented actress/stand-up comedian who is best known for being a sanctimonious bleeding-heart liberal that even left-leaners such as myself can't stand. But while I can't stand her, I always had tremendous respect for her gumption--unlike most of the politically correct society, she was willing to take a stand for what she believed in. So what's the ideal job for a lefty? Why, acting on 24, the conservative wet dream of a show based on unsubstantiated notions like "torture has, at some point, worked" and "the best military-style approach isn't strategy but is rather just running and shooting when you see anybody". She has even admitted to selling out by doing 24, but she still did it. Self-awareness counts for something, but not much.
3. Bob Seger--If you are not familiar with Seger's songs "Ramblin Gamblin Man" (there's a decent chance you know this one) or "2+2 Is On My Mind" (less popular, but far more prolific in terms of having alternate spellings for the song title), consult YouTube or some other music player. Pretty damn good, right? The former song being along the lines of a Rolling Stones or Creedence Clearwater Revival classic. The latter being even heavier, a slightly more mainstream version of the kinds of music being made in Seger's metro at the time by such greats as The MC5 and The Stooges. Now listen to "Night Moves"--or don't. Now, making awful music meant to appease the masses is common, but what makes Seger stand out is just how much effort he makes to keep you from listening to his late 60s works with The Bob Seger System. Note that Bob Seger, an extremely popular musician who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has his first SEVEN albums out of print. He doesn't get higher because I have a soft spot for "Her Strut".
2. Alex Rodriguez--It's hard to evaluate sportsmen as sellouts most of the time, especially in baseball, because it usually consists of a case like Carl Crawford, who not only got more money from going to Tampa Bay to Boston but also got on a far better team with far better fans and far more long-term job security. But to claim Alex Rodriguez's departure from Seattle was based on anything other than money is utterly asinine. He left Seattle, a very good baseball team with a solid fan base and a new stadium opening, for Texas, a last-place club with fickle fans, an ugly stadium, and 252 million reasons to show up. He could have settled for being a big fish in a small pond in Texas, but then he realized that even when he was putting up MVP-caliber numbers, one good player isn't enough to make the playoffs and manipulated his way to New York. Formerly one of the most liked players in baseball in the late 1990s, A-Rod now enjoys a reputation as one of the sport's whiniest stars.
1. Will Smith--The best actor of the many rapper-turned-actors (I suppose it's a balancing act where if your'e an awful rapper, it helps your thespian skills), but has had a propensity for being in awful, awful movies. I'll give him credit for Six Degrees of Separation and Ali, but his movies tend to be innocuous fluff or enormous action movies. Which is what makes him arguably the biggest movie star in the world. It's one thing if you make mindless entertainment like I Am Legend, a miserable corruption of a solid story by the way, if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, a non-actor whose best movie remains one in which he barely speaks (The Terminator). But Will Smith has talent; he just happens to completely ignore it. Yet for some reason he is given a pass--I've even seen people call him the greatest African-American actor working today. This is frankly laughable. Denzel Washington was willing to play an insane cop in Training Day. Samuel L. Jackson has almost always played complex characters. Even Morgan Freeman, who normally plays saintly characters (or occasionally God), played a kidnapping cop in Gone Baby Gone. Though Will Smith is almost certainly richer than these three far more accomplished actors. I leave you with this statistic: Will Smith has never appeared in a Best Picture nominated film; John Cazale appeared in five films in his life, three of which won the award and the other two of which were merely nominated).
Friday, July 8, 2011
Seth MacFarlane is no Matt Groening (and why it doesn't f***ing matter)
Unless you are yourself Matt Groening (and if you are, I have some pretty good Simpsons episode ideas for you), you have not created a television show as good as The Simpsons. For some unknown reason, the only person on the planet who gets criticized for this "inferiority" is Seth MacFarlane.
Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, is constantly slammed by most hardcore Simpsons aficionados for the quality of his show, which is perceived to be quite bland and unfunny compared to The Simpsons, particularly episodes from the show's "golden era" (Note: Nobody agrees on when this era spanned, but I personally say it's mid-Season 3 to Season 9).
I agree with the overall point that Family Guy isn't nearly as funny, smart, or innovative as The Simpsons was in the 1990s. But does this mean that television should give up?
Consider the most popular shows on television right now. American Idol. Dancing with the Stars. Shows on CBS That I Haven't Actually Seen But My Aunts Seem to Find Gripping.
Is Family Guy better than these shows? Absolutely. Family Guy does make jokes about politics, culture, and the world in which it is set. It's not shallow escapism--it does a lot of the same things that a certain yellow-skinned family did in my childhood. And the thing is, The Simpsons in 2011, while still very much a watchable show, is not what it was in 1993. It's essentially a tribute to itself--a monument to a fully functional Springfield world in which the entire town can be populated with characters we know a great deal about due to the long run of the series and the conscious effort to explore virtually every person that the Simpson family encounters. But this monument can be pretty damn tedious to watch sometimes--one-note characters like Cletus (the slack-jawed yokel, as he was so eloquently referred from Seasons 5 to 7) make okay jokes in the midst of a bigger story but don't work when they're expected to function as three-dimensional characters.
But come on, you can't possibly think Family Guy can ever reach The Simpsons' level. Are there any Family Guy episodes even close to as funny as any episode in, say, Season Five?
Well, maybe the one where Homer's dad and Marge's mom start dating. But overall, no, Family Guy is not as good and will almost certainly never be as good. King of the Hill is also not as good, but that didn't prevent it from having a special place in my heart (as well as a very long TV run by any standard other than that set by The Simpsons). Perhaps I'd be more inclined to start bashing Seth MacFarlane if he was a pompous ass about the whole thing--if he claimed his show was better or something like that. But he really isn't. Has anyone ever seen a report of Seth MacFarlane badmouthing what was obviously a major influence on his creation?
I can only recall one Family Guy joke which specifically mocked The Simpsons--one in which Stewie mocked Bart Simpson's endorsements of Butterfinger. But isn't that a fair point? Shouldn't a good satirist point out the insanity of a so-called anti-establishment show becoming willing icons of corporate America? I would hardly call this disrespectful, just as I wouldn't call The Simpsons referring to Family Guy as "plagiarisimo", or American Dad as "plagiarisimo di plagiarisimo" disrespectful. And to those who mock Family Guy as a ripoff of The Simpsons, keep in mind the high level of Springfieldians who are admittedly based on someone else in culture. Homer is Walter Matthau, Barney is Crazy Guggenheim from Jackie Gleason, Chief Wiggum is Edward G. Robinson, Moe is Sonny from Dog Day Afternoon, etc.
So if you want to lambaste Family Guy, it's your call. But it just seems silly to do so because "it's not as good as The Simpsons".
Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, is constantly slammed by most hardcore Simpsons aficionados for the quality of his show, which is perceived to be quite bland and unfunny compared to The Simpsons, particularly episodes from the show's "golden era" (Note: Nobody agrees on when this era spanned, but I personally say it's mid-Season 3 to Season 9).
I agree with the overall point that Family Guy isn't nearly as funny, smart, or innovative as The Simpsons was in the 1990s. But does this mean that television should give up?
Consider the most popular shows on television right now. American Idol. Dancing with the Stars. Shows on CBS That I Haven't Actually Seen But My Aunts Seem to Find Gripping.
Is Family Guy better than these shows? Absolutely. Family Guy does make jokes about politics, culture, and the world in which it is set. It's not shallow escapism--it does a lot of the same things that a certain yellow-skinned family did in my childhood. And the thing is, The Simpsons in 2011, while still very much a watchable show, is not what it was in 1993. It's essentially a tribute to itself--a monument to a fully functional Springfield world in which the entire town can be populated with characters we know a great deal about due to the long run of the series and the conscious effort to explore virtually every person that the Simpson family encounters. But this monument can be pretty damn tedious to watch sometimes--one-note characters like Cletus (the slack-jawed yokel, as he was so eloquently referred from Seasons 5 to 7) make okay jokes in the midst of a bigger story but don't work when they're expected to function as three-dimensional characters.
But come on, you can't possibly think Family Guy can ever reach The Simpsons' level. Are there any Family Guy episodes even close to as funny as any episode in, say, Season Five?
Well, maybe the one where Homer's dad and Marge's mom start dating. But overall, no, Family Guy is not as good and will almost certainly never be as good. King of the Hill is also not as good, but that didn't prevent it from having a special place in my heart (as well as a very long TV run by any standard other than that set by The Simpsons). Perhaps I'd be more inclined to start bashing Seth MacFarlane if he was a pompous ass about the whole thing--if he claimed his show was better or something like that. But he really isn't. Has anyone ever seen a report of Seth MacFarlane badmouthing what was obviously a major influence on his creation?
I can only recall one Family Guy joke which specifically mocked The Simpsons--one in which Stewie mocked Bart Simpson's endorsements of Butterfinger. But isn't that a fair point? Shouldn't a good satirist point out the insanity of a so-called anti-establishment show becoming willing icons of corporate America? I would hardly call this disrespectful, just as I wouldn't call The Simpsons referring to Family Guy as "plagiarisimo", or American Dad as "plagiarisimo di plagiarisimo" disrespectful. And to those who mock Family Guy as a ripoff of The Simpsons, keep in mind the high level of Springfieldians who are admittedly based on someone else in culture. Homer is Walter Matthau, Barney is Crazy Guggenheim from Jackie Gleason, Chief Wiggum is Edward G. Robinson, Moe is Sonny from Dog Day Afternoon, etc.
So if you want to lambaste Family Guy, it's your call. But it just seems silly to do so because "it's not as good as The Simpsons".
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