Introduction
Thesis Statement
“Deliberately ambiguous”, as Seth MacFarlane the producer of the show “Family Guy” describes him, Stewie Griffin is a confused child, when it comes to his sexuality, although he has all the abilities and features for being a genius. Stewie Griffin is a character born out of the Macfarlane’s ambitions of featuring a personage meant to generate humor because of his sexual confusion and in the same time facing the biological and psychodynamic challenges of his age.
Aims and Purposes of the Paper
The current paper aims to debate Stewie Griffin’s sexuality, as the character develops in the TV series “Family Guy”. In this respect, the paper proposes to investigate the producer’s intentions regarding his 1 year old “Family Guy” character in parallel with analyzing Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic development, in order to understand the child’s reactions to certain stimuli. The paper also aims to answer why his sexuality important and why does Stewie’s sexuality is kept a mystery. In relation to the child’s sexuality, one purpose of the paper is to reveal the connection between his sexuality and his intention to dominate the world and to commit matricide. While discussing Stewie Griffin’s sexuality, there should be permanently considered the fact that he is a baby and the purpose of the paper is to base the entire discussion upon this aspect.
Hypothesis of the Paper
Stewie Griffin is deliberately ambiguous in order to fit two purposes: (1) the producer’s intentions to follow a character that manifests interests towards both men and women and to follow his reactions in order to appeal to both feminine and masculine public; (2) as Stewie is still a baby, there are various phases that children go through in their socio – cognitive development, which includes ambiguous sexuality until discovering their real sexuality.
Supporting Paragraphs
A troubled character, the baby Griffin is explored by Seth MacFarlane in his quest for identifying himself as a being and as a sexual being as well. The producer of “Family Guy” follows the structure of children’s development, as psychologists describes it, but he stops upon one aspect from a child’s self – recognition, the unconscious phase (Carducci, 2009), keeping Stewie in a permanent estate of confusion regarding his sexuality.
Why is Stewie’s Sexuality Important?
The producer of the show “Family Guy” intentionally generates Stweie’s sexual confusion and ambiguous estate. MacFarlane follows a child’s normal psychosexual development until the child becomes confused and can not tell whether he feels attracted to girls or if he feels attracted to boys. For a one year old child this is irrelevant regularly, because all the attraction occurs in an unconscious estate. However, for Stweie, his sexuality is important, because the child is a genius, although he seems not to be understood by anybody in his family, except for his dog Brian (“IGN’s Top 25 Family Guy Characters”), and he does possess the comprehension to understand his feelings in relation to reality.
Because Stewie is adult – like developed from an intellectual point of view, he is a baby from a biological point of view. This increases his estate of sexual confusion, which is already complex at the earliest stages of the child’s development.
Stewie’s Aim to Dominate the World and His Child Sexuality
The estate of unconsciousness corresponds to the id component of personality, developed in theory by the Austrian scientist Sigmund Freud, who describes it as the place where the sexual energy gathers, being urged by biological needs, defined by primary instincts: surviving, sexual, aggression, satisfying self – pleasure while following primary process thinking, characterized by irrationality and pursuing the immediate gratification or satisfying the pleasures (Sulloway, 1992).
Freud’s psychodynamic theories also refer to psychosexual development. According to the scientist, a child’s sexual development passes through five phases, from the birth to the age of 5. These phases are: the oral stage (from birth to twelve months), the anal stage (age 1, 2), the phallic stage (age 3 to 5), the latency stage (from 5 years to puberty) and the genital stage (at the age of puberty) (Nevid, 2008).
Following this psychosexual development gridline, it can be identified the fact that Stewie is in the anal phase, which occurs between 1 and 2 years. This psychosexual stage is associated with the anal region, from which the child seeks gratification (when eliminating at the right time and in the right place). If, on the contrary, the child does not receive parents’ approval for eliminating in various moments, he can develop frustrations, which can further contribute to defining his personality (Pressley & McCormick, 2007).
Because of Stewie’s relationship with his parents, and because of his age, there can be stated that he is in the anal stage. Regarding the relationship with his parents, the child develops an aggression toward his mother, Lois, being urged by a desire to commit matricide. He hates his mother because she treats him like a baby, breastfeeding him or changing his diapers. Although he dislikes being considered a baby and a needy, infantile person, he seems to like the milk coming our from his mother’s breasts (MacFarlane, “Family Guy”).
His intention to kill his mother can be attributed to a combination between Oedipus syndrome and Electra complex. Regularly, Oedipus syndrome manifests through a baby’s unconscious attraction towards his mother or her father (the parent of the other sex), whom he wants to secretly posses (Keitlen, 2003). Electra complex, conceptualized later by Carl Gustav Jung, in reaction to Freud’s Oedipus’ complex, is the competition that girls have with their mothers, resulting in aggression towards the mothers, for the purpose of eliminating them, for remaining with their fathers (Scott, 2005).
These syndromes are likely to characterize the regular children’s reactions, but Stewie is not a regular child, as developed by MacFarlane. Stewie’s intention limits to eliminating his mother. This might indicate that in a subconscious level he might have secret desires to sexually posses her. While aiming to eliminate her (manifesting Electra complex), he likes her breast milk (indicating Oedipus complex).
The development of these complexes indicates that the child also manifests the symptoms of the phallic stage. In this stage the focus turns to genital area and it emphasizes the psychosexual development of boys, because it centers the masculine sexual organ, the penis (Presley & McCormick, 2007). This continuous focus develops into a fixation, expressed through significant problems in respecting authoritative persons (Bernstein, 2010), which can be clearly observed in Stewie’s behavior and intent to kill his mother, the person who wants to control him with her motherly love.
Therefore, based on Freud’s psychosexual development, little Stewie is fluctuating between two stages of his self – awareness sexual development as a child: the anal and the phallic phases. He is either focused on receiving gratifications related to his anal region or to his phallic one and when he does not receive these gratifications, he goes against the entire world, targeting his mother as his main enemy.
This makes Stewie a character that is in full conflict with others and with himself. He hates Lois (and probably all women), but he unconsciously loves the taste of her milk and her caress (MacFarlane, “Family Guy”). He is very intelligent for his age, acknowledging cultural concepts that even adults do not master, but he is unaware of his sexuality. The fact that he has a British accent indicates his self – perceived superiority toward everybody else and the fact that he is treated as a baby, mostly by his mother, determines his remorse feelings for her, as he is subjected to a treatment that he considers to be humiliating and degrading for him.
Some “Family Guy” episodes portray him as heterosexual, as he develops a crush o a baby – girl, while others indicate his homosexual orientation: having the sexy image of a naked male on his cellphone, going to homosexual parties, acting like a homosexual when in the army with Brian, his dog, for getting rid of the army and accepting the advances of an actual gay army officer (MacFarlane, “Family Guy”).
All these conflicts result in a personality disorder and develop Stewie’s frustration and his urge to rule the world. His intention to dominate the world is an indication of his anger, which is generated by his confusion. It is probably the fact that baby Stewie feels manipulated by anatomy that he reacts like this. His mind is adult and has strong perceptions about life, but his body develops normally, like the body of a baby and requires the attention that a baby does. Therefore, he develops a rage against himself also and in this context, his sexual behavior becomes incomprehensible and he does not seem to realize his ambiguous sexuality.
Why is Stewie’s Sexuality a Mystery?
It has been so far argued that Stewie is a troubled baby, who is having problems in identifying his actual sexuality. This will seemingly manifest problems as an adult, ranging from various fixations to frustrations. The fact that Stewie cannot yet identify his sexuality is quite normal for a baby, who is not yet developed. Nevertheless, it is suspicious the fact that Stewie develops oddly, compared to other children. The psychosexual analysis found him between anal and phallic stages, manifesting a reversed Oedipus complex combined with particles of Electra complex, although the lasts syndrome is specific to baby girls, not baby boys.
The producer of the show explores this psychodynamic development and plays with it through his ambiguous baby character. "He originally began as a diabolical villain, but then we delved into the idea of his confused sexuality.” (Voss, 2008)
It is important to play with Stewie’s sexuality, making the boy either heterosexual either homosexual in order to appeal to both sexual orientations and both sexes. The show makes evil jokes on all social values and treats with irony and sarcasm everybody, regardless of their gender, age, religion, political views or sexual orientation. From a strange point of view, it can be stated that the TV show is actually non – discriminative when it comes to making fun of people.
As such, Stweie portrays the hurt heterosexual who suffers from being cheated by a baby girl, or as a homosexual who goes to parties in gay clubs, or secretly admires men, or subconsciously want to sexually connect with various men. In this way, Stewie enters both camps (the one of heterosexuals and the one of homosexuals), sensing what a straight and what a gay man feels. This offers a great opportunity to the producer of the show to make fun of straight men and of gay alike, without discriminating.
“We all feel that Stewie is almost certainly gay, and he’s in the process of figuring it out for himself. We haven’t ever really locked into it because we get a lot of good jokes from both sides, but we treat him oftentimes as if we were writing a gay character." (Voss, 2008).
Stewie – More Heterosexual that Homosexual?
Considering his inclinations, manifested through his daily actions, Stewie appears to be tempted by the idea of homosexuality. Nevertheless, in certain scenes, he rejects specific homosexual principles. As such, when Brian shows him a boy playing on the scene and dancing like a girl he becomes disturbed with the image, and considers it grotesque and abominable. On the other hand, in other scenes he makes fun of his own gay inclinations: “look how gay we walk” (MacFarlane, “Family Guy”), indicting his irony towards homosexuals.
Stewie seems to show little interest in girls, but this, again, relates to his age. Little boys dislike the company of girls and want to stay around boys. They reject any touch from a girl and from this point of view I could say that Stewie is straight. Nevertheless, the fact that on the contrary, he seems to show interest in boys, is again confusing, and this makes him more attracted to boys than to girls, whom he rejects.
Although he considers himself superior to everybody because of his high IQ (Phillips, 2013), he seems to express his superiority more around girls than around boys. Again, this might indicate his perception that boys in general are superior to girls and because he cannot stand what is weak he associates himself only with the strong ones. Because men represent the symbol of strength for him, he feels attracted to men more than he feels to women.
Therefore, considering his behavior and attitude towards men and women, I cannot say that Stewie Griffin is more heterosexual than homosexual, but the other way around, as men arouse him because of their qualities that he considers superior to women.
Conclusion
This paper discussed about Stewie Griffin, the baby character from “Family Guy”, analyzing his sexuality. The paper revealed that while it is too early to discuss about a child’s sexuality at 1 year old, in Stewie’s case is very important to do this, because the individual is a genius trapped in the body of a baby. Psychodynamic and psychosexual development theories were utilized in order to analyze Stewie’s sexuality, considering the fact that he is just a baby. These theories indicated that Stewie is between the anal and the phallic stages, manifesting the reverse Oedipus complex, combined with Electra syndrome, because he wants to kill his mother, while he subconsciously might have sexual feelings for her.
Another view of Stewie’s sexuality was provided by the producer of the show, Seth MacFarlane, who challenged Freud’s psychosexual development. According to the producer, Stewie is caught between an advanced thinking intellect and primary needs, among which sexual urges can be clearly observed. The producer of the show explores his character, taking him to the extremes, but never revealing his true sexuality, in order to allow him to be flexible with jokes about heterosexuals and homosexuals alike.
Although his real sexuality was never clearly stated, considering his actions, his likes and dislikes, his reactions and attitudes towards men and women, can be stated that Stewie Griffin is more homosexual than heterosexual. Nevertheless, because he still expresses some shy heterosexual tendencies, he might actually be bi-sexual.
References
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