In Defense of Seth MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane, host of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, nailed it!

Perhaps I’m biased, because I am a HUGE Seth MacFarlane fan.

Of course you are.

Whatever. MacFarlane is a versatile showman who shits comedy gold.

Best known as the man behind the animated adult comedy series, Family Guy, MacFarlane’s brand of humor pushes every envelope imaginable. On the show, he famously blends pop-culture references, political satire, and borderline obscenities to create intelligent comedy.

That’s right, I called Family Guy “intelligent comedy.”

Nothing (and no one) is off limits. Some of the best episodes involve off-color topics that other prime-time comedy shows wouldn’t dare touch. Last night, he brought that brand of humor to the doorstep of the Dolby Theatre and smacked everyone right across the face.

Judging by today’s headlines, reactions were mixed.

Some of the words used to describe MacFarlane's performance include, “sexist,” “inappropriate,” disgusting,” “hostile,” and “ugly.”

Seriously?

One “off-color” moment that MacFarlane’s detractors seem to be latching onto is his introduction to Quentin Tarantino's “Django Unchained,” which went as follows:
 
"This is the story of a man fighting to get back his woman, who's been subjected to unthinkable violence. Or as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie."

Look, people have been making Chris Brown jokes ever since he first laid a finger on Rihanna and the jokes have become more severe since the pair reunited... and rightly so!

I’m not saying that I find humor in a piece of shit who beats up his girlfriend and I certainly don’t think it’s funny when someone clearly doesn’t have the strength to leave an abuser... but calling them both out on it?

I, for one, think that it IS okay to satirically criticize a violent homophobe. Let’s make that shitbag so uncomfortable that he’ll never show his face at another awards show. As for his victim? I believe that we should also be pointing fingers at her. Rihanna is a supposed “female role model” and she keeps going back into an abusive relationship with this jackwagon?

The other big buzz seems to be all about MacFarlane’s hilarious opening number, “We Saw Your Boobs,” in which he calls out female actresses who have exposed their tits in major motion pictures.

Dana Stevens from Slate notes that it was the start to a downhill slope of “defensive anxiety about the ascendant power of women.”

Seriously?

Let’s face it, Hollywood is “boob obsessed” and it is rare that a blockbuster movie (sans tits) gets any fucking recognition. I would argue that NONE of the movies listed in that opening number NEEDED a tit shot to be what they were.

In a pre-Titanic world, the PC police whined about gratuitous tit shots in film and now they have done a complete 180 saying that bearing the breast is empowering and should be encouraged as “art,” but if we (men especially) point it out or make fun of it, we are “degrading women.”

At least that’s how Amy Davidson of The New Yorker sees it.

What Davidson, Stevens and most of the other detractors fail to recognize is that the true butt of MacFarlane’s jokes was Hollywood itself, which is, after all, what an Academy Awards host is traditionally expected to do - make fun of the Hollywood machine.

It is amazing to me that, on the one hand, we fight for equality, empowerment, and acceptance, yet we get so uptight when someone points out our differences, our mistakes or our struggles through satire. Last night, MacFarlane left no stone unturned. He joked about race, religion, sexual orientation, men, women, and everything in between.

If that’s not equality, I don’t know what is.

How about you? 

Were you offended by Seth MacFarlane’s performance? 

Did you think it was over the top?