The animated adult series Family Guy broke the mold for its genre, created a large cult fan base and made famous its creator, 33-year-old Seth MacFarlane.
He’ll talk about his controversial series for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. March 30 in Graham Chapel.
Family Guy has been nominated for an Emmy award and has a strong following, particularly among young adult males. The satirical show, partly inspired by The Simpsons, features a dysfunctional family with a toddler bent on world domination and a talking dog. The program is infused with pop-culture references.
The show’s controversial humor has unnerved its host network, Fox, which has censored programs more closely since the Federal Communications Commission tightened restrictions on indecency. Fox canceled Family Guy but made the unusual decision to re-air it when the show became even more popular as reruns on the Cartoon Network.
The show’s DVD compilations of the three seasons have sold more copies than other DVDs for any television series to date.
Family Guy is based on an 11-minute film MacFarlane made as a student at Rhode Island School of Design. Fox purchased the film and hired its newly graduated creator to transform it into a sitcom. At 24, he was the youngest television executive producer in the industry’s history.
In addition to writing for the show, MacFarlane is the voice of several characters.
MacFarlane is also producing a second animated sitcom, American Dad, which Fox will begin airing on a regular basis in May. He has also worked on the popular Cartoon Network shows Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken and Dexter’s Laboratory, and he has appeared on Crank Yankers and Gilmore Girls.
All Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public, but due to anticipated popularity of MacFarlane’s talk, seating for the general public will be severely limited.
A remote telecast will be in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium.
For more information, go online to assemblyseries.wustl.edu or call 935-4620.