One the problems here in America would be the easy access to absolutely Godless entertainment. It has been getting worse over the years. Producers of television and movies have been pushing the envelope more and more. Popular TV series that come out are foul, to put it mildly. After achieving fame, many of them make their way to the big screen where they do not have to worry about censorship. They have been pushing more and more, getting fouler and fouler. I recall the South Park movie even having vulgar language in the chorus of the theme song. So many American children went to see that cartoon-like animated movie. A few years later, another popular series hits the movies: Family Guy.
For those not familiar, Family Guy is Godless to put it mildly. The father is the media portrayal of a ‘man’; stupid, foolish, drinks a lot of beer; the wife is the ‘pants’ of the family, keeping charge and command. There is a teenage son and daughter which are typical TV portrayals, the baby is the incarnation of Adolph Hitler and has two all consuming goals: World Domination and the murder of his mother. They have a family dog who is an alcoholic and is portrayed as the most ‘normal and sensible’ in the family (despite his drinking problems).
What follows is a comprehensive review of Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story (The Hitler reincarnation is Stewie; he is by far the most popular character of the series, thus is the star of the movie. The movie scenes will be in Black, my comments in Red. Some of the issues are repeated themes, so there are long stretches that I do not make comment on.
The movie starts out with a news cast where the ‘Asian Correspondent’ (Trisha Takinawa) is meeting the popular characters as they arrive in their cars (similar to any Hollywood movie opening), there are a few relatively clean jokes as the early people arrive, then Family Guy characters arrive last. Brian gets out of the car first holding a cocktail glass. Meg gets out and is silent, then Chris gets out and announces that he rode backwards in the limo so his underpants were going the right way (indicting they were on backwards.) This format follows many of the episodes. The jokes are not all foul, but there are certainly more dirty jokes than clean ones. The problem with jokes of these matter is that it takes matters that are shameful acts and humorizes them. The net result is the loss of shame. Once shame is lost, the world can go on sinning without regard to the consequences presented it. Another starting comment I have is that many of the jokes takes thinking to get. Many people look at such material as suitable because the dirty jokes go over the heads of children who are watching. They also reason that since they are and adult, they can be entertained by such materials without influence. Both of these assumptions are dead wrong.
Stewie makes his entrance announcing that it is great to be back and his short stay in politics didn’t work (there is an all-to-common flash back sequence all throughout the Family Guy shows explaining a joke or comment. In this one, Stewie is portrayed as Saddam Hussein with the toppled statue, hiding in the hole, etc.)
Lois gets out of the car absolutely drunk, swearing, and making sexual gestures to Peter (at least they are married). She vomits and then Peter picks her up and carries her away.
David Bowie shows up on the scene. After a question, the Trisha throws her microphone, grabs his leg and starts humping it. The glamorization or not portrayed here by Lois is disturbing. The humor of the scene is the purpose. The scene could be a lesson on why not to drink, but I submit that the real purpose was to get in more sex scenes. Indeed, several times throughout the movie, alcohol is used as a pre-requisite to sex, which the whole movie excelled in promoting as a desirable thing to get as much as possible without regard of the context of marriage.
The news cast cuts to the ‘inside camera man’ who is going to “provide a bootleg copy of the movie” (this is Quagmire, an Italian character who is simply bent in having sex with as many people ladies as possible. The name given to this character could be a forecast of his predicaments in the movie as well as the TV episodes). He focuses and the screen, he then cuts back and zooms in on a mostly exposed breast of a woman in the audience. He laughs with his sexual laugh (goes something like this: Gigity Gigity Goo) and then focuses back in the film. A common theme in this movie is the total disregard for laws of God as well as man. How many people out there believe that bootlegging is OK to do because the files are ‘free’ on the internet? People, that is theft! It goes like this: someone has put their energy into producing some movie or music, they sell it to make money for their livelihood, and someone takes it and puts it on the internet so that anyone who wants it is free to take it one way or another. That is theft. You are taking something that someone made to be sold and the net result is that you get to enjoy it without cost. As for the other sin here, I sure I will have to swell on about that one, so I will save that for later.
It cuts to a few jokes about previews and then a big green screen announces: “and now our FEATURE PRESENTAION Jerry, if you are reading this, I had sex with Darlene. I’m sorry, man, I felt like this was the most appropriate way to tell you. See you are karaoke tonight.” It appears that later has arrived. This movie is simply bent on getting sex. It is wrong to seek sex outside the context of marriage, yet this movie over and over again glorifies the attitude of “getting’ some”; it is a sin.
Movie officially now starts.
Brian is still with cocktail glass in the opening scene at a pool.
Quagmire comes out of a pump house with an unknown woman and exclaims that he can’t go swimming for an hour. This is a joke about oral sex just being performed, personal gratification without the commitment of love. People truly want intimacy, but the cheap substitute is sex, so they take that. It gives the momentary pleasure of intimacy, but leaves long term emptiness and shame. This shame, if ignored over a period of time, diminishes. This is the point that you are deluded and addicted.
Peter goes into a video store to get some pornography to watch, but the store (recently bought out by another) takes a ‘strong moral stand against pornography, open-mindedness, and Christians’. Tom Tucker (news caster) goes into the store about this time to get porno and Peter tells to save his time and then he goes off on a rant about where in the Bible it says that you can’t watch porno and masturbate to it. This rant gets him a role on the news program in a skit called, ‘Grind My Gears’, which is just an opinionated rant session cutting people and situations down. These occur periodically in the movie. Let me use this time to talk about the sticky topic of masturbation. The bible neither condemns nor affirms it in any way. Some people will go to the story of Onan (Genesis 38:6-10). This passage is not talking about masturbation, it is talking about failing to keep the oath of a brother-in-law, an Old Testament law which said that if a man dies but does not leave any children, his brother had to take his wife and provide her a son. (At least) the first son out of that union would be to his brother’s name, not his. Onan’s crime was failure to uphold that oath. What the Bible is clear about is sexual purity, however, the references all seem to use the same Greek word, ‘porneia’, which is impure sexual stimulation (basically, any sexual stimulation by a person not including your spouse). Never-the-less, go to the sermon on the mount, and even lustful thoughts are declared as a sin (Matthew 5:27-28). We can say for sure that if you are masturbating to the fantasy of a person who is not your spouse, you are sinning and guilty of either fornication (if you are not married), adultery (if you are and the person is not your spouse), homosexuality (if the person is of the same sex), etc. Outside of these, we can not say one way or another from the Lord, but I personally, am inclined to view it as a sin because if it does not start as a sin, your mind will soon make it one. We should not be mastered by anything. As for pornography, pretty much the same arguments apply. Pornography is distorting God’s creation to be used to the unlawful sexual stimulation of a person.
At the suggestion from Tom that Peter take the “Grind My Gears” news cast, Peter says that he is dying to get back on TV since he hosted Family Feud. There is a clip of Peter hosting a game show where he goes over to an apparently teenage woman on the team, gives an appropriate game show kiss on the cheek and then sticks his hand up her shirt, feels the left breast, and then the right leaving the girl in shock.
The news cast cut to Tom and Diane where Diane announces she finally gets her period. Tom says that she and her brother must be devastated that they will not get the ‘two headed offspring that might have been’. Reference to incest (the brother-sister kind, the other kind is coming), forbidden in Leviticus 18:6.
Brian is waiting for Stewie who says he is brushing his teeth in the bathroom. Brian opens the door to find Stewie naked on the sink covered with shaving cream shaving his whole body (suggestion earlier from Chris about Olympic swimmers). This scene is what derived the back cover of the movie which is Stewies naked behind covered with shaving cream, except he has already shaved the middle, so the most inappropriate part is already showing. Stewie asks Brian to shave his ‘coin purse’; which brain curses and leaves the room.
Stewie tries to kill Brad (a little kid that swims better than him) for simply swimming better than him. Stewie tries to kill him by explosion with dynamite, but it backfires on him and he is shown in hell, which is a hotel room where Stewie is with Steve Allen. He takes off his shirt which scares Stewie and he wakes up from his ‘near death’ experience. It turns out that he simply wanted his collar adjusted (Stewie thought it was for homosexual sex). We get the real gist of hell, the only TV show is a sitcom, “There’s a time for love and a time for living”...Different Strokes I think. Reference to murder, see Matthew 5:21-26 for details about Stewie’s sin. Mind you, these are placed in as humor, as detailed above, such humor desensitizes you to the reality of how bad it is, also promoting a certain level of acceptance.
At the experience, Stewie reasons that hell is worse than he thought and wants to stay out, he resorts to trying to ‘be good’. This here is an interesting point. Stewie wants to avoid hell, so he resorts to doing good. The idea is the promotion of doing good gets you into heaven while doing bad keeps you out. This is apparently used as a way to poke fun at religious activities and narrow minded, bigoted people like me. Sorry, Stewie, but the only thing that can save you is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Stewie becomes nice for a bit, he keeps doing nice things for Brian which causes me to think that Brian is concerned that Stewie is making homosexual gestures (This is not clear, it may or may not be their intention). Brain announces that talking with Stewie as he is getting his back rubbed was more disturbing than the cartoon he saw the other day: Bugs bunny actually getting shot, neck snapped, and carried away bloody by Elmer Fudd.
Peter uses his segment in ‘Grind My Gears’ to talk about a woman who is flaunting her sexuality into a camera and then explains that ‘no woman anywhere wants to have sex’. Lois is sitting there with the two older kids and says that is so true, and that is why she went back to men, because women are ‘such teasers’. Meg gets up and leaves nervously, Christ gets closer to Lois and says in a sexual tone, “Go on”. Here is the other kind of incest: parent-child, which is still condemned by the same verse as above.
Next we are at a scene with Brian, Stewie, and Meg. Stewie gives a blessing over the meal. Once again, trying to be good and displaying religious activity hoping to be saved.
Brian gets Stewie to be mean again by destroying a “perfect spider-web” as Stewie explains it (too wordy to explain the context, and not too relevant). Stewie says that he was faking being nice.
We have a spiritual conversation between Brain and Stewie. Stewie says that he does not want to go to hell, but he can’t fight his nature; he is a hateful person. This is precisely the problem: Stewie has a sinful nature. We all do, but when you believe in Jesus Christ and accept the Lord, you are transformed into a new creation, old things pass away and new things are created. The power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can change that hateful nature of Stewie into a new loving nature. When that occurs, he will not be a milquetoast, but a powerful soldier for God. When regenerated, Stewie would have a new nature that he would not have to fight, it would flow out of love.
Brian says that Stewie just needs to control his anger, which puts the thought into Stewie’s mind to get drunk to get nice. Brian discourages it and walks away leaving Stewie at the liquor cabinet. He drinks a cocktail and says that it is time for a sexy party, so the house fills up with girls, apparently mocking a scene from something, but I don’t know what. Now we have the promotion of alcohol for fun (see Proverbs 23:29-35). There is a lot of temptation and pleasure in the bottle, and it comes with a terrible price for the over-indulger. To be fair, this movie shows the ‘bad side’ of the alcohol, but again, in a humorous manner (movie details below).
Brian confronts Stewie about being drunk, “You are drunk”, and Stewie responds with, “You are sexy”. Brian takes Stewie to the bar to get him “so drunk you will never want to drink again”. They party all night. They have a bag of olives from all the cocktails. They are arguing over the keys and who is going to drive home. Stewie gets the keys and crashes into the bar. This is part of the example of humorizing the situation. It is a very funny scene with the both of them stammering and talking senselessly. To the youth, it may be appeal to have a lot of fun. In the morning, the consequences are shown.
Stewie is very hung over. As Brian pulls off the covers, Stewie is sleeping naked (causing Brian to scream), and there is a tattoo branded on Stewie, “Property of Roger Moore.”
Now we cut over to Quagmire who has a new motor home. He calls it his ‘Wanna Bango’ because he wants to “bang a broad in every state.” As already mentioned, Quagmire is a character whom desires the pleasures of sex. Later on in the movie, he gets robbed by a prostitute (details later), but the glorification and promotion of his character is a sick portrayal of a ‘man’. Truly I say this movie seems to have one goal: promote getting as much sex as one can possibly get.
Stewie tries to raise money to go to San Francisco to meet a person he believes is his father. He tries to sell lemonade, but everyone is ignoring him. He finally hits a passerby with a baseball bat and robs him.
Stewie still needs more money and he tells Brian to give him the rest of the money or else he will email the contents of the hard drive to the FBI. Stewie turns on the computer to several child-pornography pictures of Stewie in suggestive positions on the computer.
Peter and Lois get interrupted in their sexual desires the second time by Chris and Meg so Lois suggests that they should be out dating or something. They decide to start spending time with the kids to teach them how to date (Lois with Chris and Peter with Meg). Once again, the teachings that the parents supply to the teenage kids is how to get a person of the opposite gender and engage in sex with them.
Quagmire is now getting ready to go across country in the motor home. Quagmire writes on the side of the motor home, we never see the actual sign, but Brian questions the spelling of ‘country’ suggesting that Quagmire forgot the ‘o’; Quagmire says that he did not forget the ‘o’, it is not supposed to be there.
While Quagmire is in the hotel room with a prostitute, Stewie is trying to find the horn. He is in the drivers seat while Briain is in the passenger seat. Stewie pushes a few buttons that lock Brian into the seat, turn the seat toward him, then one that grabs Brians head and throws it into Stewies crotch. He says that he is afraid to push anything else.
Quagmire gets tied up and robbed by the prostitute and Stewie finds him and steals the motor home, leaving Quagmire tied up. Quagmire gets out by pulling the phone closer, turning on a porno movie and using his privates to dial the phone.
Stewie gets on an elevator with a person who is on a cell phone. As Stewie leaves the elevator, the wall is smeared with blood and the body of the person is twitching in the background.
Stewie finds the man he is looking for and learns that it is not his father; it is him from the future.
At this point, there is an intermission where the screen is black and says “Intermission”. The audio in this scene continues with many sexually explicit comments.
The future Stewie explains that the previous year for vacation, he went back to see Jesus Christ. He says that his abilities were exaggerated a bit; there is a scene where Christ is portrayed as a hippy with Peter’s voice. He is humming a peace demonstration. This type of attack on Jesus Christ is become more common, mostly with the creation of the “Jesus Seminar” where a bunch of blind, non-regenerate people who do not know Jesus personally debate around a table and vote on what Jesus ‘actually’ said verses what was ‘forged by other people’, they are also working on the miracles of Jesus.
Little Stewie grabs onto adult Stewie as he is going back to the future, so from here, we are in the future. More details will follow, but adult Stewie is portrayed as a total weakling, ignorant in the world, a pacifist, etc. This pacifism is rooted in his ‘trying to be good’ and ‘wanting to avoid hell’. As such, they basically are making another attack on faith in general that to follow any particular faith just makes you a weakling milquetoast.
They go to the family’s house for Sunday dinner. Chris walks in with his wife, who is a foul mouthed woman named Vanessa. The language is beeped out after you know what is being said as mockery of censorship. Peter falls down and says he hurt his back as he scoots over to look up Vanessa’s dress, a scene which lasts longer than a brief second.
Meg, who had a sex change and now is Ron, comes in.
Big and Little Stewie go home to Big’s apartment which is a total wreck. Next, they go to his job; he works at the appliance store (a take off on Circuit City as the logo is a big red circle). Little Stewie is appalled that Big reads Parade magazine. Another employee named Fran comes over and talks and Little makes a logical jump that they are sleeping together. Big states that he has never slept with anyone. Little Stewie gets mad and knocks him over, jumps on him and screams, “I could handle the crappy apartment and the pedestrian job, but now you are telling me that I am a 35 year old Parade magazine reading virgin?! Well, you, Sir, are pathetic!” He then screams that he needs to do a complete overhaul on life.
Little revamps the apartment to a ‘sexy’ locale and tells Big that he needs to get Fran over for an evening. Neither of the Stewies knows anything about sex except little Stewie comments about beer commercial innuendos and the Stork myth. At this point, there is a stork clip where a stork comes in with a sack in it’s beak, opens it up with a woman in the room. There is a red light in the sack. The woman asks where the baby is and the stork says, “We are going to make the baby” as he moves over closer to the bed. Yes, in the book of Leviticus sexual acts with animals is indeed condemned.
Big and Little Stewie are reading a book called, “The Joy of Sex”, and then Little is guiding Big in practice. He starts moving his crotch back and forth. Little then grabs Swiss cheese and says to take it from the top. The next scene, Fran is over. The two adults are nervously talking back and forth. Little jumps up and screams ‘lets have sex’, which Fran responds ‘definitely’. She goes in and puts in a diaphragm. It moves to the two of them in bed and they are talking about Stewie taking eight seconds during sex and then forty minutes of crying.
We find that the whole situation with Big acting as a pacifist is caused by the near death experience in the beginning of the movie.
Little Stewie goes back in time to prevent the experience, but stops at Chris and Vanessa’s wedding first to stop the marriage. Stewie blows up Vanessa with a rocket launcher and leaves the scene.
Stewie stops the explosion and the other little Stewie kills him with some sort of ray gun.
The end is displayed, then the camera goes back to Tom Tucker of the news. For about 5 seconds, he has his hands behind the desk and moving as he is moaning. The implication is that you are supposed to think that he is masturbating. After a time, you see that he is actually playing a hand held videogame.
There is an after-party for the movie. With an interview with Peter, he talks about some series he produced, one was a porno with Cleveland (The black neighbor) and Lois, and the other was an incest video with Chris and Lois.
The interview with Lois, she explains some of the period between the series and the movie, one was a fight with a police officer, another a party prostitute, another a convenience store fight.
Right before the ending with more fart jokes, there is a scene with two naked people in the bar at the party. Their private areas are covered with a guitar on one person and a beer on the other.
I would like to end with some concluding remarks:
Remarks to Non-Christians
If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, you will find that such things as this movie may entertain you. Please accept my caution that such behavior is sin. The only thing that can save you is the grace and love of Jesus Christ. The bible is very accurate, very clear, and very true. It tells that all people will have a resurrection, some people will be resurrected to heaven with peace and worship with God, and the others will be resurrected to hell, where the most eternal suffering will be for eternity. What is hell like? I do not think that I or any one else can tell you for sure, but being a very wretched sinner in my past life, I would like to offer a proposal. Hell is not like the euphoria you attain with drugs or alcohol, it is like the hangover the morning over, the pain of wanting more, the lustful tears as you try to resist. Hell is not like the temporary pleasure felt during a one night stand, or even during fornication with a non-spouse, it is like the moment you felt regret, contracted HIV, or had a pregnancy scare. Hell is not like having the new item you just stole, but like the feeling you get when the police show up to your house. In short, the brief moments of pleasure are the bait in the snare, the aftereffects are the consequence. I believe that a very gentle part of Hell will be an eternal feeling of these painful after-the-fact feelings. But it will go much deeper.
There was nothing that Stewie could do in this movie to gain favor with God. He could be saved the only way you and I can be saved: By believing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please take the time to read it and ponder it in your heart. Let me know if I can help. Those unpleasant feelings I mentioned above do have an end in Christ.
To the Christian
If you are watching this kind of material for your regular entertainment, you are out of alignment with the will of God. In no way does He desire you to watch such garbage for your entertainment. If you truly enjoy it, it is possible tat you are not in a state of Grace at all. I beseech you to ask yourself this question: If Jesus Christ was with you, would you watch such material? Would you say, “Lord, I am too mature to have it effect me?” This kind of material contains nothing worth watching. It is wrought with sin. When Paul speaks about freedom in Christ, he always prefaces that with an admonishment not to use your freedom to justify or participate in sin. Please pray over this material and ask yourself if you think that Christ would engage in such entertainment. I will submit that He would not. He is your model.
Peace in Christ,
X
