Can Attempted Matricide Be Funny? 

An Example of the Superiority Theory of Humor

Stewie vs Lois in Family Guy

        As some of you may know, Family Guy is a very popular cartoon known for its outlandish humor. Today I would like to discuss a humor theory that is very prevalent in this show: Superiority humor. Superiority Theory is present when a figure in authority is the target of the joke, when they are “taken down a notch.” In Family Guy, we mostly see Superiority humor between two characters, Stewie Griffin and Lois Griffin. For those who haven’t seen the show, Stewie is the baby of the family but somehow has a British accent when the rest of the family has strong Boston accents. He is actually the smartest one in the family and creates all of these machines to try and kill his mother, Lois, who he for some reason despises. Most of these kinds of scenes take place in the earlier seasons of the show.

    
        In Season 1: Episode 1 (click the image above to see a clip), Stewie tries to kill Lois multiple times. First he starts by loosening her chair leg, then he puts a gun in his sandwich at dinner, and he even tries to zap his mother in the kitchen with his toy ray gun, which Lois then takes right out of his hands and picks him up and takes him to bed because obviously he’s still a baby. Since Lois is the mother and Stewie is the baby, in ordinary circumstances Lois would be the authority figure. But Stewie is so precocious, such a “small adult” and believes that he is better than the rest of his family, so in this instance, Stewie is the authority figure. Because Lois barely reacts to all of Stewie’s diabolical attempts at matricide, and since she is able to continue to treat him like a baby, and foils all of his attempts to harm her, we find his antics hysterical.