Yes, I’m familiar with this line of reasoning, and pop culture is — in the end — that which tells us what we are and were…  But here’s the question…

At the RightOnline Conference in Orlando on Saturday, Whittle singled out the TV show Family Guy with particular disdain.

“Any audience of people that grew up with classical Superman automatically love this country because Superman is about the best America we can be, and when Superman was all over the pop culture we were a nation that loved this country,” he remarked. “Now, 20 years after the peak of Superman‘s popularity along comes Gilligan’s Island. That’s pretty neutral in terms of politics. Really about the only message you can get from Gilligan’s Island is if you want to get off the island all you have to do is kill Gilligan.”

“But if you’re a young person out there today and you can finish the theme song from Family Guy, then all the anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-morality messages of Family Guy are in your head as completely and thoroughly as that theme song is.”

Doesn’t it seems arbitrary to select those three examples to define the culture at these three particular moments?

I suppose we drift from Superman to Westerns, which reinforce the same message… The apolitical commentary about Gilligan’s Island reminds me of the “Political Situation of Super Mario Bros” that was going around a while back — a definite message inherent in Super Mario Bros, which is that this is a dangerous world and we need to arm ourselves to the teeth against the Tyrannies of the World, and be prepared for Vigilante Justice…

There surely has to be a similar article on Gilligan’s Island.  The closest I see with a quick google search is … something from Mental Floss that touches upon the whole “Stranded on a Desert Island” concept.    BUT:

It aired for three seasons on the CBS network from September 26, 1964, to September 4, 1967

Okay.  1964 through 1967… Just for the Hell of it, if we shift through the pop culture debris of this period… urm… you know, there was a Batman show on the air at the time, which shed the dark “Vigilante” nature of Batman, and though it hearkened to a winks and nods with its Pop Art “Camp” aesthetic… that maybe could be seen as an attack on the hallmarks of the earlier Superman ethos —

As for Family Guy… no, I don’t like the show either.  Though, yes, there was  this spot on parody… and probably others that shift out of its malaise of pop culture referencing… but.  Hm.  Is he not going to go with South Park, out of an embrace of that old libertarian “South Park Republican” concept from a decade ago?

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