Template:Family Guy character Stewart Gilligan "Stewie" Griffin is a fictional character in the animated series Family Guy voiced by Seth MacFarlane. Obsessed with world domination and matricide, Stewie is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin. His older siblings are Chris and Meg.

Though he was originally an evil child-genius bent on world domination, the writers in more recent episodes usually ignore that aspect of his personality, instead focusing on a more flamboyant character. He retained an antagonistic role in the show, especially toward Brian in episodes like "Three Kings" and "Lois Kills Stewie". Stewie is considered to be the show's breakout character.^[1] Wizard magazine rated him the 95th greatest villain of all time.^[2]

Development

Stewie's voice is provided by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, who also provides the voices of Brian Griffin and Peter Griffin, as well as numerous other characters.^[3] MacFarlane based Stewie's voice on the voice of English actor Rex Harrison,^[4] particularly on Harrison's performance in the 1964 musical drama film My Fair Lady.^[5] MacFarlane has also linked Stewie with David Hyde Pierce on more than one occasion, saying he wants Pierce to play Stewie if a live action version of the show would ever be created.^[6][7]

Design

Stewie's head has the shape of an American football.^[8][9] In the episode "Stuck Together, Torn Apart", a flashback shows Stewie's head was shaped as other babies shown on the show, until he hit his head on the ceiling while bouncing on the bed, and it flattened into the familiar football shape.^[10] However, flashbacks in "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", show his head was already shaped like a football when he was born.^[11]

The comic strip Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth also features an infant boy who has a football-shaped head with some hairs sticking out of it, talks in a very eloquent manner, fears his mother and constantly comes up with inventions to help him escape from her. The comic strip's creator, Chris Ware, started drawing Jimmy as early as in 1991. He remarks:

[The similarities are] a little too coincidental to be simply, well, coincidental".^[12]

He further states:

"[He doesn't] want a book of seven years' worth of [his] stuff to become available and then be accused of being a rip-off of Family Guy."^[12]

20th Century Fox insists that Stewie is an entirely original character, while Seth MacFarlane has refrained from commenting on the issue.^[12]

Personality

Stewie is a one-year-old with a very sophisticated psyche. He reached his first birthday in the season 1 episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", and has remained the same age ever since. His nature and mannerisms are juxtaposed with typical childlike interests and actions. While highly literate and able to cite pop culture references that date much further back than his age would let on, he is also entranced by Raffi and the Teletubbies. Stewie succumbs to other weaknesses of children his age – he believes Peter has truly disappeared in a game of Peek-a-Boo, talks to his teddy bear (Rupert) as if he were alive, is overcome with laughter when Lois blows on his stomach, ^[13] and has no idea how to use the toilet. MacFarlane has stated that Stewie is meant to represent the general helplessness of an infant through the eyes of an adult. Per cartoon physics, his ability to move objects of greater weight than himself is not surprising to other characters, nor is his ability to retrieve firearms from hammerspace.

Stewie's mastery of physics and mechanical engineering are at a level of science fiction. He has constructed advanced fighter-jets, a mind control device, a weather control device, robots, time machines, a shrinking pod,^[14] as well as an assortment of guns including lasers, rocket launchers, and crossbows. Stewie employs these to cope with the stresses of infant life (such as teething pain, and eating hated broccoli)^[15] and to murder his mother Lois, with mixed success at best depending on the objective.

In other, recent episodes, Stewie engages in other violent or criminal acts, including robbery, carjacking,^[16] loan sharking,^[17] forgery,^[18] and killing off many minor characters.^[19]

Stewie eventually realizes his dreams of matricide and world domination in the sixth season two-part episode "Stewie Kills Lois" and "Lois Kills Stewie". The events, however, are reverted in a deus ex machina ending, where most of the story turns out to be a computer simulation. Because of the rather disastrous ending for himself in the simulation, he decides to put aside his plans of matricide and world domination for the time being.

Despite his somewhat evil nature, Stewie does seem to have a softer side. For example, in "Chick Cancer", when Brian unwittingly makes a racist comment while the two of them are discussing Stewie's "marriage" to Olivia Fuller, Stewie is openly disgusted by it. When Brian profusely apologizes, Stewie leaves, saying, "You gotta work on that. Bad dog." In one episode where Brian goes to find his mother and discovers that her dead body has been stuffed, Stewie says, "Someone must have said something funny, because your mother's in stitches!" After laughing for a few seconds, he tells Brian, "I'll leave you to grieve," before walking out of the room to give Brian some alone time with his mother. ^[20][21]

Ambiguous sexuality

Stewie's sexuality - even though he is a one-year-old - is deliberately ambiguous and he has touched on hanging out in gay bars. In the episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", Stewie remarked of his desires to kill his own mother:

"I sometimes wonder if all women are this difficult, and then I think to myself: my God, wouldn't it be marvelous if I turned out to be a homosexual?"

— Stewie - Video camera confession in "Fifteen Minutes of Shame"

When the writers began to flesh out Stewie beyond being a generic evil genius in season two, MacFarlane and the writers began to explore the infant's sexuality with a series of one-off gags, which hinted that Stewie could be gay. On the commentary of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the writers describe how they were going to make Stewie discover he was gay, but decided to scrap this idea in order to retain Stewie's sexual ambiguity for writing purposes. MacFarlane planned for the series' third season to end with Stewie coming out of the closet after a near-death experience. However, the show's abrupt cancellation caused MacFarlane to abort these plans, and the episode "Queer Is Stewie?" was actually produced, but never shown. Since that point, MacFarlane has opted to have Stewie portrayed as sexually ambiguous, as, in his eyes, the flexibility of Stewie's sexuality allows for much more freedom in terms of writing for the character. MacFarlane later elaborated:

He originally began as a diabolical villain, but then we delved into the idea of his confused sexuality. We all feel that Stewie is almost certainly gay, and he’s in the process of figuring it out for himself. We haven’t ever really locked into it because we get a lot of good jokes from both sides, but we treat him oftentimes as if we were writing a gay character.

— Seth MacFarlane, "Big Gay Following", The Advocate interview^[6]

When asked why he made "the decision to take Stewie from homicidal maniac to gay little song boy," MacFarlane answered that "It wasn't a conscious decision. Characters evolve in certain ways and we found that doing the take-over-the-world thing every week was getting played out and was starting to feel a little dated. It was weirdly feeling a little ‘90s and believe me, if we were still doing that, the show would be on its last legs. I only half jokingly go by the guideline that if it is something that might possibly ruin the show, it is a story we should probably do."^[22][23]

In an interview with Playboy, MacFarlane stated "We had an episode that went all the way to the script phase in which Stewie does come out. It had to do with the harassment he took from other kids at school. He ends up going back in time to prevent a passage in Leviticus from being written: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination.’ But we decided it’s better to keep it vague, which makes more sense because he’s a 1-year-old. Ultimately, Stewie will be gay or a very unhappy repressed heterosexual. It also explains why he’s so hellbent on killing [his mother, Lois] and taking over the world: He has a lot of aggression, which comes from confusion and uncertainty about his orientation." ^{[24][25][26][27][28][29]}

Reception

MacFarlane has been nominated for two awards for voicing Stewie; in 2006, he won a Primetime Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Voice-Over Performance.^[30] That same year he received an Annie Award in the Best Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production category, for his voice work in the episode "Brian the Bachelor".^[31] In addition, Wizard magazine rated Stewie the 95th greatest villain of all time.^[32] Stewie was also named the best Family Guy character on a list of "Top 25 Family Guy Characters" compiled by IGN.^[33]

Hal Boedeker, a critic for The Orlando Sentinel called Stewie "a brilliant creation".^[9]

Merchandise and appearances in other media

Stewie, the breakout character on the show, is fast becoming a merchandising icon. The series has made a substantial comeback since its ill-fated run on Fox from 1999 to 2002. It returned with greater popularity after DVD sales of the reruns made a bundle.^[34]

Alongside t-shirts, Stewie has been included in various other Family Guy-related merchandise, including air fresheners, baseball caps, bumper stickers, cardboard standups, refrigerator magnets, key rings, buttons, dolls, posters, figurines, clocks, soapstone carvings, Chia Pets, bowling balls and boxer shorts.^{[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]}. The Family Guy: Stewie's Guide to World Domination, a book about Stewie's personality and attributes, was released in 2005^[45][46]

Stewie has also appeared in the Family Guy Video Game!^[47], where Stewie discovers Bertram attempting to outdo him in taking over the world. Desperate to stop him, Stewie shrinks himself and makes his way to Bertram's lair within Peter's testicles to discover his plan, destroys his henchman cloning lab, and rescues a kidnapped Rupert from a rocket. He finally confronts Bertram in the park, where Bertram turns himself into a giant.^{[48][49][50][51]} Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story is a DVD movie about Stewie secret and what can possibly be his future.^{[52][53][54][55]}

Stewie has appeared also in Bones^[56], which is eventually revealed to be the result of a brain tumor. Seth MacFarlane wrote all of Stewie's dialog for the episode.^[57], and also appeared in a Coca-cola^[58] commercial during the Super Bowl XLII, he also presented a musical number at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards with Brian.^[59][60]

References

External links

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