Stewie Griffin

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Stewie Griffin
Family Guy Character
Image:371 x 432 - 106k - jpg
Character Information
Full Name	Stewart Gilligan Griffin
Hometown	Quahog, Rhode Island
Age	0 (Episode 1.1 - 1.3) 1 (Episode 1.3 - present)
Gender	Male
Hair Color	Brown[1]
Height	2 ft 6 in (0.762 m)
Weight	29 lb (13 kg)
General Characteristics
Political Leaning	Totalitarian
Heritage	Irish, German
Hobbies	Attempting to kill Lois
Best Friend	Brian Griffin, Rupert the bear
Show Information
First Episode	"Death Has a Shadow"
Voice actor	Seth MacFarlane
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Stewart "Stewie" Gilligan Griffin is a fictional character in the animated television series Family Guy. He is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin, the brother of Meg and Chris Griffin, and the half-brother of Bertram. He is voiced by the creator of the show, Seth MacFarlane. Arguably, Stewie Griffin is the show's breakout character.^[2]

[edit] Personality

Stewie is extremely intelligent and speaks with an affected English accent. His Machiavellian ambitions include world domination and matricide. His personality and mannerisms have been compared by Seth MacFarlane to those of a Bond villain. In the commentary of one episode, MacFarlane reveals that Stewie's evil and selfish personality is a result of Lois smoking marijuana while pregnant with him, as is mentioned in a dream sequence in the episode "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington" (although another episode shows his personality as sinister even while existing as Peter's sperm).

Stewie's sophisticated attitude/nature and mannerisms are juxtaposed with typical childish interests and drives. He reads literature such as Marlowe's Faustus and Sun-Tzu, and cites pop culture references that date much further back than his age would permit; however, he is also fascinated by Raffi and the Teletubbies. In the episode The Road to Europe he travels to the BBC in England, in order to meet Mother Maggie who is a presenter of a children's television program. However, he also shows the traits of a loan shark, often beating up or chasing after those who do not return money to him.

Stewie succumbs to other weaknesses of children his age, such as when Lois subdues him by blowing on his stomach in "Emission Impossible". MacFarlane has stated that Stewie is meant to represent the general helplessness of an infant through the eyes of an adult.

Stewie's mastery of physics and mechanical engineering are at a science-fictional level. He constructs a laser, advanced fighter-jets, a mind control device, a weather control device, robots, and even a time machine. Stewie employs these to cope with the stresses of infant life (such as teething pain, and eating hated broccoli) and to kill Lois. Stewie seems to be constantly carrying a firearm, which he whips out whenever he wants to.

Stewie's personality has changed significantly over the course of the series; he has gradually grown away from the matricidal tendencies and diabolical genius that so dominated his character during the show's first few seasons. He has also developed an adversarial friendship with Brian, the family dog.

[edit] Influences

Some elements of Stewie's personality come from British actor Sir Rex Harrison. MacFarlane has stated that My Fair Lady (starring Harrison) heavily influenced his portrayal of Stewie, and on The Late Show with David Letterman, described Stewie as "Rex Harrison in an infant's body". Family Guy has included several tributes to My Fair Lady, most notably in "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea" and "Running Mates".

His football-shaped head is similar to other fictional characters such as Arnold from the cartoon "Hey Arnold!" and Jimmy Corrigan (The Smartest Kid on Earth) from the comic Acme Novelty Library whom Stewie superficially resembles. Like Jimmy, Stewie is a highly intelligent baby who has a dysfunctional relationship with his mother. Stewie is frequently compared often unfavorably to Brain of Pinky and the Brain being a small but ingenious creature with a large head and a sophisticated accent who plots domination of the world. He is also vaguely reminiscent of Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory being a small child with a very high intellect whose dreams of glory are frequently and often unintentionally foiled by a dim-witted female member of their family. In Dexter's case his hyperactive sister Dee Dee, In Stewie's case his mother, Lois.

Stewie is also similar to Hans Gruber of Die Hard and also Hannibal Lecter due to his villainous, erudite personality, lithe menacing appearance, dark sense of humor and impeccable sense of social refinement.

His effeminate mannerisms and personality as well as his cultured British accent are also reminiscent of Noel Coward who like Stewie occasionally smoked with a cigarette holder.

[edit] Communication with adults

MacFarlane has asserted he will never take a definite stand on whether Stewie can converse with adults. Whether the other characters understand him or not is left to the writers, who can decide which possibility is most appropriate for a given situation.

Stewie with Brian, the only family member who takes him seriously, although his girlfriend, Jillian can understand him.

Non-recurring adults often clearly understand the content of Stewie's speech. Brian is the only main character whose ability to understand Stewie is unambiguous; the two always converse "normally". Chris has shown that he understands Stewie (an example is the episode North by North Quahog when Chris was caught with alcohol at school, and the brothers argued about the situation, with Stewie eventually administering a spanking to Chris), yet it's possible that Stewie doesn't usually talk to Chris due to his own intelligence. Meg can understand Stewie as well, for in the Season 2 episode When You Wish upon a Weinstein, she watches Stewie as he sleeps. When Stewie wakes up, he demands to know what Meg is looking at, and Meg replies that she was looking at him as he slept. She also said he was a cutie, which led Stewie to break her glasses.

Despite this, in the DVD audio commentary for "E. Peterbus Unum", MacFarlane states that adults can understand Stewie, but don't take him seriously, "sort of like... if a 4-year-old who [could] talk told you to fuck off." This concept is supported by the other characters often looking at him as he speaks to them, as if to acknowledge him, but paying no mind to his often-ungracious addresses, such as calling Lois by her first name, or Peter "the fat man".

However, on the episode Untitled Griffin Family History where the family are talking about The Godfather, Stewie asks Peter "How can you say you don’t like it if you haven’t even given it a chance?" to which Lois replies "I agree with Stewie, it’s not really fair."

Although the family doesn't take Stewie seriously, adults outside the Griffin household who are associated with Brian usually understand him, such as Jillian, Brian's girlfriend.

[edit] Ambiguous sexuality

There's always been a lot of tension between Lois and me, and it's not so much that I want to kill her, it's just I want her... not to be alive anymore. 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's video camera confessional from "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 go "another way." His personality, which is often rather theatrical and effeminate, easily lent itself to such speculation.

Stewie is shown reacting with spontaneous enthusiasm to brief homosexual encounters in several episodes (including "Patriot Games"), and in "Chick Cancer" he wishes men could "get together with their buddies, and just have it be the same thing as being with a woman". Stewie and Brian have kissed in "Deep Throats" and "Saving Private Brian".

Series creator Seth 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. Since that point, MacFarlane has opted to have Stewie portrayed as sexually-ambiguous, since, in his eyes, the flexibility of Stewie's sexuality allows for much more freedom in terms of writing for the character.

Stewie has had liaisons and attractions to women as well, notably in "Dammit Janet", where Stewie falls in love with a day-care moocher named Janet, and "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", where Stewie falls for his babysitter. In "Peter Griffin: Husband, Father...Brother?", Stewie becomes sexually aroused watching cheerleaders.

In Peter's Two Dads, Stewie discovers that he "gets a jolly out of being hit". As with several other of Stewie's eccentric turn-ons, this may be a single episode situation.

In any case, Stewie is frequently shown to have very little understanding of sex at all.

[edit] Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story

Main article: Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story

On September 27th, 2005, 20th Century Fox released a direct-to-video movie featuring Stewie as the main character, titled Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story. The movie follows Stewie's cross-country adventures as he searches for a man he believes to be his real father after seeing him on a television news segment.

The movie was re-edited into 3 half-hour segments and shown as the season finale on May 21st, 2006.

[edit] Stewie's Inventions & Plans

• Death Has a Shadow - Mind Control Device - Used on a judge to save Peter from jail
• I Never Met the Dead Man - Weather Device - Used to control the world (and destroy broccoli)
• Chitty Chitty Death Bang - Carbonite Freeze Gun - Used on security guard that froze him for approximately 10 years
• Mind Over Murder - Time Machine - Stewie moves time forward to bypass the pain of teething, but was forced to move time backwards when the machine's schematics became public
• The Story on Page One - Hypnotic Control Device - A device used to harness the size and strength of Chris
• Brian Does Hollywood - Mass Hypnosis Device - Used to control the unsuspecting public
• Emission Impossible - In order to keep Lois and Peter from having another baby he created two machines:
  • Peter-Bot - a robotic version of peter that would replace him in the bed
  • Micro-Ship - A battle cruiser that shrank to the size of a cell, and was armed with phaser cannons to battle Peter's sperm cells; the ship's computer was voiced by Majel Barrett, widow of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and voice of the ship's computer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Voyager"
• Peter Griffin: Husband, Father...Brother? - Tried to control the minds of a basketball crowd by taking the part of a head cheerleader
• Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story - Created robot look alikes of him and Brian so they could leave and find his real father.
• Road to Rupert - Creates a pair of ski's with rockets on them that can even produce a large tea room and butler.
• American Dad vs. Family Guy - He builds a robot walker complete with machine guns, lasers, rockets, a force field, and a metallic orb that can explode and kill his opponents.
• He also seems to be constantly carrying a firearm, whether a laser gun, shot gun, machine gun, or his favorite pistol, the colt M1911.

[edit] Other appearances

• Stewie appeared in a short clip on the 20th annual MTV Video Music Awards dissing rapper 50 Cent, which has become a viral video circulating on numerous online services. Stewie, with blocks spelling out "MTV", Rupert and a baby toy in the background, reads some words from the song Wanksta in a comical voice, then commenting: "Well, good luck finding the subject and predicate of that run-on sentence! And what the bloody hell does it mean, "we don't go nowhere without toast"? Now, you listen to me, Mr Cent. If you want to make it in this business, lay off the doobie!". He then pulls out a hitherto concealed sign reading "Stewie for Governor".
• Stewie's face, on a stick, can be seen in the background of the Tony Kornheiser Michael Wilbon ESPN talk show, Pardon the Interruption.
• On a bonus DVD segment for the Family Guy Soundtrack, Stewie performs a rap/R&B song called "Sexy Party."
• During the 2006 Canadian Election Royal Canadian Air Farce ran their own election with Paul Martin, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton (all leaders of the major parties that election), Jim Harris (whose Green Party, while still minor, was gaining public attention)and "Stewie from Family Guy." Stewie ended up winning by an overwhelming majority of votes.
• Stewie has appeared on the MSNBC news program Countdown with Keith Olbermann, often introducing (or regressing) news stories regarding Bill O'Reilly. On the May 24th show, he introduced O'Reilly as Worst Person in the World (a regular Olbermann segment) on the program. Stewie said, "Oh, wait, Bill, hold still. Allow me to soil myself on you. Victory is mine!" This has been shortened to just "Today's Worst Person in the World." Stewie announced June 1 "Countdown presents: 'Factor Fiction', wherein we expose that bastard Bill O'Reilly lying again." He then repeated what he had said above. This has become the norm on O'Reilly segments most of the time. Recently, on June 5th, he introduced "Breaking News" about TomKat/American Idol by saying "Oh here we go. Probably some story about Britney Spears or, knowing Keith, some baseball card." He also did an animation saying "Breaking News. Oh this should be rich, must be something of a monumental earth shattering importance or they wouldn't have that Earth there shattering. See it shattering? It's Earth Shattering Breaking News. Oh, do tell me! Tell me, tell me!"
• Stewie has also appeared on the unaired short of My Name Is Earl called Bad Karma, in which he influences Earl to get even with everyone who's wronged him. Earl watches him on TV instead of Carson Daly. This short appears on the My Name Is Earl Season 1 DVD.
• Stewie was an announcer of the 2006 Spike Video Game Awards.
• Made a cameo apperance in The Johnsons episode Rufus Gets Lost in the Lost Kid Box.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

• Family Guy at the Internet Movie Database
• Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story at the Internet Movie Database
• TurnInto How to dress up as Stewie Griffin for Halloween
• Stewie Shrine