Queer As Day

     The 21st century in media has shown that it is not afraid to push the boundaries and take some risks in order to get its message across. Also, recently, gay characters have been featured more prominently in shows across a wide variety of genres, and they serve unique purposes for a show's plot or story line. There are many tropes featured for queer characters, and Stewie from Family Guy fits into the trope of ambiguously gay and the badass gay.

     First of all, Seth McFarlane, the creator of the show who also provides most of the voices for the show, confessed in an interview confirming that, yes, Stewie is in fact gay. The thing with the show is that it is played subtly, and the idea that he is gay does not play a big role in the show as he always seems to be plotting his next "evil plan," or about as evil of a plan as a 1-year-old baby can make. This also fits him into the mold of being the badass gay as it has been depicted numerous times throughout Family Guy's run that Stewie is more than capable of taking care of himself and beating people up he feels have crossed him or failed to please him, especially Brian, who in one episode, is beaten up not once, but twice within a five minute time-span.

     The idea of having a queer character on the show is not a bad idea because diversity is the name of the game when it comes to television shows, especially in this day and age, but the idea to have Stewie, a baby with a British accent and a slight lisp, interpreted in this way, it just seems as though it is a way for the writers of the show to play off of him for the sake of comedy due to his mannerisms. Despite this, Stewie is one of those characters on the show whom you look at and automatically recognize what show he is on, and he has become one of the most important and significant cartoon characters over the last twenty years since the show began in 1999.