In the “Family Guy” episode “Untitled Griffin Family History” (May 14, 2006), the Griffins find that burglars have broken into their basement. In a panic, they flee to their home’s previously unseen panic room, a room that Peter (Seth MacFarlane) had been constructing in secret. After locking themselves inside, the Griffins find there’s no telephone, nor any real way of escaping. Peter, trying to keep the mood jovial, decides to tell the history of his family, going back to the beginning of time. The bulk of the episode consists of jokey asides and flashbacks, because it’s “Family Guy.”
Near the end of the episode, Peter, finally tired of being trapped, fires a flare gun into the panic room’s air vent. This triggers the room’s automated sprinkler system, and the airtight closet begins to fill with water. Before long, the Griffins are all floating, facing a potential watery doom. As they are about to drown, Peter wants to make a final confession: He did not care for “The Godfather.” Although they are drowning, Lois (Alex Borstein) expresses outrage at his taste.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic, to the rest of the Griffins, is peerless. Brian (MacFarlane) asks why, and Peter says he couldn’t get into it. “It insists upon itself,” he offers, wholly unhelpfully. Chris (Seth Green) says that it has a point to make, so it’s okay to be “insistent.” Peter then confesses that he’s never even finished it, not knowing how it ends. The Griffins are surely drowning, but they spend what might be their final moments having a snippy, pusillanimous conversation about “The Godfather.”
It turns out that moment actually has origins that date back to Seth MacFarlane’s time in college.
The phrase ‘It insists on itself’ came from one of Seth MacFarlane’s film professors in college
It seems that the line “It insists upon itself” was a criticism that MacFarlane once heard from one of his college professors. As he revealed in a recent post on Twitter/X, a film teacher used the phrase to describe “The Sound of Music.” MacFarlane himself admitted that he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. MacFarlane posted:
“Since this has been trending, here’s a fun fact: ‘It insists upon itself’ was a criticism my college film history professor used to explain why he didn’t think ‘The Sound of Music’ was a great film. First-rate teacher, but I never quite followed that one.”
The joke of the scene — beyond having a frivolous discussion in a moment of mortal peril — is that Peter is clearly trying to sound astute and erudite, knowing that his confession about “The Godfather” would get a rise out of his family. He remains smug, however, saying that the film “insists upon itself,” feeling that the phrase is a new intellectual axiom that will inspire others to stroke their chins thoughtfully and quietly agree.
One can kind of glean what MacFarlane’s professor might have been getting at. Some films, it seems, present their story beats and their characters with a certain degree of portent, using slower editing, closeups, or highfalutin scripting to ensure the audience know they are important to the film. Certain viewers may key into when a filmmaker is announcing something or someone as important, but then reject the announcement, especially when a viewer may not be connecting with the film in question.
We might see a more artificial version of this phenomenon in nostalgia pieces like “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” That film contains long pauses after the introductions of certain legacy characters, clearly included to allow the (presumably astonished) audience to applause or gasp in a dramatic fashion. If you don’t care about those legacy characters, though, then the intended astonishment at seeming them may feel presumptuous on the filmmakers’ part. It’s being insistent.
What the heck does ‘It insists upon itself’ mean?
To extrapolate, then, if a film is hefty and dramatic and downbeat, like “The Godfather,” a viewer like Peter may see every single moment as dripping with “importance.” But because Peter didn’t connect with “The Godfather” (for whatever reason), the whole film read, to his eyes, as phony. It’s not organically winning him over, but instead it’s insisting that he accept its conceits. It insists upon itself.
Of course, one will one feel that a film “insists upon itself” if they’re not enjoying it. Something else might have been driving Peter away from “The Godfather” — a character he disliked, a performance he hated, a central conceit he morally objected to — leading him to reject everything else about the movie’s story. He checked out early on, and the film’s continued virtuosity of character and storytelling felt like pathetic ways to win him back.
Some responses on Twitter/X (transcribed by Yahoo!) also theorize what MacFarlane’s professor might have meant with his criticism of “The Sound of Music.” One reader found that Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” presented itself as “important” (read: artificially dramatic), and they found it alienating as a result.
Another reader felt that certain filmmakers appear to be self-aware, in a negative way, when they helm hefty dramas. They are, by this critic’s assessment, making what is intended to be a classic for the ages. Thus, its efforts to appear conventionally “great” begin to smell like cliché. “There are many ways that you can try to be good without trying to be good,” they elucidate, “namely bucking trends. Insisting upon itself means it hit all the notes a ‘good’ movie ‘should.'”
Know that no one has to love a popularly great movie. It’s fine to hate “The Godfather” if you hate “The Godfather.” Ditto “The Sound of Music” and its wake of flops. But to be an effective critic, one must be more succinct in their reasoning. One can’t rely on a meaningless aphorism like, “It insists upon itself.”