‘Family Guy’ Has Folks Wondering What "It Insists Upon Itself" Means

Depending on the type of teachers you've had or the degree you pursued, you may have realized that at some point in your educational career, you could get good grades simply by bulls--tting.

Not in all subjects, of course. It's kind of hard to just make up organs in anatomy class. But as long as you implemented a variegated enough vocabulary in your hot take of The Great Gatsby as a modern-day metaphor for the struggles people go through, chances are you probably could've gotten a decent grade.

And maybe in a paragraph delineating Nick Carraway's problems, you'd use a phrase like "it insists upon itself."

But what does that saying really mean?

These four words effectively sum up pseudo-intellectualism. As one Quora user puts it: "The phrase 'insists upon itself' means: 'Something most think is profound but in reality is pretentious and ostentatious.'"

This exact definition can also be found on Urban Dictionary, and it basically describes a phenomenon that constantly calls attention to how important and significant it is.

And this heavy-handedness can manifest in a bunch of different ways across different mediums.

Maybe you're watching a social media post uploaded by someone loudly screaming a story about their significant other eating all of their popcorn without replacing it.

As they relay this tale, they're sure to include numerous asides showcasing just how unique their personality is while telling this story.

The point of the story, overall, isn't their frustration with the poor mannerisms that people display. Nor is it that they've placed themselves in a relationship that is clearly leaving them frustrated. Instead, they seem more enthusiastic about showcasing just how quirky and different they are.

Through their various gesticulations, forced expressions, and mannerisms that are manufactured to display just how entertaining they are, they insist upon their own importance. Their point boils down to: Look at how special I am. Rather than, "Hey, don't be a crummy girlfriend or boyfriend."

Or, "Hey I really love my boyfriend or girlfriend, but this bothered me and I want to address this without damaging our relationship. They mean the world to me, but this hurt my feelings, would it hurt yours? Am I wrong?"

Sometimes, particular scenes in movies can feel a bit too "preachy" or with dialogue that explains a character's emotions rather than showing them.

Take Jeff Bridges's character in The Old Man. In one particular scene, a new friend he makes is having a tough time and he aims to console her. Instead of talking with her about it, or expressing how much he cares for her and that he thinks she's the bee's knees, he pops up and immediately starts making her a meal.

Although earlier in that episode, Bridges's character does talk about the importance of action over empty words. So maybe one would say that this action does "insist upon itself." However, it could be argued that the importance of this action is left up to the actor. The care that's put into making the eggs, not to show off how good of a person they are, but to honestly make a situation better is all the difference.

Another example of this could be one of the final scenes in the 2017 film The Florida Project. Upon witnessing a particularly devastating scene involving child protective services, Willem Dafoe's character doesn't launch into a maudlin show of histrionics to delineate just how broken up over it he is.

Instead, he heads back to a secluded portion of the hotel he manages and smokes a cigarette, alone, to try and cope with what he just saw.

This phrase has become particularly popular with Family Guy viewers, as Peter's character, while on the brink of drowning with his family, begins discussing why he doesn't like the classic film The Godfather.

When prompted to explain why, Peter tells his wife and kids that it's because the film "insists upon itself." Lois, flabbergasted asks Peter what that even means, to which he responds that it takes too long to get into and he loses interest.

Redditors who discussed the statement Peter makes in this Family Guy scene shared their thoughts as to what it means.

According to one user, it's when a film is repeatedly "hammering" certain themes and metaphors throughout the film "over and over" again. They summed it up by stating that "whenever you say 'Dude, I get it, now get on with the movie'" that's when a flick "insists upon itself."

Or, you know, it could just be a funny situation where a man, when presented with what appears to be certain death, decides to confess something to his family. And that confession is that he doesn't care for a movie that is revered by so many.