Post-Modernism: Blue Harvest

1) Family Guy is an example of a Post-Modern Cartoon. The episode Blue harvest is an excellent example of parody, use the Wikipedia link to list three of the cultural reference the episode makes besides the obvious one of Star Wars.

When introducing John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra, after playing the theme, they change upon request by Luke to 'The People's Court'. Another reference that appears is to the movie 'Airplane' when the group is fighting off a fleet of TIE fighters. "I just wanted to tell you both, good luck, we're all counting on you." (this one, I don't think, is mentioned on the wiki article) Thirdly, within the period of ten seconds, there are more than five different references made when all the call signs are signing in before the attack on the Death Star; Red 4 standing by, Red October standing by, etc. (This is one of my favorite parts of Star Wars to pick at; another one of my favorites is from a web series that continues this trend, setting up colours and having someone with a monotone voice come over and sign in as 'some other useless colour standing by'). (Since I gave two references that weren't on the wiki article  here have another one): Robot Chicken is referenced at the end of the episode when Peter and Chris are discussing how they did a Star wars spoof first, Chris is on the side of Robot Chicken (It's creator, Seth Green is the voice of Chris Griffin) and Peter (voiced by Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy) is obviously on the side of Family Guy. 

2) Do you think the many references that Family Guy makes add to the meaning of the show or are they simply small inside jokes? 

I believe this can be answered both ways. In some episodes, the references are nothing but asides and randoms that are there for nothing more than pure amusement, however with some of the other references, we have the broader view of knowing from which text it references; and in turn, is brings a new meaning to what the viewer is watching. For most of Blue Harvest though, I felt a lot of the references were clever asides that brought little to the Star Wars text. John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra was my favorite reference in the entire episode, I thought that was cute by poking fun at the original text as supposed to bringing something else in (along with the references to Danny Elfman and the reason TIE fighters have their name).