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"Situation comedies (Television programs) United States History and criticism."
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The sitcom
\"In this new Routledge Television Guidebook, Jeremy G. Butler studies our love-hate relationship with the durable sitcom, analyzing the genre's position as a major media artefact within American culture and providing a historical overview of its evolution in the USA. Everyone loves the sitcom genre; and yet, paradoxically, everyone hates the sitcom, too. This book examines themes of gender, race, ethnicity, and the family that are always at the core of humor in our culture, tracking how those discourses are embedded in the sitcom's relatively rigid storytelling structures. Butler pays particular attention to the sitcom's position in today's post-network media landscape and sample analyses of Sex and the City, Black-ish, The Simpsons, and The Andy Griffith Show illuminate how the sitcom is infused with foundational American values. At once contemporary and reflective, The Sitcom is a must-read for students and scholars of television, comedy, and broader media studies, and a great classroom text\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Sitcoms and Culture
Does it matter what television we watch? Despite their
stodgy reputation among many consumers of television, sitcoms,
or situation comedies, have stuck around as a cornerstone of
the television landscape.
Sitcoms and Culture examines sitcoms as cultural
artifacts ripe for exploration as they reflect the shifting
landscapes of our society. From questions of social change to
the portrayal of women and other racial, ethnic, and sexual
minorities, sitcoms have evolved alongside the major social
changes of the last half century. Using an interdisciplinary
approach, author James Shanahan combines research on cultural
indicators with an empirical methodology and cultural analysis
to examine over 50 years of sitcoms to discern the reality of
how these comedies have portrayed life to us across generations
of television.
Sitcoms and Culture helps us gain a deeper
understanding of how sitcoms mirror and shape societal norms
and of the pivotal role they have played in reflecting and
influencing cultural trends.
eBook
Sketch comedy : identity, reflexivity, and American television
\"In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television, Nick Marx examines some of the genre's most memorable-and controversial-moments from the early days of television to the contemporary line-up. Through explorations of sketches from well-known shows such as Saturday Night Live, The State, Inside Amy Schumer, Key & Peele, and more, Marx argues that the genre has served as a battleground for the struggle between comedians who are pushing the limits of what is possible on television and network executives who are more mindful of the financial bottom line. Whether creating new catchphrases or transgressing cultural taboos, sketch comedies give voice to marginalized performers and audiences, providing comedians and viewers opportunities to test their own ideas about their place in society, while simultaneously echoing mainstream cultural trends. The result, Marx suggests, is a hilarious and flexible form of identity play unlike anything else in American popular culture and media\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Sitcom : a history in 24 episodes from I love Lucy to Community
A carefully curated tour through TV comedy series, this mixtape of fondly remembered shows surveys the genealogy of the form, the larger trends in its history, the best of what the genre has accomplished, and the most standard of its works. From I Love Lucy, The Phil Silvers Show, and M*A*S*H to Taxi, The Larry Sanders Show, and 30 Rock, this guide presents the sitcom as a capsule version of the 20th-century arts—realism giving way to modernism and then to postmodernism, all between the hours of 8 and 10pm on weeknights. Each chapter springs from an individual representative entity, including The Simpsons' \"22 Short Films About Springfield,\" The Mary Tyler Moore Show's \"Chuckles Bites the Dust,\" Seinfeld's \"The Pitch,\" and Freaks and Geeks' \"Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers,\" where Martin Starr's nerdy Bill takes comfort in—what else—the pleasures of laughing at TV.
eBook
Rube tube : CBS and rural comedy in the sixties
\"Historian Sara Eskridge examines television's rural comedy boom in the 1960s and the political, social, and economic factors that made these shows a perfect fit for CBS. The network, nicknamed the Communist Broadcasting System during the Red Scare of the 1940s, saw its image hurt again in the 1950s with the quiz show scandals and a campaign against violence in westerns. When a rival network introduced rural-themed programs to cater to the growing southern market, CBS latched onto the trend and soon reestablished itself as the Country Broadcasting System. Its rural comedies dominated the ratings throughout the decade, attracting viewers from all parts of the country. With fascinating discussions of The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and other shows, Eskridge reveals how the southern image was used to both entertain and reassure Americans in the turbulent 1960s\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Blockbuster TV : must-see sitcoms in the network era
Archie Bunker. Jed. Laverne and Shirley. Cliff Huxtable. Throughout the entire history of American prime-time television only four sitcoms have been true blockbusters, with Nielsen ratings far above the second- and third-rated programs. Weekly, millions of Americans of every age were making a special effort to turn on the set to see what Archie, Jed, Laverne, and Cliff were doing that week. The wild popularity of these shows-- All in the Family , The Beverly Hillbillies , Laverne & Shirley (and its partner Happy Days ), and The Cosby Show --left commentators bewildered by the tastes and preferences of the American public. How do we account for the huge appeal of these sitcoms, and how does it figure into the history of network prime-time television?
Janet Staiger answers these questions by detailing the myriad factors that go into the construction of mass audiences. Treating the four shows as case studies, she deftly balances factual explanations (for instance, the impact of VCRs and cable on network domination of TV) with more interpretative ones (for example, the transformation of The Beverly Hillbillies from a popular show detested by the critics, to a blockbuster after its elevation as the critics' darling), and juxtaposes industry-based reasons (for example, the ways in which TV shows derive success from placement in the weekly programming schedule) with stylistic explanations (how, for instance, certain shows create pleasure from a repetition and variation of a formula).
Staiger concludes that because of changes in the industry, these shows were a phenomenon that may never be repeated. And while the western or the night-time soap has at times captured public attention, Blockbuster TV maintains that the sitcom has been THE genre to attract people to the tube, and that without understanding the sitcom, we can't properly understand the role of television in our culture.
eBook
Custer's Last Sitcom: Decolonized Viewing of the Sitcom's \Indian\
Playing Indian is one of the oldest and most pervasive forms of American cultural expression, indeed one of the oldest forms of affinity with American culture at the national level. This form of expression is \"central to efforts to imagine and materialize distinctive American identities.\" Enacting redface has historically aided European Americans in various quests for identity and authenticity since the Revolutionary Era. Non-Native sitcom characters, too, have explored what it means to be authentically American and authentically \"Indian\" simultaneously through the process of playing \"Indian.\" In this paper, the author introduces \"decolonized viewing,\" an approach to interpreting these televisual \"Indians,\" and then applies this process to his analyses of playing \"Indian\" in \"The Brady Bunch\" \"The Brady Braves\" (1971), \"Saved by the Bell\" \"Running Zack\" (1990), and \"My Wife and Kids\" \"Michael's Tribe\" (2002). Connected through an aim to educate characters and ultimately viewers, these three chief-filled episodes, which continue to air today in rerun form, present newly found \"Indians\" who share or receive supposed knowledge about Native Peoples in the process of playing \"Indian.\" As narratives in which characters--often children and teenagers--fail to learn important lessons about real Indigenes, the episodes also largely fail in their attempts to educate viewers. Instead, they reiterate longstanding stereotypes and representations of \"Indians.\" In the process, they also reveal key intersections between playing \"Indian\" and notions of authenticity, multiculturalism, and cultural appropriation that predominantly situate Native Peoples within a limited logic of what constitutes \"Indianness.\" (Contains 47 notes.)
Journal Article