Television Sitcoms

Nervous Laughter examines 40 years of situation comedy, decade by decade, providing the first truly panoramic view of TV's most popular dramatic form. Within this context, Hamamoto traces what he describes as the dominant liberal democratic ideology implicit within situation comedy and explains its enduring popularity. "Critically analyzing four decades of television situation comedies from The Honeymooners to The Bill Cosby Show, Hamamoto shows how the sitcom reflects, explains, legitimates, and challenges the society in which it is grounded, illuminating the power of laughter both to reaffirm and to question existing social structures. . . . Hamamoto offers a well-researched and refreshingly lucid study, immensely readable for its astute scholarship. Indispensable for students and scholars of television, popular culture, and comedy." Choice

This volume chronicles the phenomenon of a television program that has commanded first place since its premiere in September 1984. Each week in the United States it has consistently drawn a loyal audience of more than 60 million people, breaking all records for ratings and shares. The show is credited with lifting a third-place network into commanding leadership, advancing the image of black families, being the object of the greatest syndication barter deal in history, and regenerating the sitcom genre. Approached from a systems-theoretical perspective, this book considers The Cosby Show historically, economically, politically, legally, and socioculturally.

PART I: Housewives, Heroines, Feminists 1. Everyday Life, Michelle Mattelart 2. The Search for Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas, Tania Modleski 3. Affirmation and Denial: Construction of Feminity on Indian Television (excerpts), Prabha Krishnan and Anita Digh 4. Roseanne: Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess, Kathleen Rowe 5. L.A. Law and Prime-Time Feminism, Judith Mayne 6. Empowering Women? The Oprah Winfrey Show, Corrine Squire 7. Identity in Feminist Television Criticism, Charlotte Brunsdon 8. New Traditionalism and Post-Feminism: TV Does the Home, Elspeth Probyn PART TWO: Audiences and Reception Contexts 9. Women's Genres, Annette Kuhn 10. Melodramatic Identifications: Television Fiction and Women's Fantasy, Ien Ang 11. Black Feminism and Media Criticism: The Women of Brewster Place, Jacqeline Bobo and Ellen Seiter 12. In Love with Inspecter Morse, Lyn Thomas 13. Fruitful Investigations: The Case of the Successful Lesbian Text, Hilary Hinds 14. the Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal in Postwar America, Lynn Spigel 15. Behind Closed Doors: Video Recorders in the Home, Ann Gray PART THREE: Private Bodies, Public Figures 16. Television Tales and a Woman's Rage: A Nationalist Recasting of Draupidi's Disrobing, Purnima Mankekar 17. Abortion Discourse and 1970s Television Documentary, Julie D'Acci 18. The Ideology of Freshness in Feminine Hygiene Commericials, Kate Kane 19. Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile, Tricia Rose 20. The Gorgeous Lesbian in L.A. Law: The Present Absence?, Rosanne Kennedy 21. Reproducing Reality: Murphy Brown and Illegitimate Politics, Rebecca Walkowitz 22. Representation Wars: Malaysia, Embassy, and Australia's Corps Diplomatique, Suvendrini Perera

Offering a fascinating examination of the explosion of black television programming in the 1980s and 1990s, this book provides, for the first time ever, an interpretation of black TV based in both journalism and critical theory. Locating a persistent black nationalist desire--a yearning for home and community--in the shows produced by and for African-Americans in this period, Zook shows how the Fox hip-hop sitcom both reinforced and rebelled against earlier black sitcoms from the sixties and seventies. Incorporating interviews with such prominent executives, producers, and stars as Keenan Ivory Wayans, Sinbad, Quincy Jones, Robert Townsend, Charles Dutton, Yvette Lee Bowser, Ralph Farquhar, and Susan Fales, this study looks at both production and reception among African-American viewers, providing nuanced readings of the shows themselves as well as the sociopolitical contexts in which they emerged. While black TV during this period may seem trivial or buffoonish to some, Sly as a Fox reveals its deep-rooted ties to African-American protest literature and autobiography, and a desire for social transformation.

"This book fills a need. It will be used by scholars and revered by undergraduates doing papers. It is a highly desirable acquisition for libraries of all types." Choice "[an] essential purchase for universityand most college libraries as well as large public libraries." Reference Books Bulletin