The Sitcom Reader, Second Edition

This updated and expanded anthology offers an engaging overview of one of the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of television programming: the sitcom. Through an analysis of formulaic conventions, the contributors address critical identities such as race, gender, and sexuality, and overarching structures such as class and family. Organized by decade, chapters explore postwar domestic ideology and working-class masculinity in the 1950s, the competing messages of power and subordination in 1960s magicoms, liberated women and gender in 1970s workplace comedies and 1980s domestic comedies, liberal feminism in the 1990s, heteronormative narrative strategies in the 2000s, and unmasking myths of gender in the 2010s. FromI Love Lucy andThe Honeymooners toRoseanneCybill, andWill & Grace toTransparent and many others in betweenThe Sitcom Reader provides a comprehensive examination of this popular genre that will help readers think about the shows and themselves in new contexts.

For access to an online resource created by Mary Dalton, which includes interviews with contributors and course lectures, visit:The Sitcom Reader: A Companion Website @ https://build.zsr.wfu.edu/sitcomreader

List of Illustrations
Introduction

1. Origins of the Genre: In Search of the Radio Sitcom
David Marc

THE 1950s

2. Who Rules the Roost?: Sitcom Family Dynamics from the Cleavers toModern Family
Judy Kutulas

3.I Love Lucy: Television and Gender in Postwar Domestic Ideology
Lori Landay

4. To the Moon! Working-Class Masculinity inThe Honeymooners
Steven T. Sheehan

THE 1960s

5. The Rural Sitcom fromThe Real McCoys to Relevance
Rick Worland and John O’Leary

6. The 1960s Magicoms: Safety in Numb-ers
Gary Kenton

7. Negotiated Boundaries: Production Practices and the Making of Representation inJulia
Demetria Rougeaux Shabazz

THE 1970s

8. The Norman Lear Sitcoms and the 1970s
Gerard Jones

9. Liberated Women and New Sensitive Men: Reconstructing Gender in 1970s Workplace Comedies
Judy Kutulas

10. “Who’s in Charge Here?” Views of Media Ownership in Situation Comedies
Paul R. Kohl

THE 1980s

11.The Cosby Show: Recoding Ethnicity and Masculinity within the Television Text
Michael Real and Lauren Bratslavsky

12. RoseanneRoseanne, Reality, and Domestic Comedy
Susan McLeland

13.Cheers: Searching for the Ideal Public Sphere in the Ideal Public House
Robert S. Brown

THE 1990s

14.Seinfeld: The Transcendence of the Quotidian
Albert Auster

15.Cybill: Privileging Liberal Feminism in Daily Sitcom Life
Laura R. Linder and Mary M. Dalton

16. Talking Sex: Comparison Shopping through Female Conversation in HBO’sSex and the City
Sharon Marie Ross

THE 2000s

17. “It’s Just a Bunch of Stuff that Happened”:The Simpsons and the Possibility of Postmodern Comedy
H. Peter Steeves

18. Breaking and Entering: Transgressive Comedy on Television
Michael V. Tueth

19. Sealed with a Kiss: Heteronormative Narrative Strategies in NBC’sWill & Grace
Denis M. Provencher

THE 2010s

20. The Hidden Truths in Contemporary Black Sitcoms
Robin R. Means Coleman, Charlton D. McIlwain, andJessica Moore Matthews

21. Disability and Sitcoms: ALegit Analysis
James Schultz

22.Transparent Family Values: Unmasking Sitcom Myths of Gender, Sex(uality), and Money
Maria San Filippo

Conclusion: The Evolving, Resilient Sitcom: Sitcoms are Not Dead!

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index