Jeremy G. Butler - The Sitcom

THE SITCOM

In this new Routledge Television Guidebook, Jeremy G. Butler studies our lovehate relationship with the durable sitcom, analyzing the genres 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 sitcoms relatively rigid storytelling structures. Butler pays particular attention to the sitcoms position in todays 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.

Jeremy G. Butler is Professor of Creative Media at the University of Alabama. He has published book chapters and articles on the sitcom in Journal of Film and Video and Cinema Journal . He is the author of Television: Visual Storytelling and Screen Culture and Television Style .

Routledge Television Guidebooks

The Routledge Television Guidebooks offer an introduction to and overview of key television genres and formats. Each guidebook contains an introduction, including a brief history; defining characteristics and major series; key debates surrounding themes, formats, genres, and audiences; questions for discussion; and a bibliography of further reading and watching.

Science Fiction TV

J.P. Telotte

Political TV

Chuck Tryon

Lifestyle TV

Laurie Ouellette

Reality TV

Jonathan Kraszewski

The Sitcom

Jeremy G. Butler

THE SITCOM

Jeremy G. Butler

First published 2020

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2020 Taylor & Francis

The right of Jeremy G. Butler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-85094-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-85096-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-72445-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Perpetua

by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Figures

Tables

I must first thank Erica Wetter at Routledge for her patient persistence in seeing this book through to completion, despite several delays on my part. One would think a short book would be quicker to write than a long one, but, no, no it is not. I am grateful to Marysia Galbraith, Kristen J. Warner, Robin Means Coleman, and Lang Thompson for reading portions of the manuscript and to Nick Buzzelli for tireless assistance in manuscript preparation. I relied on director/producer/writer Ken Kwapiss copious knowledge of television comedy for an insiders perspective. Tom Cherones and Tom Azzari have also been generous with their time and allowed me to interview them on several occasions. I dedicate this book to my 15-year-old son, Ian, who, as far as I know, has never watched an entire sitcom episodehe being of the YouTubian generation. Nonetheless, he has managed to become a fan of both Monty Python and the songs of Tom Lehrer. This gives me cause to think there is still hope for his generation.