Closures
Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom
Seiten
2024
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3014-0 (ISBN)
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3014-0 (ISBN)
Grace Lavery reconsiders the seven-decade history of the American sitcom to show how its reliance on crisis and resolution in each episode creates doubts and ambivalence that depicts heterosexuality as constantly on the verge of collapse and reconstitution.
From The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Arrested Development to BoJack Horseman, the American sitcom revolves around crises that must be resolved by episode’s end, with a new crisis to come next week. In Closures, Grace Lavery reconsiders the genre’s seven-decade history as an endless cycle of crisis and closure that formally and representationally frames heterosexuality as constantly on the verge of both collapse and reconstitution. She shows that even the normiest family-based sitcoms rely on queer characters like Alice (The Brady Bunch) and Steve Urkel (Family Matters) who highlight how the family is perpetually incomplete and unstable. Analyzing the genre’s techniques and devices such as the laugh track and the cringe pan, Lavery also charts the shift to friend-group and workplace sitcoms like Friends and The Office, which she contends reflect a weakening of social ties in ways that place characters in an unending state of becoming. With this capacious yet svelte queer and trans theorization of the sitcom, Lavery demonstrates that the family ties that bind the genre’s normative heterosexuality are far more tenuous than we have been led to believe.
From The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Arrested Development to BoJack Horseman, the American sitcom revolves around crises that must be resolved by episode’s end, with a new crisis to come next week. In Closures, Grace Lavery reconsiders the genre’s seven-decade history as an endless cycle of crisis and closure that formally and representationally frames heterosexuality as constantly on the verge of both collapse and reconstitution. She shows that even the normiest family-based sitcoms rely on queer characters like Alice (The Brady Bunch) and Steve Urkel (Family Matters) who highlight how the family is perpetually incomplete and unstable. Analyzing the genre’s techniques and devices such as the laugh track and the cringe pan, Lavery also charts the shift to friend-group and workplace sitcoms like Friends and The Office, which she contends reflect a weakening of social ties in ways that place characters in an unending state of becoming. With this capacious yet svelte queer and trans theorization of the sitcom, Lavery demonstrates that the family ties that bind the genre’s normative heterosexuality are far more tenuous than we have been led to believe.
Grace Lavery is a writer and academic who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques and Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis.
Formula vii
Part 1. Full House 1
Part 2. Friends 43
Epilogue. Parallels 81
Notes 95
Works Cited 99
Index 107
| Erscheinungsdatum | 26.01.2024 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 30 illustrations |
| Verlagsort | North Carolina |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 227 g |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4780-3014-3 / 1478030143 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4780-3014-0 / 9781478030140 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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