Television Sitcom and Cultural Crisis

This volume demonstrates that television comedies are conduits through which we might resist normative ways of thinking about cultural crises.

By drawing on Gramscian notion of crisis and the understanding that crises are overlapping, interconnected, and mutually constitutive, the essays in this collection demonstrate that situation comedies do more than make us laugh; they also help us understand the complexities of our social world’s moments of crisis. Each chapter takes up the televisual representation of a modern cultural crisis in a contemporary sitcom and is grounded in the extensive body of literature that suggests that levity is a powerful mechanism to make sense of and cope with these difficult cultural experiences.

Divided into thematic sections that highlight crises of institutions and systems, identity and representation, and speculation and futurism, this book will interest scholars of media and cultural studies, political economy, communication studies, and humor studies.

Holly Willson Holladay is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Missouri State University, USA.

Chandler L. Classen is a doctoral candidate in Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.