Television Comedy and Femininity: Queering Gender

by Rosie White

Overview

Can comedy on television harbour elements of gender transgression or subversion? If a man is permitted to be ‘funny peculiar’ – playing the underdog or misfit – does a woman seem stranger in his place?
Mapping examples from British and American comedy television over the past 60 years, from I Love Lucy to The Big Bang Theory and Smack the Pony to Waiting For God, this book asks: are particular forms of television comedy gendered in specific ways? Paying attention to series which have not been addressed in academic work, as well as more established shows, White offers fresh insights for the fields of television studies, gender and women’s studies, cultural history and comedy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784533625
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/30/2018
Series:	Library of Gender and Popular Culture
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Rosie White is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, Theory and Popular Culture at Northumbria University, Newcastle, U.K. She is author of Violent Femmes: Women as Spies in Popular Culture (2008) and numerous articles on feminism and women in film and television.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

Acknowledgements xi

Series Editors' Foreword xii

Introduction Funny Peculiar: Queering Gender, Comedy and Television 1

Queering Gender 3

Queering Femininities 11

Queering Comedy 16

Queering Television 20

1 Gracie, Martha, Eve and Lucy: Queering Femininity in Early American Television Comedy 25

Queering Space and Time in 1950s American Sitcom: The Burns and Allan Show (CBS 1950-8) 26

Queering Sitcom: Our Miss Brooks 35

Queering the Gaze: The Martha Raye Show (NBC 1953-6) 38

Lucy and Lucille 43

Queering Suburbia 53

2 Back to the Dollhouse? Queering Postfeminism in Contemporary American Sitcom 57

Postfeminism and the New Comedy 60

Not Unruly Women? 63

Sex and the City: Queering Postfeminism 65

30 Rock 67

'I Want to Go to There' 73

Parks and Recreation 78

Postscript 89

3 The Big Bang Theory: Queering Masculinity in American Sitcom 91

Queer Masculinities in Contemporary Americana Sitcom 94

Two and a Half Men 99

The Big Bang Theory 101

Race and Ethnicity in The Big Bang Theory 107

Sheldon Cooper: A Third Gender? 111

Resolving Queer Masculinities 116

4 Smack the Pony: Feminist Negotiations in British Sketch Comedy 123

Contexts: Not a Feminist Sketch Show 125

Queer Temporalities 129

Contexts: Postfeminism, Femininity and the 'Norm' 132

The Grotesque, the Queer, the Monstrous 137

Feminist Praxis: The Production of Smack the Pony 140

Queerly Desiring Subjects 145

Speaking and Stunting 148

Legacies 153

5 Queering Age: Older Women in British Television Comedy 159

Queer Times 161

Queering Ageing 163

The Young Old: The Golden Girls and Last of the Summer Wine 166

You're Only Young Twice 169

Waiting for God 179

Going Forward? 192

Conclusion 199

Notes 207

Bibliography 208

Index 224

Editorial Reviews

"Dealing with the fascinating topic of female comedy on both sides of the Atlantic, White showcases such hilarious talents as Lucille Ball and Tina Fey and untethered programs such as 30 Rock and the British sketch comedy Smack the Pony ... What is good about White’s book is its wedding of British and American comedies, its recognition of the variable of age, and its celebration of women ... Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers and faculty." - CHOICE

"Admirably smart but eminently readable, topical but informed by a breadth of textual and theoretical histories, Rosie White’s book brings new and illuminating insights to bear on how we understand TV comedy and femininity. White’s work is a standout moment in the cultural and scholarly drive to recognise the talents and marginalisation of women in comedy, and to unpack the ‘wobbly scenery’ of normative gender identities." - Deborah Jermyn, Reader in Film and TV, University of Roehampton

"In this startlingly original reading of gender and comedy in transatlantic television, Rosie White persuasively illustrates the inherent queerness of this comedy and reveals how much we lose when we focus on funny performances of gender in a binary way. Her lively discussions of television series and performances sparkle with detail, wit, and theoretical savvy. In the tradition of books that are truly groundbreaking, Television Comedy and Femininity will have you nodding in vigorous agreement with its insights. And it will also make you laugh." - Linda Mizejewski, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University

From the Publisher