Read more
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.
List of contents
Introduction: Humor and/in Crisis Part I: Systems and Institutions 1. "Quiet Quitters": Detectorists, Hobbies and Resistance to Neoliberal Capitalism 2. Laughing to Keep from Crying at Abbott Elementary: Humor's Potential in the Teacher Demoralization Crisis 3. The Struggle is Real and It's Hilarious: The Crisis of Choice in Workin' Moms 4. Comedy at Cloud 9: Union Dynamics and Corporate Critique in Superstore 5. Veep, Tragicomedy, and the Perpetual Crisis of American Democracy Part II: Identity and Representation 6. Never Have I Ever...Challenged Whiteness 7. "Poor People Can't Afford to Quit Their Jobs to Make Things Better": Working Class Crisis in The Conners 8. "No, the World Is Ending Because of Me": Satire, Neoliberal Crises, and the Millennial Female Subject in Search Party Part III: Speculation and Futurism 9. "It's Better Than Not Trying, Right?": The Good Place and Humor in the Durative Present 10. The Crisis of Technological Reliance and the Spectacle of Authority: Avenue 5's Ironic Depiction of Technology 11. Kinship at the End of the World: Apocalyptic Media and The Last Man on Earth as a Manifesto for Life in Eco-Crisis
