Studies in Communication & Society
1 total work
From the early radio sitcoms to the 21st century, this book examines the American situation comedy as a contemporary morality play, considering how comic devices operate as the vehicles for potentially subversive and radical discourses to take place within a traditionally conservative form. Adopting a structuralist approach to the constitution of comic events, it pays particular attention to how comic agendas legitimize, reflect and endorse certain models of American citizenship and lifestyle, and how the sitcom seeks to "educate" through addressing moral and political dilemmas, progressive notions of parenting, the reformation of the family and the "playing out" of democratic principles.