Download or read book Television Comedy and Femininity written by Rosie White and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Television Comedy and Femininity written by Rosie White and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hysterical written by Linda Mizejewski and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-12-06 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee, Mindy Kaling, Melissa McCarthy, Tig Notaro, Leslie Jones, and a host of hilarious peers are killing it nightly on American stages and screens large and small, smashing the tired stereotype that women aren't funny. But today's funny women aren't a new phenomenon—they have generations of hysterically funny foremothers. Fay Tincher's daredevil stunts, Mae West's linebacker walk, Lucille Ball's manic slapstick, Carol Burnett's athletic pratfalls, Ellen DeGeneres's tomboy pranks, Whoopi Goldberg's sly twinkle, and Tina Fey's acerbic wit all paved the way for contemporary unruly women, whose comedy upends the norms and ideals of women's bodies and behaviors. Hysterical! Women in American Comedy delivers a lively survey of women comics from the stars of the silent cinema up through the multimedia presences of Tina Fey and Lena Dunham. This anthology of original essays includes contributions by the field's leading authorities, introducing a new framework for women's comedy that analyzes the implications of hysterical laughter and hysterically funny performances. Expanding on previous studies of comedians such as Mae West, Moms Mabley, and Margaret Cho, and offering the first scholarly work on comedy pioneers Mabel Normand, Fay Tincher, and Carol Burnett, the contributors explore such topics as racial/ethnic/sexual identity, celebrity, stardom, censorship, auteurism, cuteness, and postfeminism across multiple media. Situated within the main currents of gender and queer studies, as well as American studies and feminist media scholarship, Hysterical! masterfully demonstrates that hysteria—women acting out and acting up—is a provocative, empowering model for women's comedy.
Download or read book Pretty Funny written by Linda Mizejewski and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2014-03-07 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A totally engaging read [and] a fascinating look at the diversity and range of female comics . . . by an author who herself obviously has a sense of humor.” —Joanna E. Rapf, coeditor of The Blackwell Companion to Film Comedy Women in comedy have traditionally been pegged as either “pretty” or “funny.” Attractive actresses with good comic timing such as Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, and Julia Roberts have always gotten plum roles as the heroines of romantic comedies and television sitcoms. But fewer women who write and perform their own comedy have become stars—and often they’ve been successful because they were willing to be funny-looking, from Fanny Brice and Phyllis Diller to Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett. Pretty/Funny focuses on Kathy Griffin, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, and Ellen DeGeneres, the groundbreaking women comics who flout the pretty-versus-funny dynamic by targeting glamour, postfeminist girliness, the Hollywood A-list, and feminine whiteness with their wit and biting satire. Linda Mizejewski demonstrates that while these comics don’t all identify as feminists or take politically correct positions, their work on gender, sexuality, and race has a political impact. The first major study of women and humor in twenty years, Pretty/Funny makes a convincing case that women’s comedy has become a prime site for feminism to speak, talk back, and be contested in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Women Watching Television written by Andrea L. Press and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1991-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women's inclinations to identify with television characters varies with their assessment of the realism of these characters and their social world.
Download or read book TV Family Values written by Alice Leppert and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1980s, U.S. television experienced a reinvigoration of the family sitcom genre. In TV Family Values, Alice Leppert focuses on the impact the decade's television shows had on middle class family structure. These sitcoms sought to appeal to upwardly mobile “career women” and were often structured around non-nuclear families and the reorganization of housework. Drawing on Foucauldian and feminist theories, Leppert examines the nature of sitcoms such as Full House, Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Cosby Show, and Who's the Boss? against the backdrop of a time period generally remembered as socially conservative and obsessed with traditional family values.
Download or read book REDESIGNING WOMEN written by Amanda D. Lotz and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s, American televison audiences witnessed an unprecedented rise in programming devoted explicitly to women. Cable networks such as Oxygen Media, Women's Entertainment Network, and Lifetime targeted a female audience, and prime-time dramatic series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal empowered heroines, single career women, and professionals struggling with family commitments and occupational demands. After establishing this phenomenon's significance, Amanda D. Lotz explores the audience profile, the types of narrative and characters that recur, and changes to the industry landscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion of channels. Employing a cultural studies framework, Lotz examines whether the multiplicity of female-centric networks and narratives renders certain gender stereotypes uninhabitable, and how new dramatic portrayals of women have redefined narrative conventions. Redesigning Women also reveals how these changes led to narrowcasting, or the targeting of a niche segment of the overall audience, and the ways in which the new, sophisticated portrayals of women inspire sympathetic identification while also commodifying viewers into a marketable demographic for advertisers.
Download or read book The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom written by Tison Pugh and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition. Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.
Download or read book Stealing the Show written by Joy Press and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a leading cultural journalist, the definitive cultural history of female showrunners—including exclusive interviews with such influential figures as Shonda Rhimes, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Mindy Kaling, Amy Schumer, and many more. “An urgent and entertaining history of the transformative powers of women in TV” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). In recent years, women have radically transformed the television industry both behind and in front of the camera. From Murphy Brown to 30 Rock and beyond, these shows and the extraordinary women behind them have shaken up the entertainment landscape, making it look as if equal opportunities abound. But it took decades of determination in the face of outright exclusion to reach this new era. In this “sharp, funny, and gorgeously researched” (Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker) book, veteran journalist Joy Press tells the story of the maverick women who broke through the barricades and the iconic shows that redefined the television landscape starting with Diane English and Roseanne Barr—and even incited controversy that reached as far as the White House. Drawing on a wealth of original interviews with the key players like Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black), and Jill Soloway (Transparent) who created storylines and characters that changed how women are seen and how they see themselves, this is the exhilarating behind-the-scenes story of a cultural revolution.
Download or read book Camp TV written by Quinlan Miller and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sitcoms of the 1950s and 1960s are widely considered conformist in their depictions of gender roles and sexual attitudes. In Camp TV Quinlan Miller offers a new account of the history of American television that explains what campy meant in practical sitcom terms in shows as iconic as The Dick Van Dyke Show as well as in more obscure fare, such as The Ugliest Girl in Town. Situating his analysis within the era's shifts in the television industry and the coalescence of straightness and whiteness that came with the decline of vaudevillian camp, Miller shows how the sitcoms of this era overflowed with important queer representation and gender nonconformity. Whether through regular supporting performances (Ann B. Davis's Schultzy in The Bob Cummings Show), guest appearances by Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly, or scripted dialogue and situations, industry processes of casting and production routinely esteemed a camp aesthetic that renders all gender expression queer. By charting this unexpected history, Miller offers new ways of exploring how supposedly repressive popular media incubated queer, genderqueer, and transgender representations.
Download or read book Television Women from Lucy to Friends written by Lynn C. Spangler and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the pre-feminist antics of Lucy Ricardo & the post-feminist musings of the women in 'Friends', the depiction of women on television has evolved in as many interesting & surprising ways as the women's movement itself.
Download or read book The Girl in the Show written by Anna Fields and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Schumer—and every other "funny woman"—comes a candid feminist comedy manifesto exploring the sisterhood between women's comedy and women's liberation. “I’m not funny at all. What I am is brave.” —Lucille Ball From female pop culture powerhouses dominating the entertainment landscape to memoirs from today’s most vocal feminist comediennes shooting up the bestseller lists, women in comedy have never been more influential. Marking this cultural shift, The Girl in the Show explores how comedy and feminism have grown hand in hand to give women a stronger voice in the ongoing fight for equality. From I Love Lucy to SNL to today’s rising cable and web series stars, Anna Fields's entertaining, thoughtful, and candid retrospective combines personal narratives with the historical, political, and cultural contexts of the feminist movement. With interview subjects such as Abbi Jacobson, Molly Shannon, Mo Collins, and Lizz Winstead—as well as actresses, stand-up comics, writers, producers, and female comedy troupes—Fields shares true stories of wit and heroism from some of our most treasured (and underrepresented) artists. Creating a blueprint for the feminist comedians of tomorrow using lessons of the past, The Girl in the Show encourages readers to revel in—and rebel against—our collective ideas of "women's comedy."
Download or read book Defining Women written by Julie D'Acci and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining Women explores the social and cultural construction of gender and the meanings of woman, women, and femininity as they were negotiated in the pioneering television series Cagney and Lacey, starring two women as New York City police detectives. Julie D'Acci illuminates the tensions between the television industry, the series production team, the mainstream and feminist press, various interest groups, and television viewers over competing notions of what women could or could not be--not only on television but in society at large. Cagney and Lacey, which aired from 1981 to 1988, was widely recognized as an innovative treatment of working women and developed a large and loyal following. While researching this book, D'Acci had unprecedented access to the set, to production meetings, and to the complete production files, including correspondence from network executives, publicity firms, and thousands of viewers. She traces the often heated debates surrounding the development of women characters and the representation of feminism on prime-time television, shows how the series was reconfigured as a 'woman's program,' and investigates questions of female spectatorship and feminist readings. Although she focuses on Cagney and Lacey, D'Acci discusses many other examples from the history of American television.
Download or read book Women Camp and Popular Culture written by Katrin Horn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative study claims camp as a critical, yet pleasurable strategy for women’s engagement with contemporary popular culture as exemplified by 30 Rock or Lady Gaga. In detailed analyses of lesbian cinema, postfeminist TV, and popular music, the book offers a novel take on its subject. It defines camp as a unique mode of detached attachment, which builds on affective intensity and emotional investment, while strongly encouraging a critical edge.
Download or read book We Killed written by Yael Kohen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kohen assembles America's most prominent comediennes to piece together an oral history about the revolution that happened to (and by) women in American comedy.
Download or read book Private Screenings written by Lynn Spigel and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Their Own Best Creations written by Annie Berke and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich account that combines media-industry history and cultural studies, Their Own Best Creations looks at women writers' contributions to some of the most popular genres of postwar TV: comedy-variety, family sitcom, daytime soap, and suspense anthology. During the 1950s, when the commercial medium of television was still being defined, women writers navigated pressures at work, constructed public personas that reconciled traditional and progressive femininity, and asserted that a woman's point of view was essential to television as an art form. The shows they authored allegorize these professional and personal pressures and articulate a nascent second-wave feminist consciousness. Annie Berke brings to light the long-forgotten and under-studied stories of these women writers and crucially places them in the historical and contemporary record.
