Sitcoms and Culture

James Shanahan (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

324 Seiten

2025
Indiana University Press (Verlag)
978-0-253-07301-3 (ISBN)

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Does it matter what television we watch? Despite their stodgy reputation among many consumers of television, sitcoms, or situation comedies, have stuck around as a cornerstone of the television landscape.
Sitcoms and Culture examines sitcoms as cultural artifacts ripe for exploration as they reflect the shifting landscapes of our society. From questions of social change to the portrayal of women and other racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, sitcoms have evolved alongside the major social changes of the last half century. Using an interdisciplinary approach, author James Shanahan combines research on cultural indicators with an empirical methodology and cultural analysis to examine over 50 years of sitcoms to discern the reality of how these comedies have portrayed life to us across generations of television.
Sitcoms and Culture helps us gain a deeper understanding of how sitcoms mirror and shape societal norms and of the pivotal role they have played in reflecting and influencing cultural trends.

James Shanahan is Professor in The Media School at Indiana University, where he was Founding Dean from 2015 to 2021. He is author of Media Effects: A Narrative Perspective and has co-authored and co-edited several books focused on the effects of media, especially television, including (with Michael Morgan) Television and Its Viewers: Cultivation Theory and Research and (with Janet McCabe, Kimberly A. Novick, and Gabriel M. Filippelli) Climate Change and Resilience in Indiana and Beyond (IUP, 2022).

Acknowledgments
1. Cultural Indicators
2. A brief history of situation comedies
3. "Sitlit": Sitcoms and their images, content, and effects
4. Family, life, love, good, house: The universe and demography of sitcoms
5. Textual analysis
6. Sitcoms, cultural indicators, and social change
Afterword
Appendix A: Situation comedies referenced
Appendix B: Sitcom syllabus
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	02.05.2025
Reihe/Serie	Comedy & Culture
Zusatzinfo	47 b&w illus., 12 b&w tables
Verlagsort	Bloomington, IN
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-253-07301-4 / 0253073014
ISBN-13	978-0-253-07301-3 / 9780253073013
Zustand	Neuware