Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture
Following his Demographic Vistas (1984), Marc continues to study the situation comedy as a major exponent of our existing social order. Isolating the sitcom from other comic forms it eclipsed on TV, he examines representative programs: from the middle suburban nuclear families of the 1950s, through the "stagflation-era designer social comedies" of the 1970s and beyond. Marc's scholarly stance falls between objective analysis and subjective experience, the high-cultural gourmet and fannish gourmand. The resulting gumbo--of thematic dissection spiced with sociopolitical context and connection and mass market realities--strives to evoke television's role in our cultural consciousness. Marc's work has yet to achieve this convincingly, but it is important groundwork in communications studies.- Jeff Clark, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, Va .Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.