"'estern Jooma/ofCommunkatirm,62(1) (Winter 1998), 74---93 Winter 1998 75
more specifically, to begin to explicate their parodic mode of masculine discourse. In this essay, I examine Home Improvement (from Sept ember 7, 1991 The "Mock-Macho" Situation Comedy: t o the present ) and Coach (from February 28, 1989 through May 14, Hegemonic Masculinity 199 7), with a focus on the way in which signs of "masculinity" are e xpressed and played off one a nother within the parodic mode of US and its Reiteration television situation comedy. The goal of this analysis is not to define a new comed ic genre, but to identify some ofthe features and complexi t ies of this comedic mode, and to examine the implicatio ns of mobilizing Robert Ha nk e this type of gender parody for hege monic masculinity! Variou s efforts ha ve been made to theorize the specific effectivity of TlU:; essay examines how Home Improvement and Coach play off the stereotypes of humor (Berger, 1987 ) and comedy (Palmer 1987, 1994), to critique the conventional masc ulinity in order to descri be how these texts work to reiterate hegamcnic masculinity. The an alysis focuses on how the "mock-macho" sitcom takes gendered assumptio ns of comic theor ies, and to explore women's m a~ lin i ty as an object. of its own discoul'lle and tnd ecee pleasure in the eeahse ucn of relations hip to laughter (Gray, 1994). Palmer (1987 ) a rgues tha t comic murolinity IIll II gender performance. This study 8Ug:ge&tll some of the features and a rticulation invokes baekground expectationsof plausibili tyand im plau complexities of this discursive strategy lind draws on Butler's (1990 ) concept of"g\>nder sibility, which , in tum , "stem from the discourses of the social forma parody" to tbecriee "mock-macho" gen der performances and their ramie effectivity. The t ion." As he explains , "jokes create com ic impact ., . by the cont radic f'Nl3y conclud {'ll with an eseeesment cr the ambivalen t gender polities of "mock- ~ho" situation comedies . t ion of di sc ursively defined expectations" (p. 139 ). In Palme r 's formulation of the "logic of the absurd" specific to comedy, implausible actions or events r einforce'a given discours e, while plausibility "consti tutes an a ttack up on the discourse in t erms of which the action is seen An essential aspect of power is that it only likes W laugh at its own jokes . as absurd"(p. 179 ). However. it is one thing to describe the effectivity of -PetA:or Slotl:rdijk (1987 ) t his logic a nd quite another to theorize the rela tion between situation It', a dll.ngerou5 game, tha t oomedy plays, Sometimes it tella you the troth, sometimes it comedy and social re la tions of power. delays it. On the one hand, Palmer (1987) suggests that humor is "neither - ElvillCoote-llo (199.f) essentially liberatory nor conservative ... its very ba sis is amhiva lence" (p. 2 13).2 On the other hand, work in feminist media studies has OMEDY, ACCORDING TO NEALl-; & KRuTNIK (1990), traffics in the identified how feminine discourse in r elati on to soap ope ras is often C"surprising, the improper, the unlikely, and the transgressive in parodic: order to make us laugh"(p. 3). Moments oftel evision comedy typical ly "involve a de parture from a no rm, whether the norm be one ofaction, It makes fun of domina nt practices an d discursive notions. By playing in this way with a ppropria te behavior, conventional dress. or stereotypical fea tu res" (p. the conventio n.. ofthe dominan t discourse, feminine diseourae ecnst jt utes itse lf all 'oth er' 67). At the same time, as Bathrick ( 984) a ptly notes, situation to it, and displa ytia poten tial resistance. (Brown, 1m . p. 190) comedies situate us, off@ri ngsomeofthesubjectpositions which women Women's reco nstruction of humor and play with language, as Gray and men may inhabit to make se nse of their own lived gender rela tions (1994) suggests. is a way for women to "insert themse lves into history a nd realities . This is indeed the case with HOmR Improvement and as agen ts ofcha nge" (p. 36). However, there are limi ts to the subversive Coach, two popular ABC sitcoms. Analysis of these se ri es provides an potential ofsuch comedy, for the "sitcom's dependence upon a consumer opportunity t o explore sit uation comedies as gender comedies , and, culture for its very existence will almost certai nly preclude a laughter which provokes analysis of consumerism itself' (Gray, 1994 , p. 45). Behind these conside rations lies an ongoing debate over whether humor and comedy are basically subversive or conserva tive. But as the ROBERT HAII.'l{E (PhD., University of Pennsylvania, 1987) is Visiting Profess or of Sociology, Ryel'llOn Polytechnic Univenrity. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. An earher veraion epigraph to this essay suggests, humor often entails the ccmmunica of this essay ...·u presented at the 1993 Intern ational Communication Association t ion of paradox (Fry. 198 7). Thus , comic articulation can be defined as a emjerence, Wa ~ h i n gto n , D.C. The author wisbes to than k L. DeLa na Browning. Tom semiotic process that is both "subversive a nd conservative. offensive Sch umadlel", TholllM Byers., and the three anonymoull reviewt"ra fur their usefu l and inoffensive, serious and ridiculous" (Palmer, 1987, p. 182); comic C1i ticisJn8 and valueble s uggestiens. narrative is simultaneously plausible and impla usible (Palmer, 1994 ). 76 The "Mock-Macho"Situation Comedy Winter 1998 77
In light of the fundamentally incongruous nature of comedy, the from below) into its opposite, cynicism (the male power bloc tells the question then becomes how we can theorize television's contribution to truth about themselves and denies any ability to do anything about it). the hegemonic process when masculine discourse takes itself as an object of its own discourse in order to parody elerrients of dominant This essay advances a suspicious, rather than cultural populist, (masculinistl ideology? We can begin to answer this question and the reading of "mock-macho" humor within the contemporary sitcom genre. specific issues it raises by examining two contemporary situation Such a reading differs from Miller's (1987) aesthetic conception ofthe comedies, Home Improvement and Coach. sitcom genre, and from his humanistic critique of its relation to American consumer culture. For Miller, even when "pseudopatriarcha Home Improvement and Coach represent a paradoxical discursive list fantasy" is replaced with "pseudofeminist fantasy," such comedic event: masculine discourse which takes up masculinity as an object of texts only serve to promote television's assault on "individuality," and to its own discourse. In both series, a parodic mode of discourse is promote consumption as a way oflife. (However, Miller goes on to claim deployed to address white, middle class, middle-aged men's anxieties that the sitcom's recoding offatherhood through "routine autosubver about a feminized ideal for manhood they may not want to live up to, as sion" is evidence of an anti-patriarchal trend in television.) This well as changes in work and family life that continue to dissolve argument has merit if one accepts Miller's conception of genre and separate gender spheres within white, professional-managerial, class "patriarchy." life. At the same time, queer theory and politics have further pluralized More recently, Mellencamp (1992) has analyzed sitcoms from a and relativized the gendered meanings of "home," "family," "romantic feminist, nee-Freudian, and Baudrillardian perspective. While she love," and even "mass culture" (Doty, 1993). These discourses, along contends that through witticisms and other transgressions the domi with the discourses of the "men's movement," intersect to produce the nant discursive code of patriarchy might be undone, Mellencamp also broader discursive context in which "mock-macho" sitcoms such as acknowledges that the sitcom's strategy for containing women as Home Improvement and Coach have appeared. Thus, it is within this ''wives'' and "mothers" is always contradictory and open to alternative context that we must examine how "mock-macho" sitcoms function as a readings based on women's experiences of and dilemmas within discursive strategy through which the force relations of masculinity patriarchy. On the otherhand, Craig (1996) has taken a more determin and femininity take effect. istic view of recent domestic sitcoms. In his discussion of Home Mock-macho sitcoms like Home Improvement and Coach offer view Improvement, Craig describes how this popular "producerly text"· is ers more than a postmodern spectacle of unenlightened or unrecon designed to enable both female and male viewers to derive different meanings and pleasures from the same series. Although the series structed manhood. By making a mockery of masculinity, these comic takes masculinity and power as its theme, and the producers evidently narratives simultaneously preserit men as objects of laughter and as intend to offer a "mildly feminist satire of men," Craig argues that it subjects moving between "old" and "new" subject positions. While this works to "restore (women's) consent by pointing out the inevitability process of resubjectification may not signify a change in social struc and the 'naturalness' of ... modernized hegemonic masculinity" (1996, tures of hierarchy and inequality, such comic texts can imply a lack of p.70). reverence for conventional masculinity, especially as it is defined in terms ofcompetence and infallibility. As Gray (1994) suggests, humor, While sitcoms offer many sources of contradiction for women view like sexuality, is a changing social construct; thus, the popularity of ers, which some series may even foreground (e.g., men as bumbling but these sitcoms suggests a shiftin the nature and parameters of domestic loveable fathers as inEverybody Loves Raymond), what is unique about sitcom performance, as male comic television actors ridicule their own Home Improvement and Coach is their self-conscious foregrounding of lack of self-knowledge and as more male viewers have learned to laugh masculine discourse. As this critical reading of these series highlights, at themselves (see also Men Behaving Badly). However, as I shall go on playing offmasculine stereotypes and playingupon the classification of to argue, such self-reflexive humor also may signify and celebrate a men as "sexist" is one of the discursive strategies through which these neocynical disposition. Indeed, in contrast to a neokynic or "bottom up" series reiterate and recuperate hegemonic masculinity. power which some media scholars have argued is enabled by popular In order to develop this argument, I first discuss some of the textual media texts like Roseanne, I argue that Home Improvement and Coach features of Home Improvement and then of Coach, paying particular display a neocynical stance that legitimates a "master cynicism," a attention to the major male characters. Following Fiske (1987), I "cheekiness that has changed sides" (Sloterdijk, 1987, p. 111). That is, analyze these comic television characters discursively as metonymic these series articulate a particular discursive strategy in the sitcom representations of male social positions, values, attitudes, and beliefs. I 'battle of the sexes,' which reverses neokynicism (popular feminism argue that the central male characters Tim Taylor (Tim Allen) and 78 The "Mock-Macho" Situation Comedy Winter 1998 79
Hayden Fox (Craig T.Nelson) express not only each series' distinctive interests, concerns, and dilem mas within conte mporary domestic life. features and its ideological practice and problematic but also its The series' parodic discourse of masculinity echoes Ehrenreich's (1983) affective disposition. My analysis presupposes that these cha racters thesis about white, heterosexual , middl e-class men in th e 1950s. She (and the actors who create these distinctive comic personae) are "the argues that for post-World War II American men, masculinity, endan main agents for 'hailing' and th en interpellating the prospective gered by the bureaucratic organization of corporate work , could be audiencc" (Fiske, 1987, p. 162). renewed at home by taking up power tools and outdoor barbecues. The analysis which follows draws upon my regular viewing of However, throughout t he 1960s and 1970s, the se para tion of spheres individual episodes from each series' premiere through April, 1993. betw een domestic and public life, as well as within the household, were While my observations are limited to this period, where appropriate, I further challenged by the second wave of femi nism . By the 1990s, th e also have utilized secondary media texts and their read ings of each boundary between th e "female" domestic sphere and the "male" pu blic series' characters ." sphere had become even more permeable, at least for members of the By April 1993, Home Improvement had displaced Roseanne to white, professional, managerial class. It is at this historical conjunc become the No. 1 "hit show" (Hall, 1993). Also, by t hat time, Coach, tu re th at Home Improvement atte mpts to imagine and preserve a place which first gained popularity by being scheduled after Roseanne, had for men within the "home," the primary spatial institution of the family, been rescheduled to follow Home Improvement, temporarily creating a by putting into circulation and va lorizing "men's talk" about their "mock-macho" sitcom line-up for the first hour of Wed nesday evening wives, tools, home repair, and otherjoys of domestic manhood. viewing. Such scheduling practices, in pursuit of laughter, higher Tim Taylor makes a professional career out of this 1950s han dyman ratings, and comparable demographics, provided the opportunity to role by hosting a Detroit-based cable TV show called Tool Time, a examine these two series in tandem as a prime-time site of "mock take-off of the public television series This Old House and other macho" humor.' What initially struck me and led me to undertake this "home-repair" cable television shows. His solution to every home study, wa s th e juxtaposition of th ese sitcoms and th e collision of their improvement problem is the macho "More Power!" but his actions, gendered viewpoints . It seemed to me th at th is was a unique moment in instead of demonstrating competency and control, typically lead to sitcom history in which one could see masculine discourse seeking, and comic mishaps an d catastrophes. Tool Time is a forum th at bridges th e gaining, precedence and economic va lue over feminine discourse. workplace and home, public and private spaces. There Tim Taylor not only dispenses how-to-fix-it or build-it advice as a tool "expert," he also mocks and insu lts his assistantAI Borlan d, makes wisecracks about his Install ing t he New Man wife Jill Taylor, jokes about everyday life at home, and ponders over Home Improvement is based on th e stand-up comedy of Tim Allen, gender relations and issu es in general to a mostly male studio who had established a reputation for doing "Men are Pigs" jokes and audience. making light of masculine stereoty pes and machismo attitudes in his Allen/Taylor's performance thus puts definitions of domestic man standup comedy club performances (Koltnow, 1994). The sitcom series hood and valued men's technical knowledge into circulation in an becam e an extended vehicle for Allen's brand of "mock-macho" hu mor exaggerated form and makes th ese ideological eleme nts of masculinity and self-ridicule. Tim,"The Tool Man," Taylor, is, like his sitcom father readily available to viewers. Thi s semiotic excess may enable some predecessors, "at once the joker and a joke" (Miller, 1987, p. 214), but he viewers to "mock the conventional, to evade its ideological thrust, to also followed female standup comic performers like Roseanne Barr who turn its norm s back on themselves" (Fiske, 1989, p. 114). This may parodied the image of white, middle class women and joked about account for some of Home Improvement's popul arity, especially for everyday, domestic life. His is a recombinant image of domestic women viewers; however, other viewers (especia lly male ones), may be manhood, combining middle and working-class series' representations drawn to the text by the centrality of its male star/joke teller, its of men and families, to produce a novel, leading ma le character for a masculin e viewpoint on men and women, and its preferred technical middle-class series- a middle-class, macho male buffoon." In contrast discourse of masculinity within t he domestic sphere. Moreover, for to Dr. Cliff Huxtabl e of The Cosby S how (September 20, 1984-ApriI 30, some male viewers, Tim Allen/Taylor's humor may express a barely 1992), who represented black, middle-class men's accommodation of a concealed, hostile struct ure of feeling towards women (Cra ig, 1996). "pro-feminist" stance, Tim Taylor represents a "pro-male" male stance within white, middle-class, domesticity. In keeping with the conventions of the domestic sitcom genre, complications and entanglements of love, marriage, and rai sin g chil Take, for example , Home Improvement's represen tation of an im dren abound in Home Improvement. In most episodes, Tim Taylor proved home and what this series presen ts as "masculine" prerogatives, engages in some kind of relational "home repa ir " to restore marital 80 The "Mock-Macho" Situation Comedy Winter 1998 81 equilibri um or family harmony. More specifically, the series is about them resolved by the injection of a little romance. In this regard, Cra ig men ; as Tim Taylor puts it to his studio audience, and to us watching at (1996) argues that Jill Taylor is similar to the "strong, fiery" heroines home: prefer red by readers of romance fiction (as described in Radway's (1984] Readi ng th e Romance), Tool TIme is more tha n home improvement. It's male improvement. An improved male is and he suggests that this may account more sensitive to his wife. How do we get sensitive? By digging down in our emotions a nd for the show's popularity among women viewers. He also poin ts out sharing your feelings with others. You guys up to it? that Pamela Richardson, who plays Jill Taylor, has been lauded in women's magazines for being "the most true-to-life mom on TV" as well Such invitations towards the es tablishment ofa more sensitive norm for not being "shrewish nor sacchari ne as her character humorously for masculinity, however, almost inevit ably are subjected to further takes apart gender-related cliches and pokes fun at machismo mental comic t reatment, thereby making light of men's efforts to get in touch ity" (New Woman's people , 1993, p. 69). However, Pamela Richardson wit h their "feminine" side and to "improve" themselves and the ir has also been praised for support ing and stabilizing Tim Allen's homes. position as "more likeable and funnier"(Craig, 1994). Furthermore, in In contrast to Cliff Huxtable, arguably the most popular TV father of the series' second season, when Jill took a job outside the home, the the 1980s, Tim Taylor does not direct his humor at exposing the series began to explore "t rue-to-life" conflicts that arise for many inadequacy of sexist platitudes or machismo attitudes (Jhally & Lewis, dual -career couples who must negotiate housework and chi ldcare . Yet, 1992); rather, Tim's humor is directed towards "soft" males, like his while the series has featured many scenes of J ill parenti ng or doing assistant Al, and towards his wife Jill and other female members of the housework alone, few scenes have shown Jill working outs ide the cast, such as Jill's "feminist" friend, Karen. When Karen voices feminist home, or even discussing her work wit h Tim Taylor. Even an episode in cri tiques of patriarchal ideology, this provides an opportunity for Tim which J ill was to be honored for her work cente red on how Tim Taylor's Taylor to rebut her femini st arguments and to make nonsense of effort to be support ive led to her h umil iation. feminist sense. A" one male viewer explained to one of my students, Whi le the relationsh ip betwee n Tim and Jill is central to the series Home Improvement is not as concerned as other sitcoms about being an d significant in representing gender difference, Froli ck (1992) also "politically correct about men an d women" (Harrell, 1993). Insofar as sugges ts that the series has "taken on the new men's movement, which Tim's comic style includes tendenti ous jokes that make women the encourages men to reassert their masculinity" (p. 14). According to targets, these moments offer male viewers t he pleasure of seeing the men's movemen t spokes man Robert Ely (1990), while the "fifties male" rat ional nor ms offeminist criticism subverted. role has lost its relevance for men , the 1970s "soft male" image is also Whi le Home Improvement attempts to construct an "improved" home problemati cal for men.Feminism, accord ing to Bly, may have liberated for men (specifically, for men who alre ady have homes ), whethe r it women , but it failed to liberate men. This can only be accomplished, in cons tructs an improved home for women is indeed open to questi on. In Bly's mythopoetic vision, if men dig down into the ir collective uncon t he series' first year, Jill Taylor wa s a full -time wife and mother, who scious and retrieve the forgotten "Wild Man,"the alternative to the "soft was most often seen working in the kitchen or looking after their three male."This "Wild Man'tis t he mode of masculinity wit h which Bly urges sons. Her character could easily be seen as conti nuing the tradition of men to get in touch . This is particularly important, according to Bly, for the sitcom's ideal middle-class wife/mother. Like 1950s wives and the younge r generation of men for whom the transcultural metanarra mothers Donna Reed, June Cleaver, and Harriet Nelson , J ill appears to ti ve of masculinity is no longer available." be contained within her kitchen and living room. TV Guide has also Bly (1990) valorizes an account of gender development that identifies compared her to the verbally assertive Alice Cramden of The Honey the necessary separation of boys from their mothers as the problem, a mooners, and read her as "part of t he earthier, more opinionated wave separat ion made increasingly difficult as gender roles and traits have of TV wives. Women- like Roseanne-who have power and use it" become increasingly androgynous and blurred . As feminist critics have (Hall, 1993, p. 9). Jill Taylor sometimes does not permit or recogni ze pointed out, this mythopoet ic effort to retrieve a lost coherence and Tim's jokes, and sometimes she makes h er husband the butt of her own unity for the masculine subject is a massive refu sal of the cultural, jokes or offers a contrast ing "female" viewpoint on gender differences, social, and political contexts in which "masculinity is constructed in but her comic persona does not include naming and attacking aspects of ways that oppress woman (see, for example, Doubiago, 1992). patriarchy. Home Improvement appears to refract this Blysian version of the Desp ite the dissymmetry in their joking relat ionship, TV Guide crisis of ma sculinity. Tim Taylor 's guttural "Arghh, arghh, arghh!" is rea ders have been invited to see Tim and Jill as "affectionate and feisty the vestigial verb al sign of Bly's "Wild Ma n." Tool Time, like Bly 'e equals" (Hall , 1993, p. 9). It is not unusual to see any discord between cere monial men's hut, is a place where "men's talk" about "tools" and 82 The "Mock-Macho" Situ ation Comedy Winter 1998 83
"home repai r" can be exchanged and homosocial relations can be is accomplished by Tim's constructing male-dominated spaces within recreated. uninterrupted, inhibited or constrained by the presence of the home. These include th e garage workshop. whe re Tim Taylor can wives and mothers. In fact. the only woman to ap pear here regularly is show fatherly concern and masculine expert ise with tools, and the back Tim Taylor's assistant Lisa , the stereotypical "buxom tool girl," whose yard, where Tim and his sons ca n express their "natural" aggressive brief appearances evoke a pre-feminist vision of women as "sex objects" ness by roughhousing and wrestli ng, Tim's worries about his sons' and whose role is to fetch and stand by ready and willing to take orders "sissiness" also leads him into conflict with Jill over the proper sort of at the beck and ca ll of men. socialization for boys. Tim and Jill grapple with and debate their son's choices of leisure activities; Jill prefers ballet and opera , while Tim Home Improvement also visua lizes, more than other domestic sit thinks sports and monster-truck rallies are more fun . In one episode, coms, a se pa rate male place withi n the home. The series is a blueprint Tim must deal with his son's emba rrassment at being hugged by his for gender relations th at acknowledges the need for "male improve fathe r in pub lic. From Wilson, he learns that males display affection for ment," yet simultaneously expresses men's deep anxiety about further one anotherby usingfonns rooted in male comba t and competition. Tim dissolving the boundaries between men's and wome n's spaces. In fact, proceeds to teach his son that hugging may be inappropriate in some th e potential or actual dissolution of sepa rate male/fem ale spheres circumstances, but that fathers can express love for their sons in less within t he Taylor househ old is often a source of misunderstandings and physical, but distinctly "male" ways: ..After all," Tim quips to his son, argu ments. Tim Taylor's movement between his workplace and home "I'm not a man, I'm your father." workshop, and his clear demarcation of male-defined spaces and activities, constructs a "home" that is more obvious ly segregated by Home Improvement's Blysian inte r-text extends beyond father-son gender than most sitco m homes. The effect of Home Improvement's relations to Tim Taylor's relationships with ot her men. From Tim remasculiniaation of domestic space is to reassert male knowledge an d Taylor's point of view, his assistant AI rep resents dubious masculinity: involvement concerning the ma nagement of the household and raising AI is shy, sensitive, caring, co-operative, unw illing to take risks , too children and to undermine whatever histori cal claim to knowledge or close to his mother, and too much in touch with his "feminine" side. Th authority in th e domestic sphe re women have had. At the end of one Tim Taylor's further consternation, AI is more skillful with tools and episode, for exa mple, it is Jill who has learned to "let go of some th ings" more popular among guests and viewers of Tool Time th an is Tim , the to accommodate Tim Taylor's knowledge of how to do things, to host of th e show. As the embodiment of th e "soft male," AI is th e appreciate his domestic successes as well as failures, and to value his constant target of Tim Taylor's insults an d ridicule. Still , Tim Taylor's efforts to be "sens itive" as well as his natural "boyishness." and AI's joking relationship reflects the trad itional use ofjoke-telling to secure the frate rnity of heterosexual men (Lyman, 1992). That is, Tim In const ructing a space for the male subject within the home, Home Taylor, as the host of Tool Time is often upstaged by AI, and while Improvement also expresses the ideological problematic of th e "new gender is not th e only content of their jokes, joking enables the m to father," which is, in part, th e problem of being a male heterosexual negotiate the te nsion they-and male viewers-may feel about their parent when domesti c femininity is no longer hegemonic for women relations hips with each other and with women (Lyman, 1992). and single-parent families have become more common (Cohen, 1993). Within the sitcom genre, Murphy Brown Hayden Fox clearly embodies elements of conventional masculinity episode, Hayden Fox learns t hat one of his star football players, Terry, which a re narratively demonstrated to be anachronistic; 88 Hayden is gay. Hayden's assumption that Terry is a "man's ma n," and thus a once put it, "I'm 8 man in back of his time." Hayden is aware of the suitable sexual partner for his daughter, turns out to be mistaken . "great change" in gender relations ush ered in by th e liberal femini st What is more, Hayden discovers that the re have been other gay movement. He atte mpts to become a more involved father, but he Minnesota Screaming Eagles. Thus, the gay athlete, a paradoxical displays great scorn for Kelly's sensitive boyfriend , and later husband identity that calls into question heteroerotic orthodoxy, is made visibl e and ex-husband. Stuart.He regards some women as equals, but he as the Other t hat was th ere aUalong. Hayden reiterates cliches about makes put-downs of his ex-wife and he is antagonistic toward and "homosexuals" yet obviously struggles to und erstand "gayness." Like resentful of women like J udy, the women's basketball coach, who many Coach episodes, this episode is constructed to allow for a bimodal , success fully compete with him in the t raditionally male domain of or polyvalent, response. While "gayness" rema ins unthinkable to college sports. Hayden Fox, he does not believe in hu rting anyone. So gay and nonhomophobic viewers may appreciate Hayden's effort to be fai r. At The series' reinvention of homo vulgaris anonymous is premised. on th e same time, Hayden Fox's discomfitu re, especially when he sees two th e assumption that some men would prefer not to reformulate th eir of his former football players dancing with each other in a gay bar, may sense of masculinity because it means giving up certain masculine also be viewed as an invitation to homophobic, st raight viewers who prerogatives, including a propen sity for engaging in acts of deception, share Hayden's unease to lau gh at these models of "failed" masculinity. an overbearing and selfish demeanor, and an obliviousness to wnmens' feelings and concerns. Hayden is a butt figure by virtue of his Ofcourse, episodes that explicitly address the relationship between exaggerated incompreh ension of these as pects of his self-identity. straight and gay sexua lity are rare exceptions to the h e terose x~ al ideology and heterocentrist narrative conventions that rule this series Like Home Improoement, which offers a blueprint for ins talling the and the sitcom genre in general. Still, Coach and other 1980s and 1990s new man within the phys ical interior of the home, Coach reconstructs sitcoms which have featured episodes about gays and gay characters masculinity so as to be more acceptable to the private or domestic (e.g., Cheers. Roc, .\furphy Brown, Roeeonne. and Spin City ) indicate (histo rically coded as femi nine) side of everyday life. Cooch 's weekly that hegemonic heteromasculinity no longer works to ex cl ~ de a l ~rn a reinvention ofnome vulgaris anonymous takes place on the private side tive definitions of masculinity, but instead appears to require an Image of "personal rul es and values" and "individual attit udes" twetnra cb. of its Ot her in orde r to remai n hegemonic by re producing the binary 1993); however, Hayden Fox's public side-that of th e unregenerate, terms of gender signification. traditional male-remains largely intact from week to week. In ABC's promotional spots, Coach has been billed as a "sports Hegemonic Masculinity and its Reiteration comedy,"and Hayden Fox as a bumbling football coach who nonetheless builds a success ful football program. This draws upon sports symbol Let us now return to the main qu estions of this study: What ism that is deeply imbricated in t he gender myths that divide power cont ribution does the parodic mode of "mock-macho" humor in these between men and women. Footba ll, in particular, represents key two sit uation comedies mak e to t he process of hegemonic masculinity? elements of hegemonic masculini ty such as aggression and violence How does t his form of gender parody function as a discursive strategy? (Real, 1977; Katz, 1995), an d Cooch's parody of t hese models of manhood depends upon viewer's familiarity with th ese codes for Rowe (1990)offers a partial answer: Men secure their power not only parodi c effect. by looking but by being see n, by fashioning a spectacle of themselves. One way this male power is reali zed is through control over the Furthermore, as Pronger (1990) has suggested, sports is a masculine jok e-telling form which has tradi tionally made women and/o.r other genre th at is not without its paradoxes: "Sports, as a masculine genre, marginali zed groups its targets. In cont rast to Roseanne, which Lee presen ts some men with an archetypal mythic form for homoerotic (1995) argues inspires "feminist resistance" and Mellencamp (1992) desire: th e sexy, muscular, masculine athlete. That desire is paradoxi argues works to shift the humorous target ofjokes away from w o~ e n to cal, being at once a reverence for and a violation of masculinity"(p. 9). patria rchal struct ures, Home Improvement and CO?ch ~o rk to shift t~e The conventions of comedy, unlike those of televised sports, are flexible target from patriarchal st ructures back to mascuhne discourse and Its enough to sometimes allow this paradox to become visible. Episodes of own 'othe r.' In doing so, th ese series' express and reaffirm beteromascu Home l mprooement and Seinfeld have been built on the premise of line preroga tives, obsessions, and pl easur~8 . A..... Hutche?n ~ 1 ~89! mistaken homosexual iden tity. In cont rast, one episode of Coach was explai ns, it is "through a double process of l.nstalhng and irom zmg. built upon th e premise of mistaken heterosexual identi ty. In this that "parody signals how present rep resen tations come from past ones 88 The "Mock-Macho" S ituation Comedy Winter 1998 89 and what ideological consequences derive from both continu ity and hegemonic norm of "its claim to a naturalized or essentialized gender difference' Tp. 93). Through the "mock-macho"sitcoms'foregrounding of identity" (Butler, 1990, p. 138). Th is representational strategy, which the "man qu estion" from a male-centered point of view, its parodic re-presents and plays off the stereotype, offers the opportunity for the masculine discourse acknowledges the precariousness of hegemonic reenact ment of hegemonic norm s, or, altern atively, for their renegotia (heterolmasculinity. tion, by virtue of th e failure to completely embody the norm. This parodic mode of masculine discourse enables male viewers to However, compared to t he forms of gender parody that Butler move betw een identification and disidentification. We may find our considers, Home Improvement and Coach are light parod y, and thu s, selves, at different moments, laughing at, or with, Tim Taylor and far less subvers ive. Tim Allen's and CraigT. Nelson's performances may Hayden Fox. The parodic mode also indi cates a redistribution of some be viewed as part of a hegemonic process whereby masculine discourse men's affective invest ments in past representations in favor of some constitutes certain tra ditional forms of "masculinity" as 'other' to its investment in more up-to-date ones. Alternatively, t his mode may also new, presumably "real" self. The "mock-macho" sitcom re-presents signify and celebrate a "neocynical" discursive strategy whereby "hege white, middle-class, midd le-aged masculinity as an act of real-ization, monic power airs its secrets a little, indulges in a little semi-self caught in-between the "old" American man and th e overly-femin ized, enlightenment, and tells all"(Sloterdijk, 1987, p. 111). Parody depend s model of th e "new" America n man. In this sense, these sitcoms upon the recognition of some original or tra ditional conception of constru ct male identity in a postst ructuralist fashion, encoding "mascu masculinity; however, the neocynical stance seeks to void any contradi c linity" as a conflict between "old" and "new" subject positions, and tion between the present positioning of the male subject and its past therefore, to some degree as "fluid: at once defined and redefined, at representations. In any case, male agency is at work re-cognizing the once real and (relpresented"(Sacc, 1992, p. 24). interplay of differing subject position s. As Smith (1988) explains, Although these sitcoms presumably speak to toda y'e men an d A perso n is not simply determined and dominated by the ideological pressures of any women, t hese programs indicate that traditional elements of masculine overarching discourse or ideology but is also the agent of a certain discernment. A person identity arc still worth some affective investment on the part of is not sim ply the ector who follows ideological scripts, but is also the age nt who reads them in order to inse rt himlhe r selfinto them-c-or not. Ipp. xxxiv-xxxv) te levision producers, writers, performers, and viewers. In the case of roma ntic comedy, this component of "gendered myth making" by media Poststructuralist feminist th eorizing has further complicated the creators ensures that "tastes and preferences const ructed as masculine relationships between represen tations ofgender and gender identity by are more likely to be privileged even when the text in que stion is meant emphasizing th e politics of the signifier in a way that enables us to to appeal prim ari ly to women"(Scodari, 1995, p. 24). As Scoda ri's avoid essentialist implications. Butler 's ( 990) notion of gender parody, analysis of Cheers, among othe r programs , suggests, patriarchal no which theorizes gender as performative rather than expressive, is tions, dissemi nated by journalists and perpetuated in professional lore, useful both for theorizing such "mock-macho" sit uation comedies as shape "what is and what is not pleasurable sto rytelling," and, I would gender comedies , and for assessing their political significance. Her add, what is funny or not fun ny. thesis, based on an analysis of the cultural practices of drag, cross dressing, and the stylization of butch/femme identities, is th at gender In their weekly engagement wit h this form of light gender parody, is a performance that main tains the illusion of a core feminine, or male viewers may experience as pleasurable, rather than as discomfit masculine, self. Gender impersonation , she argues, disarticulates ing or emb arrassing, th e destabili zation and restabilization of the.signs gender signification from the politics oftruth and falsity that makes for of masculinity, and perhaps be moved to some new understanding of an essential, polarized female or male ident ity. the ir own "maleness" or of men as a social group. Apart from this ~n Only two sitcoms-The Ugliest Girl in Town (September 26, 1968 possibility, th ese media texts make it clear that male agency has J anuary 30, 1969) and Bosom Buddies (November 27, 1980 investment in both "old" and "new" forms of subjectivity and In September 15, 1984)-have been based on a men-in-drag premise. controlling the discursive terrain of any interplay or renegotiation between th em. Therefore, the light parody of "mock-macho" sitcoms is However, sitcoms like Home Improvement an d Coach. without resort less likely th an men-in-drag sitcoms to const itute the kind of gender ing to drag or cross-dressing, also put the idea of an original and stable performance "that will compel a reconsideration of the place and masculine identity in to question by exceeding the norm s of "real" (i.e., "macho") masculinity. Following Butler ( 990), th en, I offer the follow stability of the masculine and th e feminine"(Butle r, 1990, p. 139). ing formulation:"Mock-macho" sitcoms invite parodic la ughter by Fin ally, it is imp ortant to note tha t sitcoms, as an in s t itu t ion~li ~e d parodying the mechanisms of the const ruction of some "original" form of joking, are not funny in th emselves; t hey require a third domestic patriarch or macho stereotype and te mpora rily deprive the person," t he audience, for t heir completion (Mellencamp, 1992). Most 90 Th e "Mock-Macho"Situation Comedy Winter 1998 91 sitcoms, of course, provi de a laugh track or the laughter of a "live" linity works through a variety of representations of men as well as studio audience to cue us into the funny moments, but we should expect various discursive strategies (Hanke, 1992). In the case of "mock that it makes a great deal of difference whether that "third person" is a ma cho" sitcoms, white, middle-class men are represented as fitting the woman or a man. And so, the question of whether actual viewers! stereotype at the same time it plays off of it and constructs their auditors are laughing with or at Tim Allenffaylor, or Hayden Fox/Craig exclusion from it. A neoG ramscian-Butlerian framework for thinking T. Nelson is important in judging the gender politics of these texts. I about sitcoms as gender comedies opens up a way to better understand concur with Saco (1992 ) that recept ion analysis is vital if we are to this particular discursive strategy of (disjavowal and how it enables understand the sorts of investments and dispositions t hat male and male agency to reflexively (reject and (relaffirm the force rel ations female viewers bring to television texts, including comic ones. Audience between masculinity and femini ni ty disturbed during the sitcom an alysis might discover, for instance, how female and male audience "battle of the sexes" or challenged by th e "bottom-up" power of comic members take pleasure in "mock-mac ho" humor, and how they make performers like Roseanne. sense of Tim Taylor, Hayden Fox, and their weekly exchan ges with other characters. Such research, as well as further investigation ofthe NOTES production context of these series, is beyond the scope of the present 1. For a more detailed expla na tion of hegemonic masculinity, see Ha nke (1992). st udy. However, situation comedies are a form that ca n be descri bed 2. Palmer (1987) notes two ways in which hum or ca n "plausibly, incarnate real and whose effectivity can be analyzed through textual analysis, even if opposition." One way is to make a joke un der circumstances whe re it is not permitted, or "the significance of that structure is negotiable according to certain to joke abo ut subjects that are locally forb idden . The othe r way is to ma ke a joke whOIS(' butt is pa rt of organized opposition to a n infltitu tion or person. Besides the examples he principles: comprehe nsibility, performative adequacy and inoffens ive provides, it is proba ble that anti-malejokes would have a differe nt ring to the m if tol d in ness" (Palmer, 1994, p. 174). the context of a n organized political movement such as the women ', movement. 3. I wish to comment on the additional documentation req uested by t h.iJI manuscript', To summarize, in "mock-macho" situation comedies, masculinity, reviewers. In brie f, I was not prepared to provide episode titles and broadcast dates. AlII t hrough parodic representation, is made visible to itself and allows worked on fina l te\; lIions, I was also unable to locate the videotapes [ had made and 80 1 itself to be called into question. In this sense, the actions and comic had to rely on my viewing notes, my memory, a nd any reruns I might happen to see. Th is experience s uggests the need to revise my methodological procedures 80 that 1 will be failures of these "mock-macho" characters articulate the notion that more able to respond to the scru tiny of pee r review in future research. men are incompetent and fallible as a plausible generalization. Suc h 4. My focus is limit ed to "mock-macho" situation comedies because of my particula r revelations, of cours e, would be to the detriment of masculine iden tity theoretical interest in signs of masculinity, gende r parody, a nd hegemonic masculinity. Of as it is represented a nd naturalized in masculinist discourse. However, course, these texts share the format, codes, and conventions of the s itcom genre as a whole, a nd they are linked, in man y more ways than I point to, diachronically and masculinity rendered as a comic spectacle in the parodic mode of synchronically to other s itcoms. while making a mockery of masculinity, "meek-macho" situation comedy implies that ma scu linity is a performa nce or act that sitcoms do not parody the family in the way The Simpsons or Married . .. with Children once met a hegemonic norm , bu t now obviously fails to meet it. 1b the do, nor do they parody femini nity in the way Absolutely Fabulous does. For an insightful degree that this performance is regarded as more implausible than analysis of the textual strategies an d viewing positions of Married . .. with Children, see plausible, this discursive strategy invites cynical laughter, a form of Kervin (19941; for a brillian t analysis of femini ne gender parody in AbBOlulely FobuJou. see Baker(l9971. humor which is both an "element ofpraxis and an 'operator' of effects" 5. For an analysis of working-dass ma le bu ffoons in sitcom history see Butsch (1995). (J. Fontanille, paraphrased by Palmer, 1994, p. 189 ).7 Neocyn ical 6. Bly's Iron John fai ry tale begins in pre-Christianity an d seeks to recover, in the humour works to serve male agency by delaying the truth of male wake of the indu strial revol utio n which damaged the father-son bond. the structureof the power, unders tood as collective cult ural power imbricated in the male psyche as it W all 20,000 yea rs ago. In his re rea ding, all sto ries about the ~Vi1d Man for the last 14,000 years have been associated wit h the initiation of you ng men. Industrial reproduction of gender hierarchy and inequality. Because the butts of societ ies, as opposed to "t ri ba l~ ones, lack a ritu al precess or space. In Bly's his-story of "mock-macho" humor-individua l men- are represented as absurdly ma sculinity, the ·Wild Man 's- sexua lity is nature rath er tha n a culturally-constructed incongruous, this discursive strategy recuperates patriarchal notions social practice. and update s masculinity by putting th e signs of masculinity into 6. For a discussion of thi s dilemma in the context of the representation of the "new man - in ea rly 1990·s film sec Jeffords (l993}. co-motion with the shifting horizon of our expectations and values. Like 7. Summarizing Fontanille, Pal mer (1994) note s that "Cyn icallaughte r is the exact Tim the "tool" man's puns which play on the du al meanings of words, opposite of ... collect ive good humour; it is always derision, a lau ghter of exclusion, "mock-macho" h umour sugges ts that the re is no primary or stable including covering oneself with ridicule to further one's own exclusio n. Its role is meaning of"masculinity," nor is there a single, functional re lationship threefold. Firs t, it is to desenaitise the list ener to his values by rid iculing them . Second. between genderand humor (Palmer, 1994). Thus,"mock-macho"humor since all concepti! and va lues a re rejected. ra tional argu ment is im possible, and jests, puns, rid icul e, nonsense, HI'. destabilise attempts at rationality. 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