Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television
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HUMOR AND SATIRE ON CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION This book examines contemporary American animated humor, focusing on popular animated television shows in order to explore the ways in which they engage with American culture and history, employing a peculiarly American way of using humor to discuss important cultural issues. With attention to the work of American humorists, such as the Southwest humorists, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, and Kurt Vonnegut, and the question of the extent to which modern animated satire shares the qualities of earlier humor, particularly the use of setting, the carnivalesque, collective memory, racial humor, and irony, Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television concentrates on a particular strand of American humor: the use of satire to expose the gap between the American ideal and the American experience. Taking up the notion of ‘The Great American Joke’, the author examines the discursive humor of programmes such as The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Daria, American Dad!, The Boondocks, The PJs and Futurama. A study of how animated television programmes offer a new discourse on a very traditional strain of American humor, this book will appeal to scholars and students of popular culture, television and media studies, American literature and visual studies, and contemporary humor and satire. Silas Kaine Ezell is Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, USA. The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture Series Editor: C. Richard King Washington State University, USA Dedicated to a renewed engagement with culture, this series fosters critical, contextual analyses and cross-disciplinary examinations of popular culture as a site of cultural poli- tics. It welcomes theoretically grounded and critically engaged accounts of the politics of contemporary popular culture and the popular dimensions of cultural politics. Without being aligned to a specifi c theoretical or methodological approach, The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture publishes monographs and edited collections that promote dialogues on central subjects, such as representation, identity, power, consumption, citi- zenship, desire and difference. Offering approachable and insightful analyses that complicate race, class, gender, sexu- ality, (dis)ability and nation across various sites of production and consumption, includ- ing fi lm, television, music, advertising, sport, fashion, food, youth, subcultures and new media, The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture welcomes work that explores the importance of text, context and subtext as these relate to the ways in which popular culture works alongside hegemony. Also available in the series Superheroes and American Self Image From War to Watergate Michael Goodrum ISBN: 978-1-4724-3550-7 Wasted: Performing Addiction in America Heath A. Diehl ISBN: 978-1-4724-4237-6 Consumerism on TV Popular Media from the 1950s to the Present Alison Hulme ISBN: 978-1-4724-4756-2 Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television Michael Mario Albrecht ISBN: 978-1-4094-6972-8 Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television Animation and the American Joke SILAS KAINE EZELL Oklahoma Baptist University, USA First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Silas Kaine Ezell The right of Silas Kaine Ezell to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ezell, Silas Kaine, author. Title: Humor and satire on contemporary television: animation and the American joke / by Silas Kaine Ezell. Description: Farnham, Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, [2016] | Series: The cultural politics of media and popular culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2015038675 | ISBN 9781472457721 (hardback: alk. paper) | Subjects: LCSH: Animated television programs—United States—History and criticism. | Television broadcasting—Social aspects—United States. Classifi cation: LCC PN1992.8.A59 E94 2016 | DDC 791.45/34—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038675 ISBN: 9781472457721 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315587646 (ebk) Typeset in Garamond and Century Gothic by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Preface and Acknowledgments vii 1 Irony and Incongruity in American Humor 1 2 Frontiers, Suburbs, Politics, and Poop: Setting, Episodes, and the American Carnivalesque in the Southwest Humorists and Animated Television Programs 13 3 No Laughing Matter: The Relationship between American Humor and American Collective Memory 41 4 African-American Multiculturalism in The PJs and The Boondocks 75 5 The Unkindest Cut: Animated Television and Postmodernism 115 Conclusion: Irony and Nihilism: Postmodern, or American? 143 Bibliography 153 Index 163 For Alexander, may you never forget how to laugh. Preface and Acknowledgments This project really began around 1990, when I first discovered The Simpsons. Being an early adolescent at the time, I, like many others, thought that Bart Simpson was the coolest character on television. Also like many others, I liked the program because it seemed to portray more accurately how families interacted than many other programs. Despite their animated distortions, including bug eyes, paper-sack hair, and severe overbites, the Simpsons looked more like my family than the Cleavers, Huxtables, Seavers, or Tanners. They could often be mean-spirited, sometimes cruel, to one another, but out of their ceaseless conflicts rose genuine love, appreciation, and loyalty. In addition to the family dynamic, I also craved the constant references to, and satire of, popular culture. As I grew older, I added an appreciation of other animated programs, such as Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill, and Daria. At this time, I was aware of the impact that these programs had on me individually, but I’d never given much thought about the impact that they make on culture. It was not until I became a high school teacher that I began to think about the ways in which these programs make important contributions to culture and shape the attitudes of young people. In particular, I was teaching Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope in a satire-themed unit. As we were discussing the various grotesque functions of the body, my students would constantly remark that the scenes in Swift reminded them of various episodes of South Park. Because I had not watched South Park before, I decided to watch a few episodes to see if my students’ assertions were accurate, and I found them to be quite appropriate. I then began to understand more fully that satire plays a role in shaping those who watch it. Because my students began to understand how Swift criticized his own culture through satire, they also began to reassess their own ideas through their understanding of a television show. My classroom experience greatly infl uenced my fi eld of study while I earned my masters and doctoral degrees. My thesis was a study of how South Park embodies the classical elements of satire. As I wrote the thesis, however, I had a constant feeling of unease. Though I believe that many elements of the show have much in common with classical satires, something also seemed different. Eventually, as I began studying American literature in more depth, I found that South Park is also participating in a particularly American tradition of humor and satire, as are many other animated programs. HUMOR AND SATIRE ON CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION This book is an attempt to explicate how these shows continue traditions established by American humorists from Washington Irving, the Southwest humorists, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Pryor, to animated television programs. The intent is not to show a direct inspiration, though that may be the case in some instances. Instead, I want to argue that there is a particular joke that is evident in the American DNA, and just as children might not be intentionally copying their parents, they inherit the traits of their parents without even realizing it. Such is the case when examining the infl uence of American humorists on animated television programs. After all, when taking a cursory look at this list, it appears that the similarities between these writers and performers are few, and in matters of style and medium, this assessment would often be correct. However, below the surface, they all address a specifi c incongruity within American culture. Louis D. Rubin, Jr.’s “The Great American Joke” perfectly addresses this underlying similarity. If genetics were applied to American humor, then one could observe this constant trait in the most important humorists in the American literary canon. It is my hope that this study will spark debate among scholars and performers and begin a discussion on animated programs’ place in the pantheon of American humor while also continuing to distinguish what is “American” about American humor. I am also pleased that this study will be part of a series about the cultural politics of media and popular culture. As is the case with any mode of discourse, not all animated programs are created under the same conditions—each has its own agenda and method for disseminating that agenda. For example, The Simpsons operates on an opposing plane to the idealized sitcom families of the 1950s and 1980s.