The Poetics and Politics of Invective Humor : Disparagement in Contemporary Female-Led US Sitcoms

Vituperation, disparagement, and debasement seem to have become part of the mainstream discourse in contemporary US-American media culture. Zooming in on a distinct televisual comedy genre, Katja Schulze explores the formal principles, media-specific realizations, and the cultural work of disparagement in contemporary female-led situation comedies. Subsequently, larger patterns of (gender-based) invective strategies and conventions that define the dynamism of this comedic genre come into view. Her study outlines case studies of popular sitcoms, like Parks and Recreation , Mike & Molly , and the revival of hit-sitcom Roseanne , thereby unearthing how the shows are able to stage humor as mass-mediated deprecation - a signifying practice with its own poetics and politics. Contents Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Conceptual Impulses and Cultural Context 3. Invective Humor: Discourses of Otherness 4. Reflexive Invectivity: The Comedy of Super Niceness in Parks and Recreaction 5. Dynamizing Invectivity: The Role of Invectives in the Boundary Work of the Genre 6. Conclusion Bibliography