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The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom
Winner of the 2019 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for the Best Work in LGBTQ Studies from the PCA
The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition.
Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.
The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition.
Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.
258 pages, Hardcover
Published February 27, 2018
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About the author
Tison Pugh
50 books12 followersTison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature and has published on children’s literature in such journals as Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Marvels and Tales.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 30, 2018
Looking at a selection of American family sit-coms from Leave it Beaver to Modern Family, Pugh analyzes how television portrays gender and sexuality. While narrow in its approach, Pugh's book would make for a great reader in an undergraduate course on sexuality and representation.
'This book contributes to this ongoing discussion by exploring how the fantasies of genre, of marketing, and of children can never fully cloak the queerness lurking within the plucky families designed for American viewers' comic delight. Queer readings of family sitcoms demolish myths of yesteryear, demonstrating the illusion of American sexual innocence in television's early programs and its lasting consequences in the nation's self-construction, as they also allow fresh insights into the ways in which more recent programs negotiate new visions of sexuality while remaining indebted to previous narrative traditions and long-standing generic conventions." 4
"When we think of children, we think of the cultural fantasies of children-young, fresh-faces naifs in need of parental and community guidance to nurture them into adolescence and then adulthood-an often true yet strikingly simplistic assessment of their maturation process." 13
"Children's innocence may appear to be a timeless value-or, more precisely its advocates attempt to present it as a timeless value-yet images of children's innocence have shifted remarkably within television's relatively short history, which further adumbrates the queer potential of the child. " 14
"Sociologists of the 1950s such as James Bossard and Eleanor Boll noted a transition in the United States from adult-centred to child-centred families, documenting, "a radical change in the whole idea of the child's relative place in the family," such that "one finds a tendency, first, toward more 'child-centred' ritual, and, second, toward a change in the emphasis of the content of the family rituals which function as control or education, from one of narrowly channelizing behaviour to one of liberating and guiding potentialities." 45
"Queer theory intersects with children's narratives in their joint focus on the social meaning of the Child. As Lee Edelman argues, the figure of the Child, a powerful signifier of cultural innocence, demarcates normative behaviours and pleasures for adults: "The Child," he posits, "marks the fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity." 52
"Nostalgia wields its inexorable pull as individuals recoat their yesteryears with patinas of affection and loss, not simply remembering events of their youth but imbuing them with a warm, hazy glow, as well as regret for their passing. As Soren Kierkegaard muses: "To live in recollection is the most perfect life imaginable; recollection is more richly satisfying than all actuality, and it has a security that no actuality possesses. A recollected life has already passed into eternity and has no temporal interest anymore. The past becomes a longed-for-paradise, one with its disappointments erased from view. With a dash of cynicism, Ralph Harper proposes that "nostalgia is neither illusion nor repetition; it is a return to something we have never had. And yet the very force of it is just that in it the lost is recognized, is familiar. Through nostalgia we know not only what we hold most dear, but the quality of experiencing that we deny ourselves habitually. Nostalgia, then, does not simply entail a remembrance of things past but a celebration of a fantasy of that past. Furthermore, in sugar-coating one's history, nostalgia threatens to dull one's sensibilities, as Charles Maier suggests through his memorable anthology: "Nostalgia is to memory as kitsch is to art." 71
"Within Roseanne's allegorical consideration of blue-collar life without union, her struggles to provide for her family showcase a mother's tribulations in times of economic duress, with Barr's body, through her defiant presentation of fatness, metonymically capturing the program's ethos. As Julie Bettie states, "In Roseanne, the socially "low" is marked by Roseanne and Dan Conner's large bodies, in striking contrast to the thin and normatively beautiful characters of middle-class sitcoms." 112
'This book contributes to this ongoing discussion by exploring how the fantasies of genre, of marketing, and of children can never fully cloak the queerness lurking within the plucky families designed for American viewers' comic delight. Queer readings of family sitcoms demolish myths of yesteryear, demonstrating the illusion of American sexual innocence in television's early programs and its lasting consequences in the nation's self-construction, as they also allow fresh insights into the ways in which more recent programs negotiate new visions of sexuality while remaining indebted to previous narrative traditions and long-standing generic conventions." 4
"When we think of children, we think of the cultural fantasies of children-young, fresh-faces naifs in need of parental and community guidance to nurture them into adolescence and then adulthood-an often true yet strikingly simplistic assessment of their maturation process." 13
"Children's innocence may appear to be a timeless value-or, more precisely its advocates attempt to present it as a timeless value-yet images of children's innocence have shifted remarkably within television's relatively short history, which further adumbrates the queer potential of the child. " 14
"Sociologists of the 1950s such as James Bossard and Eleanor Boll noted a transition in the United States from adult-centred to child-centred families, documenting, "a radical change in the whole idea of the child's relative place in the family," such that "one finds a tendency, first, toward more 'child-centred' ritual, and, second, toward a change in the emphasis of the content of the family rituals which function as control or education, from one of narrowly channelizing behaviour to one of liberating and guiding potentialities." 45
"Queer theory intersects with children's narratives in their joint focus on the social meaning of the Child. As Lee Edelman argues, the figure of the Child, a powerful signifier of cultural innocence, demarcates normative behaviours and pleasures for adults: "The Child," he posits, "marks the fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity." 52
"Nostalgia wields its inexorable pull as individuals recoat their yesteryears with patinas of affection and loss, not simply remembering events of their youth but imbuing them with a warm, hazy glow, as well as regret for their passing. As Soren Kierkegaard muses: "To live in recollection is the most perfect life imaginable; recollection is more richly satisfying than all actuality, and it has a security that no actuality possesses. A recollected life has already passed into eternity and has no temporal interest anymore. The past becomes a longed-for-paradise, one with its disappointments erased from view. With a dash of cynicism, Ralph Harper proposes that "nostalgia is neither illusion nor repetition; it is a return to something we have never had. And yet the very force of it is just that in it the lost is recognized, is familiar. Through nostalgia we know not only what we hold most dear, but the quality of experiencing that we deny ourselves habitually. Nostalgia, then, does not simply entail a remembrance of things past but a celebration of a fantasy of that past. Furthermore, in sugar-coating one's history, nostalgia threatens to dull one's sensibilities, as Charles Maier suggests through his memorable anthology: "Nostalgia is to memory as kitsch is to art." 71
"Within Roseanne's allegorical consideration of blue-collar life without union, her struggles to provide for her family showcase a mother's tribulations in times of economic duress, with Barr's body, through her defiant presentation of fatness, metonymically capturing the program's ethos. As Julie Bettie states, "In Roseanne, the socially "low" is marked by Roseanne and Dan Conner's large bodies, in striking contrast to the thin and normatively beautiful characters of middle-class sitcoms." 112
September 11, 2019
Very interesting and relevant points were made, but perhaps the book is too example-based for every reader to have a good general idea of the point it’s trying to make and the timeline it tries to trace. I don’t really see how else it could’ve been done, but for people like me who had never heard of shows like Leave it to Beaver before reading this book, it can get a bit confusing.
I did thoroughly enjoy chapters on mor recent shows like Hannah Montana and Modern Family, though. It’s very enlightening to see a show in an angle that we rarely ever discuss as a society.
I did thoroughly enjoy chapters on mor recent shows like Hannah Montana and Modern Family, though. It’s very enlightening to see a show in an angle that we rarely ever discuss as a society.
July 15, 2019
I have a low tolerance for sitcoms in general, but this still proved to be a fascinating read. Of course, I'm the type of person who prefers reading about tv than actually watching it.
My favorite chapter was the one about Roseanne. While I'm not a fan of the sitcom, it was pretty groundbreaking for its time, especially in terms of how it portrayed women and gay people.
4 out of 5 stars, would recommend.
My favorite chapter was the one about Roseanne. While I'm not a fan of the sitcom, it was pretty groundbreaking for its time, especially in terms of how it portrayed women and gay people.
4 out of 5 stars, would recommend.
November 21, 2021
maybe it's just me, but i feel like nothing new was said here.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews