Television Sitcom and Cultural Crisis demonstrates that television comedies are conduits through which we might resist normative ways of thinking about cultural crises.
Introduction: Humor and/in Crisis Part I: Systems and Institutions 1. "Quiet Quitters": Detectorists, Hobbies and Resistance to Neoliberal Capitalism 2. Laughing to Keep from Crying at Abbott Elementary: Humor's Potential in the Teacher Demoralization Crisis 3. The Struggle is Real and It's Hilarious: The Crisis of Choice in Workin' Moms 4. Comedy at Cloud 9: Union Dynamics and Corporate Critique in Superstore 5. Veep, Tragicomedy, and the Perpetual Crisis of American Democracy Part II: Identity and Representation 6. Never Have I Ever...Challenged Whiteness 7. "Poor People Can't Afford to Quit Their Jobs to Make Things Better": Working Class Crisis in The Conners 8. "No, the World Is Ending Because of Me": Satire, Neoliberal Crises, and the Millennial Female Subject in Search Party Part III: Speculation and Futurism 9. "It's Better Than Not Trying, Right?": The Good Place and Humor in the Durative Present 10. The Crisis of Technological Reliance and the Spectacle of Authority: Avenue 5's Ironic Depiction of Technology 11. Kinship at the End of the World: Apocalyptic Media and The Last Man on Earth as a Manifesto for Life in Eco-Crisis
Holly Willson Holladay is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Missouri State University, USA.
Chandler L. Classen is a doctoral candidate in Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.