Rather paradoxically, I suppose, I do like some books on the history of television comedy. I quite liked, for instance, a book I recently read on. American television comedy, David Marc’s Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, second edition, 1997), a book I found to be an excellent introduction to the history and culture of American television comedy of the sitcom and stand up variety.
Marc’s introduction to and synthesis on American television comedy in its sitcom forms (domesticoms, ruralcoms, magicoms, ethnicoms and racecoms, litcoms and the coms that mix and match those various subgenres), comedy variety (the product, as Marc notes, of music hall and vaudeville), and stand up, is grounded in almost a lifetime of studying and writing on American television and it shows. Marc does an excellent job of placing American television comedy and American television in general in their economic contexts (its commercialism, for example), their political contexts (censorship), their demographic contexts (ratings, market segmentation in the post-network era), and their cultural contexts (its structure; forms; political, economic, ideological, and identity correctnesses). He nicely explores the dominance of the sitcom in American TV land, something he attributes, in part, to its political, economic, ideological, and ethnic correctness and its, unlike much stand-up comedy, tendency toward the vanilla.
Marc does a nice job of exploring the terrain of the history of American television comedy. He takes us from the ethnicom (The Goldbergs, for example) in the early days of TV, to domesticoms (Father Knows Best, for example), to magicoms (a variation on the domesticom, see Bewtiched for example), to litcoms (the short and brief dominance of shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show All in the Family, and M*A*S*H, all of which are historically important but, in my opinion, aesthetically bland), to the return of the not so repressed domesticoms like Family Ties in the 1980s, to chosen family domesticoms that celebrate American diversity such as Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, and to the parodic and satiric contained by economic and ideological correctness domesticoms like Married...With Children and The Simpsons, both of which seem more daring than they really are as Marc notes. Marc nicely explores the decline of the American television comedy-variety show and its banishment to late night TV (The Tonight Show). He does an excellent job of exploring the impact of cable on American network television, one that led to audience declines for the big three of CBS, NBC, and ABC, and the advent of “real” stand up (the daring comedy of George Carlin on HBO, for example) on premium cable channels like HBO and the endless reruns of old sitcoms on basic cable channels and commercial channels. He nicely explores the standard structure and form of American sitcoms. They began, as he points out, with the familiar status quo, followed by a ritual error, the ritual lesson learned, and the return of the familiar status quo. Most viewers do like their rituals of repetition after all.
There are some missing pieces in Comic Visions. Marc does not explore how viewers read television comedies, something that is multiple and quite complex, and the multiple ways viewers use television in general, which is quite complex as well. He does not explore dramedy “sitcoms" such The Wonder Yeare. He does not explore a sitcom, a teencom which some, though not me, find innovative (example: Square Pegs). These absences will not please everyone but then we should remember that all history is selective and Marc’s history of American television comedy is no different.
All that said, Marc’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of America, the history of American culture, the history of American television, and the history of American television comedy. It is made even better by the fact that not only is the book grounded in sound exegesis and sound exegetical context analysis, but it is also, unlike many contemporary crystal ball textualist works on American literature, film, and television with their fetishisation of psychoanalysis, and sound hermeneutics, grounded in sound contextual analysis, in other words. Finally Comic Visions is—and I love this in particular—wonderfully acerbic in its homiletics. Very recommended.
