Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis: On the Couch with Lucy, Basil, and Kimmie - Softcover

D.T. Klika

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501354906 ISBN 13: 9781501354908

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Synopsis

Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis puts the sitcom character on the analysts couch and closely examines the characters of Basil Fawlty, Lucy Ricardo and Kim from Australias Kath & Kim, in order to reveal the essential elements that must exist in a sitcom before even the first joke is written. Original in its approach, D.T. Klika uncovers major findings about the sitcom as well as human behavior and relationships that we find arresting and even familial. By offering a new way of reading the sitcom using psychoanalytic theory, this book can be used as a basis for engaging in critical discourses as well as textual analysis of programs. Psychoanalytic theory enables a reading of character motivations and relationships, in turn elucidating the power struggle that exists between characters in this form of comedy. Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis shines a light on what is at play in the sitcom that makes us laugh, and why we love the characters we do, only to discover that this form of comedy is more complex than we first thought.

About this title

Review:

The complexities of the supposedly simple matter of comedy are rigorously and thoughtfully unpicked in this book, which offers a psychoanalytical framework that is both innovative and illuminating. By focussing on character, Klikas book develops fruitful frameworks for thinking about how comedy works in terms of narrative, genre and performance. As such, it represents a significant intervention in thinking about humour, television and the sitcom. --Brett Mills, Senior Lecturer in Television Studies, University of East Anglia, UK

This lively and engaging book, written from the perspective of a scriptwriter, brings a broad range of psychoanalytic theory to the understanding of our most cherished television characters and beloved incidents of recent and not so recent sit-coms from the UK, US and Australia. Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis provides an excellent treatment of the specificity of this comic form: it is original in its theoretical endeavour, incisive in its analyses, and compelling in its descriptions. The study is simultaneously comprehensive in scope and provocative in its demand for a deeper reflection on the attraction of the form and the nature of our investment in it. --Dr Lisa Trahair, School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Australia

About the Author:

D.T. Klika is Lecturer in TV and Film Production at Middlesex University, UK. Klika has had a thirty year fascination with the sitcom from its theoretical underpinnings to its sociological appeal - that began with membership of the British Film Institutes seminal TV Sitcom group (1982). Klika has worked as a writer, producer, script advisor and written three sitcom pilots, one of which was nominated for the Australian Writers Guild Monte Miller Award another was recently nominated for the New York Screenplay Contest.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1501354906
• ISBN 13: 9781501354908
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224