The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom

By Tison Pugh

Rutgers University Press

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.

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Enjoyable to read, creative, and well-argued, The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom reconsiders the political potential of the sitcom in this much-needed addition to the field. Becca Cragin, Bowling Green State University

Weekly Book List, March 23, 2018 Chronicle of Higher Education

New Books in Communications Studies,' New Books Network podcast interview with Tison Pugh New Books Network

Transitions: Georgia Institute of Technology Selects New Chief, CUNY York College President to Step Down,' compiled by Julia Piper Chronicle of Higher Education

TISON PUGH is a professor of English at University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is the author of several books including Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality, and the Southern Literary Canon.

Introduction: TV's Three Queer Fantasies
1. The Queer Times of Leave It to Beaver: Beaver's Present, Ward's Past, and June's Future
2. Queer Innocence and Kitsch Nostalgia in The Brady Bunch
3. No Sex Please, We're African American: The Cosby Show's Queer Fear of Black Sexuality
4. Feminism, Homosexuality, and Blue-Collar Perversity in Roseanne
5. Allegory, Queer Authenticity, and Marketing Tween Sexuality in Hannah Montana
6. Conservative Narratology, Queer Politics, and the Humor of Gay Stereotypes in Modern Family
Conclusion: Tolstoy Was Wrong: or, On the Queer Reception of Television's Happy Families

Acknowledgments
List of Television Programs
Notes
Works Cited
Index

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