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theses

Sharing a Laugh examines the social and cultural roles of television situation comedy in Britain between 1945 and 1980. It argues that an exploration of sitcoms reveals the mindset of postwar Britons and highlights how television developed both as an industry and as a public institution. This research demonstrates how Britain metamorphosed in this period from a welfare state with an implicit promise to establish a meritocratic and expert-based society, into a multiracial, consumer society ruled by the market. It illustrates how this turnabout of British society was formulated, debated, and shaped in British sitcoms. This dissertation argues that both democratization (resulting from the expansion of the franchise after World War I) and decolonization in the post-World War II era, established culture as a prominent political space in which interaction and interconnection between state and society took place. Therefore, this work focuses on culture and on previously less noticed parties to the negotiation over power in society such as, media institutions, media practitioners, and their audiences. It demonstrates how British sitcom writers turned a form which was seen as frivolous entertainment into an inquiry that questioned the most fundamental structures of their society. Sitcoms thus addressed and engaged with the critical issues of British life: postwar consumer aspirations and shortage of housing, fears of Americanization, racism and the end of empire. Sitcoms’ incredible outreach extended these debates across the nation, and enabled a conversation that took place in the privacy of the home to resonant in the public sphere. The dissertation looks both at institutions and at trailblazing individuals who shaped the genre. It considers the role of audiences and of technological innovation in turning a staple of broadcasting into a site of public debate, education, and memory. It maintains that vintage sitcoms still shape contemporary audiences, and their understanding of the past through sitcoms’ repeated transmission on television, their availability on DVD, and via services such as YouTube.

ETD_4692

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Tal Zalmanovich

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000069013

doi:10.7282/T3DJ5D6W

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.