Popular Culture Review 30.2 • Summer 2019 Book Review
Television Comedy and Femininity : Queering Gender . By Rosie White . I . B . Tauris & Co , 2018 . 226 pages .
978-1-78453-362-5 , pp . viii – 226 .
Reviewed by Clayton N . Cobb University of Nevada , Las Vegas
While many people flick on their favorite show after dinner as a means of checking out of the late capitalism existences that they inhabit from nine to five , Rosie White ’ s Television Comedy and Femininity : Queering Gender reminds readers that television is unusually rich with critique of those very existences . As White exposes in her intricately researched yet accessibly written scholarship , TV comedies have openly challenged heteronormativity , heterofemininity , and hegemonic masculinity since the earliest days of network sitcom , and “ unruly ” women have always held an integral role in those challenges ( 63 – 64 ). White notes , “ Funny women are always already odd , other , and out of step with the fiction of hegemonic femininity ,” paving the way for the queer readings and reorientations that she enacts throughout her work ( 13 ). White uncovers , recovers , and deconstructs feminine queerness , demonstrating how gender and sexual orientation have developed within television narrative through feminist and postfeminist eras .
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White ’ s book covers the extensive critical ground in relatively few pages , offering queer readings of landmark American television classics such as I Love Lucy , Sex and the City , 30 Rock , and Parks and Recreation ; lesser-known American sitdoi : 10.18278 / pcr . 30.2.13