Overview

Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis puts the sitcom character on the analyst’s couch and closely examines the characters of Basil Fawlty, Lucy Ricardo and Kim from Australia’s 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.

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9781501354908

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Reviews

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, Klika’s 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 *

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, Klika's 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 *

Author Information

D.T. Klika is Senior Lecturer in TV and Film Production at Middlesex University, UK. Klika has worked as a writer, producer, script advisor and written three sitcom pilots, one of which came fourth in the 2015 London Film Awards; another was awarded third place at the 2016 Cannes Screenplay Contest for best TV Comedy Pilot and has been produced as a research project for a book on writing and producing the fifteen minute TV Sitcom teaser pilot.

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