Saturday Night Live and American TV - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253010772 ISBN 13: 9780253010773

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2013

Synopsis

For over 35 years, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" has greeted late night–TV viewers looking for the best in sketch comedy and popular music. SNL is the variety show that launched the careers of a mass of comedians including Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Adam Sandler, among others. Week after week, SNL has produced unforgettable sketches and provocative political satire, adapting to changing times while staying true to its original vision of performing timely topical humor. With essays that address issues ranging from race and gender to authorship and comedic performance, "Saturday Night Live" and American TV follows the history of this 36-time Emmy-winning show and its place in the shifting social and media landscape of American television.

About this title

About the Author

Nick Marx is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.

Matt Sienkiewicz is Assistant Professor of Communication and International Studies at Boston College.

Ron Becker is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Miami University of Ohio where he is also an affiliate of the American Studies, Film Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs. He is the author of Gay TV and Straight America.

From Booklist

There have been a couple of good popular histories of Saturday Night Live, Hill and Weingrad’s Saturday Night (1986) and Shales and Andrew’s Live from New York (2002). Readers looking for a more analytical approach to SNL will want to check out this interesting collection of essays. The contributors, most university professors, take close looks at SNL’s political humor, its post-9/11 impact on the restoration of irony to American comedy, its handling of comedy aimed at an African American audience, its musical performers and how the show expects them to adjust their normal acts to fit into SNL’s format, and the show’s impact on network television (in 2006, NBC launched two series, a drama and a sitcom, about the production of a weekly sketch-comedy series). The writing here is quite dry, but the book is undeniably interesting as it explores the show from angles that many readers probably haven’t encountered previously. It takes a bit of work to get through the prose, but that effort is rewarded by a new appreciation for SNL’s creators, writers, and performers, and the ground they broke. --David Pitt

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0253010772
• ISBN 13: 9780253010773
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294
• Editor: Becker Ron, Marx Nick, Sienkiewicz Matt