Sitcoms

Numerosi prodotti di importazione arricchiscono sempre più spesso l’offerta dei media italiani, tv compresa: in questo modo, nel nostro Paese approdano contenuti che non sono pensati e realizzati appositamente per il pubblico nazionale, ma che, una volta trasferiti e adattati, mutano – almeno in parte – la loro forma. In ambito televisivo, un caso particolarmente interessante è quello della situation comedy americana: un genere centrale nella tv statunitense, ma che in Italia è insieme molto diffuso nei palinsesti e spesso frainteso, complesso da tradurre e talvolta ricostruito – o persino stravolto –, disprezzato ma visto (e rivisto) da intere generazioni di spettatori. Questo volume pone le basi teoriche per uno stu dio dei processi di ‘mediazione’, solo apparentemente banali, che intercorrono nel passaggio di un prodotto mediale da un Paese all’altro: l’appropriazione nazionale (o ‘italianizzazione’), la traduzione, l’adattamento, la distribuzione. E poi applica queste basi a un’approfondita analisi delle vicende italiane della sitcom americana, e di alcuni suoi titoli in particolare (Seinfeld, Friends, Will & Grace, How I Met Your Mother), da tre punti di vista: la ricostruzione della sto ria del genere nel nostro Paese; la rassegna delle variazioni e modifiche traduttive che il prodotto televisivo si trova necessariamente ad affrontare; infine, il racconto della sua filiera produttiva e distributiva, delle routine traduttive e dei professionisti coinvolti. Per capire cosa cambia nella sitcom quando passa dagli Stati Uniti all’Italia, e perché.

Clase perteneciente a la asignatura Ficción Seriada Audiovisual y Multimedia en la que se muestra el nacimiento y evolución del género de la comedia seriada desde sus inicios hasta su salto a formatos online. Se repasa el mercado estadounidense y español, principalmente. Se ofrece estándares de producción de estos formatos.

Quy trình kiểm định kỹ thuật an toàn lao động đường ống dẫn khí đốt cố
định bằng kim loại (QTKĐ 05/2017/BCT do Cục Kỹ thuật an toàn và Môi trường công nghiệp chủ trì biên soạn và được ban hành kèm theo Thông tư số 10/2017/TT-BCT ngày 26 tháng 7 năm 2017 của Bộ Công Thương ban hành Quy trình kiểm định kỹ thuật an toàn lao động máy, thiết bị, vật tư có yêu cầu nghiêm ngặt về an toàn lao động thuộc thẩm quyền quản lý của Bộ Công Thương. https://kiemdinhsitc.com/kiem-dinh-duong-ong-dan-khi-dot/

NOTA: Este trabajó se publicó originalmente en inglés con el título “US Cult TV Series in the International Market: Considering the Reception of The X Files in Spain”, dentro del volumen editado por Marta Fernández Morales y José Igor Arranz Prieto, A Comparison of Popular TV in English and Spanish Speaking Societies: Soaps, Sci-Fi, Sitcoms, Adult Cartoons, and Cult Series (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010; 107-135). La traducción al castellano es mía y cuenta con el permiso de la editorial.

In comedies, the idea of community is an indispensable staple – be it as an (implied) audience, as butt of the joke or as what Werner Röcke has termed Lachgemeinschaften (communities of laughter), i.e. groups of an unforeseeable and fluid nature that can renegotiate power relations and social order. Communities of laughter can arise spontaneously, yet they follow conventionalized practices and rely on shared codes. This has allowed for their integration into generic forms such as film comedies, where the idea of community has featured prominently ever since the success of postwar Ealing films (such as Passport to Pimlico): here, a tightly-knit group of amicable underdogs usually challenges a powerful institution, negotiating questions of Britishness in the process.
This article traces the heritage of this type of Lachgemeinschaft in contemporary British comedies and points to a two-fold development.
Whilst the mildly anarchic but ultimately conciliatory spirit of Ealing comedy survives in recent box-office hits like The Full Monty or Made in Dagenham, there are other developments which challenge the idea of a community based on principles of mutual solidarity. It is television in particular where the recent rise of “cringe comedies” (often darkly humorous narratives invoking feelings of discomfort and embarrassment) suggests a much bleaker outlook on social reality.
The article draws upon numerous examples both from films and influential cringe series such as The Office in order to interrogate this divide, to question the importance of media-related difference in generating communities of laughter, and to analyse the underlying concepts of Britishness that become visible in the process.

ENGLISH SUMMARY

The book "Worlds To Be Continued. Analysing Possibilities of Serial Narrativity" (in Czech "Světy na pokračování. Rozbor možností seriálového vyprávění") is built upon the assumption that fictional stories presented as serials have been a longstanding part of nearly everyday experience with narrative arts; capitalizing on the case of TV shows, it presents the intellectual framework, research background and analytical tools to effectively describe, explore and explain serial fiction.

The approach is theoretically grounded in serial fiction poetics, which aims to (1) present a systemic explanation of serial fiction, (2) capture a variability of artistic possibilities of serial narrative and, (3) offer tools for the analysis of actual serial works.

The original concept of seriality serves as foundation for the first and second aims; it remains as mere background for analytical hypotheses with regard to the third aim. Serial fiction poetics, as presented here, assumes the presence of a space-time continuum, which is created by the work through interaction with its audience. This is process is termed a fictional macroworld: narrated stories take place within its conditions and settings. Each episode of a serial constitutes an episodic world; seriality denotes a relationship between the state of affairs in a macroworld at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macroworld at the end of the previous one. Depending on the intensity of connectedness between these two states and the relations of fictional characters to them, the book presents a typology of seriality, which serves as a functional and heuristic categorization, yet not as a substantive one.

(1) In the case of a separate seriality type, no fictional characters share the state of affairs at the end of the current episode with the state of affairs at the end of the previous one (e.g. The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964).
(2) In the case of a non-sequential seriality type, the current episode shares at least one fictional character with the state of the macroworld at the end of the previous one, without any open connection between these episodic worlds on the level of narrative causality (e.g. Columbo, 1968-2003).
(3) In the case of a semisequential seriality type, episodic worlds represent rather closed narrative units but they include at least one causal line of events, which continues in the state of affairs in the following episode (e.g. most of House, M.D., 2004-2012).
(4) In the case of a sequential seriality type, there are prevalent causal connections among episodic worlds on various levels (e.g. most of Dallas, 1978-1991; Pride and Prejudice, 1995; Stranger Things, 2016-?).
(5) Lastly, in the case of a disrupted seriality type, the standing linear composition of episodic worlds is problematized; instead of a line, it creates a network of relations among fictional elements in both states of affairs in a macroworld, where the currently valid state of affairs in a macroworld is being rewritten or retrospectively changed (e.g. Arabela, 1980-1981; Day Break, 2006; Lost, 2004-2010).

Worlds To Be Continued is divided into three parts, which are all based on analyses of a sample of roughly four hundred television serials from various countries and times.

1. SERIALITY AS A SYSTEM

The first part of the book gives a systemic explanation of seriality, using the five types top-down, and in these contexts, it describes ways of mediating information (a narrative outline) and issues of identifying fictional entities across episodes (a fictional macroworld arrangement). Both aspects turned out to be functionally related, and they expose a logic of an inner composition of seriality as a specific kind of fictional representation. The first part stands for a theoretical-descriptive dimension of the serial fiction poetics. It deals with relationships of seriality within a theoretical frame and, while considering its systemic transformations, it aims at a clarity of explanations.

2. SERIALITY AS A REGISTRY OF POSSIBILITIES

The second part of the book explores variable possibilities of serial narrative. It approaches the types of seriality from its material, bottom-up, as it explores preferred registries of artistic solutions both within the types of seriality and in the crime serial as a mode of fictional worldmaking. In these contexts, it studies (1) narrative process through an original question-based model of the analysis of a work, one which is not based on knowledge of a whole work, as in various other narratological concepts, because knowledge of this kind cannot be assumed in case of a serial work. The second part further focuses on (2) a fictional macroworld dynamics, which it explains through an original composite model, understanding a fictional macroworld as a dynamic interaction between various areas of a macroworld (microworlds and subworlds); this dynamics can be utilized to explain its happening. The second part of the book stands for a descriptive-analytical dimension of the serial fiction poetics. It deals with the art of seriality in a creative frame, explores registries of preferred artistic solutions, and aims at a productive depiction of a field of possibilities.

3. SERIALITY AS ANALYTICAL BACKGROUND

It was deemed necessary in the last, analytical part of the book to limit the range of types of seriality considered appropriate for research interest. Despite the descriptive potential of the typology, it represents a limiting set of categories for a dynamic analysis, disregarding the fact that one serial work often uses various types of seriality in a variety of patterns (e.g. Doctor Who, 1963-1988; The X Files, 1993-2016). What is specifically focused upon in the third part of the book are those tools which have so far constituted the basis for an analytical framework (narrative outline, fictional macroworld arrangement, question-based model of a narrative process, and composite model of macroworld dynamics) or its auxiliary categories (a cultural encyclopaedia, immersive spectatorship, and analytical spectatorship). The last two chapters attempt to offer the greatest possible degree of aesthetic sensitivity towards those works analysed and those explanations presented. An analysis of the serial 24 (2001-2010) explores tactics applied to achieve clarity and coherence within a very diverse system of narrative situates the work in the contexts of complex serials and those of action films of motion. The closing analysis of Mr. Bean (1989-1995) as a serial addresses the more general question of how can we systemically analyse the narrative and macroworld of serials that seemingly consist of a number of rather independent sketches. The third part of the book considers the analytical dimension of serial fiction poetics. It explores issues related to the explanatory potential of analyses of individual serial works within an aesthetic frame and aims at a maximum degree of adaptability in relation to the artistic uniqueness of these works.

The three parts of Worlds To Be Continued develop and transform, with respect to these three aims, which differ from each other but are also interrelated, only to answer the questions posed, in correspondence with the individual dimensions of serial fiction poetics, in ways that are at the same time systematic and aesthetically sensitive.

Desátá kapitola z knihy SVĚTY NA POKRAČOVÁNÍ. KOKEŠ, Radomír D. "Anatomie fazole: logika vývoje osobnosti, makrosvěta a osnovy Mr. Beana". In Týž. Světy na pokračování: Rozbor možností seriálového vyprávění. Praha: Akropolis, 2016, s. 163-178, 194-195.

OPRAVA: Strana 175 - "V první epizodě postava Beana ještě není příliš soudržná a trojice zobrazených situací se způsoby řešení či jejich rozvíjení významně nesouvisí, takže jsou v osnově provazovány jednoduchými, vizuálně sjednocenými motivy [...]." -> "V první epizodě postava Beana ještě není příliš soudržná a trojice zobrazených situací se způsoby řešení či jejich rozvíjení významně nepodobá, takže jsou v osnově provazovány jednoduchými, vizuálně sjednocenými motivy [...]."

For more than half a century, North American viewers have shared their lives with
sitcoms. They engaged with viewers through year-long arcs, hence creating habits of consumption that demanded viewers to sit through twenty-minute episodes on a weekly or bi- weekly basis. Therefore, a study of the sitcom genre, or any other television genre for that matter, must first and foremost engage with its medium. Interestingly enough, television and its content have often been studied for their effect on social consciousness. For example, in the 1950s, as Patricia Mellencamp argues in her essay, Situation Comedy, Feminism, and Freud: Discourses of Gracie and Lucy, sitcoms, short for situational comedy, have mirrored the US government’s military policy of containment, aiming to exclude women from the work force (42). However, these politics were not directly injected into the narrative, but instead they formed the very structure of the genre, profiting from “its obsessive repetition of the domestic regime” (52). In this sense, it is true that repetition is one of the key elements in the shaping of our behaviours. Ivan Pavlov’s famous experiment, which influenced classical conditioning and behaviourism, is just one example of how the repetition of one stimulus over a certain period of time will engender expectations, and eventually lead to the reconditioning of the subject. Though these techniques are commonly used in education and psychotherapy, it is not impossible to think that they have been applied elsewhere; working covertly within cultural discourse.

My thesis explores the use of metafiction, or self-reflexivity, in the Simpsons, especially in how the writers use it to position themselves within the genre of the cartoon and the sitcom, and comment on the successes and struggles that come with producing the longest-running animated series ever.

Da Lucy ed io a Friends, da Happy Days a The Big Bang Theory, da I Jefferson a The Good Place, da Casa Vianello a Boris: la situation comedy è un genere televisivo importante, che sembra semplice ma non lo è, ha un linguaggio stratificato e una storia piena di svolte. Fa ridere il pubblico con la sua sapiente miscela di innovazione e ripetizione, ha dato vita a un importante modello produttivo e industriale, riempie i palinsesti tra prime visioni e repliche. I suoi personaggi diventano popolari, i suoi racconti proseguono per tante stagioni e circolano pressoché dappertutto. Il volume traccia una definizione della sitcom e ne ricostruisce le principali evoluzioni, negli Stati Uniti come in Italia. Getta poi uno sguardo sul presente e sul futuro di un genere spesso trascurato ma ancora centrale, che nello scenario digitale non solo resiste ma si trasforma, insieme alla tv che cambia.

This book offers a long overdue, extensive study of one of the most significant programmes in the history of television, namely Friends. This sitcom has become a cultural phenomenon, but received rather little scholarly attention thus far, and the available critical literature tends to lack in-depth analysis. Featuring original interviews with key creative personnel (co-creator Marta Kauffman, executive producer Kevin S. Bright, director James Burrows and production designer John Shaffner), the book pays detailed attention to Friends’ use of humour, performance, style and set design. It also considers the programme’s politics of representation and the critical backlash it has been receiving in recent years. Moreover, the book looks beyond Friends to consider the show’s impact on global television production and reception by viewers across a range of national contexts. The book’s central argument is that Friends has become such a seminal success because it adopts a strategy of intima...

Cringe comedies differ from traditional embarrassment humour by being explicitly aimed at evoking not just the positive emotion of amusement but also the decidedly negative emotion of vicarious embarrassment (i.e. 'cringe') in their audiences. Drawing on Warren and McGraw's benign violation theory of humour and the concept of benign masochism, I offer a biocultural account of how they achieve this effect and why audiences counterintuitively seem to find it enjoyable. I argue that whereas a farce like Fawlty Towers (1975-1979) employs psychological distance in order to render its embarrassing violations thoroughly benign and thus singularly conducive to amusement, cringe comedies like The Office (2001-2003) and The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) comparatively decrease psychological distance in order also to evoke high levels of vicarious embarrassment. Finally, I argue that audiences find benignly masochistic pleasure in such cringe-inducing media because they offer vicarious experiences with social worst-case scenarios.

The article focuses on the co-creational labour made by professionals (and non-professionals) who, in a non-Anglo-Saxon country such as Italy, adapt and modify (heavily or slightly) the ‘original’ media products (i.e. TV series) in order to make them accessible to the domestic audience. After a concise introduction on the ‘Italianization’ process, the article proceeds to describe two ways of adapting nationally: the professional translation and dubbing system and the grassroots fansubbing phenomenon. The attention is both on the production routines and on their influence on the meaning of the text.

Dissertação de Mestrado - PUC-SP

Este trabalho propõe analisar as comédias seriadas da televisão norte-americana que parodiam o
formato documental. The Office, Parks and Recreation e Modern Family, produções que
constituem o corpus da presente pesquisa, são representantes de uma recente tendência na
programação televisiva dos Estados Unidos. Esta tendência, intensificada a partir da metade dos
anos 2000, consiste em apresentar o texto cômico ficcional em linguagem de documentário. Este
formato, por sua vez, rompe com a consolidada práxis do sitcom tradicional que, segundo
pesquisadores, apresentava-se estagnado, com as mesmas características desde I Love Lucy,
televisionado na década de 1950. Os objetivos são examinar a relação entre a popularidade atual
do formato e a conjuntura de seu surgimento: uma programação televisiva repleta de reality
shows e a massiva produção audiovisual amadora voltada para a internet. Trabalhamos com a
hipótese de um novo relacionamento do espectador com o discurso da
factualidade. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa será bibliográfica e documental, envolvendo o
entrevistas com os respectivos autores em publicações diversas e levantamento bibliográfico. A
base teórico-metodológica fundamental da pesquisa consiste nas obras de Jon Dovey e Mark
Andrejevic sobre reality TV e de Brett Mills e Antônio Savorelli sobre o sitcom.

This book offers a long overdue, extensive study of one of the most significant programmes in the history of television, namely Friends. This sitcom has become a cultural phenomenon, but received rather little scholarly attention thus far, and the available critical literature tends to lack in-depth analysis. Featuring original interviews with key creative personnel (co-creator Marta Kauffman, executive producer Kevin S. Bright, director James Burrows and production designer John Shaffner), the book pays detailed attention to Friends’ use of humour, performance, style and set design. It also considers the programme’s politics of representation and the critical backlash it has been receiving in recent years. Moreover, the book looks beyond Friends to consider the show’s impact on global television production and reception by viewers across a range of national contexts. The book’s central argument is that Friends has become such a seminal success because it adopts a strategy of intima...

Przedmiotem niniejszej analizy jest rola piosenek w amerykańskich sitcomach oraz możliwe problemy tłumaczeniowe związane z przekładem modyfikacji piosenek i nawiązań do znanychutworów muzycznych. Część teoretyczna poświęcona jest sitcomowi jako gatunkowi tekstu oraz ogólnym aspektom tłumaczenia piosenek. Następnie omówiono fragmenty zaczerpnięte z seriali „Friends”,„The Big Bang Theory”, „How I Met Your Mother” i z ich oficjalnych telewizyjnych tłumaczeń na język polski i niemiecki. Artykuł dowodzi, że w przypadku tłumaczenia sitcomów nieuniknione jest tłumaczenie piosenek oraz że w tym gatunku tłumaczenie piosenek stanowi równocześnie tłumaczenie humoru.

Artykuł ukazuje sitcom jako swoiście teatralny gatunek telewizyjny. O teatralnym charakterze sitcomu świadczy przede wszystkim jego geneza. Autor opisuje, w jaki sposób współczesne telewizyjne komedie sytuacyjne wyewoluowały z widowisk typu minstrel show, przedstawia także związki gatunku z wodewilem amerykańskim i francuskim. Ważnym elementem łączącym minstrel shows i wodewile z wczesnymi sitcomami jest humor etniczny. Ten typ komizmu trafił do telewizji poprzez radio, wraz z adaptacjami słuchowisk takich jak Amos ‘n’ Andy czy The Beulah Show. Junke pokazuje też, w jaki sposób ukształtowała się współczesna forma klasycznych sitcomów, blisko spokrewniona z wodewilowymi skeczami. Niezwykle istotnym aspektem podejmowanego zagadnienia jest fakt, iż komedie sytuacyjne są nagrywane z udziałem publiczności, bądź też udział ten symulują za pomocą tzw. laugh track. Również kamera zajmuje pozycję widza teatralnego, a twórcy w taki sposób używają filmowych środków wyrazu, aby podkreślić wrażenie umowności.

Abstract: The text attempts to portray sitcom as a specifically theatrical genre of television programming. The theatricality of sitcom is evident in its origins. The author describes how modern situation comedies evolved from minstrel shows, he also outlines the connections between the television genre and vaudeville, both American and French. Minstrel shows, vaudevilles and early television sitcoms all rely heavily on ethnic humor. This type of humor found its way to the new medium through radio, as it was at the core of television adaptations of radio sitcoms such as Amos ‘n’ Andy and The Beulah Show. Junke describes the shaping of classic television sitcom’s form, which is closely related to comic sketches featured in American vaudeville. An important aspect of the issue is the fact that sitcoms are taped before a live studio audience, or simulate the presence of such audience with the help of a laugh track. Camera in situation comedies assumes the position of a spectator and the filmmakers use the cinematic means of expression in such a manner as to emphasize its evident conventionality.

Since 1990, The Simpsons’ annual “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have constituted a production sub-context within the series, having their own conventions and historical trajectory. These specials incorporate horror plots and devices, as well as general references to science fiction, into the series’ base in situation comedy. The Halloween specials disrupt the series usual family-oriented sitcom structure, dissolving the ideological balances that stabilise that society. By depicting the Family and community in extreme circumstances, in seeing the horror of ‘how things could be’, the Treehouse episode leave us with hanging questions about the nature of social being that bleed into the regular sitcom-style episodes. By breaking from the comparatively realistic social-satire that characterizes the series as a whole, the Halloween specials cast a reflexive gaze back onto “The Simpsons” itself. As a result, the “Treehouse” episodes are valuable as a means of examining the strategies and implications of the series as a whole. Bakhtin’s model of the carnivalesque is utilised to underscore these disruptive traits that characterise the Treehouse episodes.

Este documento se detiene ampliamente en detallar cómo se ha construido el humor en la serie televisiva Friends. Esta comedia de situación estadounidense responde perfectamente al género clásico de la sitcom y, en consecuencia, se ha conseguido sistematizar fácilmente los recursos utilizados. Este apartado seguirá el siguiente esquema: los personajes, la situación, el chiste verbal (verbal funnies) y el humor visuales (visual gags) (Kelsey, 1990). Por considerarlos importante, también se añadirán los chistes conseguidos a través de recursos sonoros que a efectos de esta investigación se han acuñado como humor sonoro o sound gags.

Pertenece a la asignatura Ficción Seriada Audiovisual.

This paper aims to contribute to the burgeoning area of investigation into cinematic discourse with special attention devoted to the discrepancies in the comprehension process which is consequent upon the level of perception of humorous intention by different TV recipients. To accomplish the ultimate objective, the division of television discourse into the two communicative layers, viz. characters’ and recipients’, is taken as a starting point. More specifically, the meaning gleaned by the viewers is based on verbal and visual communication established between fictional characters. It is argued that three types of recipients, namely a regular viewer, metarecipient and fanrecipient, may construct different interpretations, with the regular recipient sometimes being oblivious to humorous intention. The study is pivoted on the claim that the production crew devises dialogues and monologues in such
a way to enable the audience find funniness.

Translation of catchphrases in sitcoms on the example of How I Met Your Mother
This paper takes as its subject the catchphrase "suit up" in How I Met Your Mother and its translations into German (dubbing) and into Polish (voice over). The objective of the analysis is to see whether this verbal phrase has a recurring character also in the translations and whether the translators succeeded in rendering in their versions many variations of this catchphrase .

«Sempre per le uscite librarie, segnalo la bella monografia di Angelo Iermano, La scienza e il comico. La comicità di The Big Bang Theory alla luce delle teorie del riso (Edizioni Sinestesie). Il titolo è molto chiaro, e il giovane studioso ci accompagna dentro la serie forse più seguita e importante degli ultimi anni attraverso un apparato teorico di primo livello. Tra i temi affrontati, anche quello del nerd. Come spiega l’autore, “il nerd, figura che è sempre stata messa in disparte nelle produzioni cinematografiche e televisive americane, trova adesso inaspettati spazi da protagonista, portando a termine un processo che ha radici lontane e che ne ha fatto una figura di spicco non solo dell’industria dell’audiovisivo ma anche del nostro tempo”.»
Roy Menarini, "Corpi di attrici e attori, (fanta)scienze e comicità", 15 febbraio 2018 (https://roymenarini.com/2018/02/15/corpi-di-attrici-e-attori-fantascienze-e-comicita/)

«La scienza e il comico» ripercorre la storia delle teorie del riso per spiegare le ragioni comiche della sitcom «The Big Bang Theory». I protagonisti della serie sono dei «nerd», personaggi molto strani e diversi da noi. Lo studio vuole spiegare perché questi suscitino il nostro riso, analizzando non solo i meccanismi delle forme comiche e umoristiche dello show, ma anche la comicità intrinseca dei personaggi, autentiche «maschere nerd». La serie inoltre ha stabilito uno stretto legame con la scienza, riuscendo anche a sfruttarne il rigido e astruso linguaggio per rivelarne il potenziale comico. Il longevo successo del programma si incarna in forme comiche e umoristiche inedite che, da ultimo, dimostrano quanto sia ben avviato il percorso verso la definita «rivincita» del nerd. Questi si è liberato dalle catene dello stereotipo dello studente secchione e bullizzato per divenire adulto e svelare la sua portata rivoluzionaria. Il suo essere naturalmente anticonformista e avverso alla normalità ha conquistato il mondo e ha imposto a tutti noi presunti normali il suo panorama culturale ed estetico. «The Big Bang Theory» è in tal senso uno dei contributi più decisivi di questo processo di «nerdizzazione del mondo».

This paper deals with visual jokes consisting of aural verbal part and visual (non)verbal part that can be found e.g. in US-American sitcoms such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and How I Met Your Mother. The first part of the paper characterises audiovisual works in general, taking into consideration relations between visual and aural channel. Then, the characteristics of voice-over translations are described. The main part of the paper analyses chosen examples of the visual jokes and their official Polish translations. It is of main interest to see whether the analysed fragments have the same function, i.e. humorous function, also in the target version, and if the relations between the visual and the aural channel were respected by the translator.

The present paper draws upon Sperber and Wilson's ([1986] 1995) Relevance Theory to undertake a pragmatic analysis of situation comedy (sitcom) discourse. More specifi cally, special attention is paid to the cognitive interpretative paths the viewer needs to take in order to fi nd a dialogue or monologue humorous. The analysis is premised upon the participation framework, which accounts for the bi-partite division of communication in fi ctional discourse: the character's (fi ctional) layer and the recipient's layer, the latter being in the centre of attention.

Świat według Kiepskich to jeden z najpopularniejszych (bo oglądanych przez miliony ) sitcomów ostatnich lat w reżyserii Okiła Khamidowa , następnie Patricka Yoki , produkowany przez ATM  dla Telewizji Polsat, a emitowany od 1999 roku do dziś . Przedstawia niezwykłe perypetie życiowe zwykłej, bo przeciętnej, bytującej na granicy minimum socjalnego rodziny Kiepskich oraz ich sąsiadów i jest w polskiej telewizji sitcomem wyjątkowym.

The focus of this work is on the formal construction of jokes within the popular form of entertainment, the televised workplace situation comedy. The narrative universe of a sitcom is a product of industry, and so it is created to have a mass appeal as well as to reinforce social norms. However, the smaller units of humor transmission within the sitcom, the jokes, enforce the reality of the constructed universe. What seems unremarkable to a character will seem absurd to an audience, and so the joke can be an instrument of challenging boundaries and social change.
Parallel to this analysis will be an exploration of the worlds created within these shows: how they operate and differ from our reality, how they reflect our society and in turn, how our society is informed by the power of these shared imaginary worlds. What is the impact on the collective imaginary and our relation to narratives when the barriers between them breech?
Specific objects of interest areThe Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1978), Murphy Brown (1988-1998), and 30 Rock (2006-2013). Despite the 40 year span of these works, each premise is centered around a white female protagonist living in a metropolitan area, balancing her domestic life with a career in the industry of television production. This dissonance of the boundary crossing examined is reflected in the shows within these shows (a live local news show, a weekly news magazine, and live variety show, respectively) revealing the both liberating and limiting act of constructing an aesthetic object that must present as authentic and authoritative.

The present study examines humour in the tenth season of the TV sitcom Friends and its translation from English into Lithuanian. With humour often believed to be culture-specific, humour translation presents a notorious issue in translation practice, as jocular content in the target language is often criticised for being poor and vague. Grounded in Raskin's (1985) theory of verbal humour and adopting Schjoldager's (2008) inventory of translation microstrategies, the article examines the components and mechanisms of humour in the source language and analyses the strategies applied to humour translation, focusing on whether the intended humorous effect is preserved in the target language. The article also seeks to establish to what extent humour as used in Friends is culture-dependent. The study was conducted at two levels. First, we briefly presented the essence of Raskin's model of humour, which centres around the notions of script and incongruity, and later applied it to the selected series to identify and analyse the data in the source language. We then supplemented the findings with the identification of jokes in the target language and assessment of translation microstrategies employed in rendering humorous instances in Lithuanian. The findings of the study are believed to further the theoretical and practical domains of translation from English into Lithuanian in particular and, more broadly, contribute to the discussion on the culture-specific worldview.

In spite of recent studies discussing its myriad definitions, the asexual orientation has rarely been discussed in regards to its representation within television programming, being regarded as a “relatively uncharted area of sexual variability”. Despite the common definition of asexuality as “a lack of sexual attraction”, the orientation has arguably received little accurate portrayal within televisual fiction, where as a consequence, its few representations could perceivably be viewed as enforcing imprecise or negative stereotypes. One of the most impactful means by which negative depictions of the asexual identity is potentially spread is through the genre of television comedy, given the perception of “humour as forces of conservatism” that can support the “preservation of the status quo”; in this case being the ideals of “heteronormativity”, which “presumes heterosexuality to be natural”.

This dissertation proposes to investigate representations of asexuality within television comedy, analysing how the term as a “sexual orientation, just like heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality” can be read and interpreted within a selection of case studies made up of examples of television sitcoms. By analysing how asexuality is discussed within media texts, the representations can then be likened to how other queer identities have been historically presented and stereotyped within television, as well as investigate how asexuality’s associated behavioural traits are central to the construction of humour within sitcom.

El presente trabajo de fin de máster plantea una aproximación a la recepción de las denominadas sitcom o comedias de situación a través de sus versiones dobladas al castellano. El estudio que aquí se ha realizado tiene como objeto la reflexión sobre el tratamiento de las identidades culturales mediante el análisis comparativo del doblaje al castellano de la sitcom norteamericana The Big Bang Theory. Sentando las bases teóricas sobre distintos estudios de traducción, hemos intentado analizar las diferentes técnicas de traducción empleadas para trasladar, de una cultura a otra, dichas identidades culturales con el fin de comprender de qué forma llegan representadas en la realidad cultural del espectador meta.

This article examines the Netflix revival of Full House, the family sitcom about three single men raising three girls that was part of the family-friendly “TGIF” (Thank Goodness It’s Funny) lineup ABC aired on Friday nights in the 1980s and 1990s. The 2016 release of Fuller House, I argue, was driven not only by the possibility to exploit an existing property with ongoing media and cultural presence in times of “peak TV” but also by Netflix’s strategic efforts to revive the bygone days of TGIF-style programming and reinvent family-friendly viewing in the era of complex television and online streaming platforms. In analyzing the Full House revival—its production and reception contexts, its carefully crafted text and paratexts, its position among complex dramas and edgy sitcoms—I will also trace the ways in which Fuller House engages in postfeminist discourse and raises pertinent questions about family values, gender roles, and ethnic diversity.

Translating humorous texts is definitely a hard task, since verbal humor is a phenomenon strongly linked to the internal structures of a given language and to the cultural context, but it can be even harder in case of audiovisual texts, where images have to match with words.
This paper is an attempt to find out if, translating a text strongly characterized by humor, losses are bigger (and more frequent) than gains, or if the contrary happens. To answer such a "research question", the American sit-com How I Met Your Mother and its Italian adaptation have been selected as case of study, due to the success the show has enjoyed throughout the years and due to some features that make it a stand-out in its genre.
The analysis of this paper is focused on two elements, puns and vulgar expressions: the humorous usage of puns is explained and justified by the Incongruity and Superiority Theories of Humor, while the usage of vulgar expressions with comic intentions is explained and justified by the Superiority and Release Theories.
The two different types of analysis, quantitative and qualitative, present in this paper show that losses are a very important part of such translations.

Julia Leyda focuses on the sitcom Arrested Development and the ground-breaking drama Breaking Bad. Both shows portray the moral and ethical laxity—in the business world and in US-American society and the family—that would later be invoked as the fulcrum of popular understanding of the economic crisis. However, both also depict the commonplace neoliberal appeals to self-improvement and individual responsibility that provided justification for the risky financial behavior that fueled the housing boom and ultimately brought down the economy. Leyda examines the ways in which the material and emotional spaces of the home were opened up to public scrutiny during the early years of the millennium, revealing the ways in which financialization had begun to permeate televised domestic spaces in the USA.

In this dissertation, I read gender humor through the lens of masculinities studies and critical humor studies to contribute to gender studies and humor studies. I engage two crucial problems and propose solutions and possibilities for redress. The first problem concerns the state of the concept of ridicule—as a form/aspect of humor—within gender-related debates and specifically ridicule’s place in challenging and enforcing gender hegemony. In such discussions, ridicule and humor are frequently mentioned as insidious social control strategies through which certain forms of masculinity and femininity are abjected. Despite their recognizing such role of ridicule, however, the above debates never grant the role any theoretical significance. Critically reviewing the related literature, I draw on Michael Billig’s theory of ridicule as a universal reinforcer of the social order to argue that ridicule, as occurring in mainstream gender humor, plays a panoptical role in enforcing inequitable gender relations. As a pervasive disciplinary tool, gendered ridicule causes self-regulation in social agents who then wish to consent to the cultural ascendancy of certain modes of gender performance and the subordination of certain other forms of performing gender. By connecting this fearful consent to debates in gender studies about the role of abjection in the creation of gendered subjectivities, I also hypothesize that ridicule occupies a necessary role in the creation of gendered beings in the first place. I raise my main argument in Chapter One. In Chapters Two to Four, I illustrate the argument by analyzing various types of mainstream gender humor—with a particular emphasis on the genres of canned joke and sitcom—from Iranian and Anglo-American (mainly the U.S. and the U.K.) societies and cultures. The main humor types and/or categories include those targeting women, homosexuals, effeminates as well as bodily non-normative and ethnic/racial femininities and masculinities. For the Anglo-American sections (Chapter Two and parts of Chapter Four), besides related joke cycles, episodes from the sitcoms Two and a Half Men (2003-2015) and Ellen (1994–1998) as well as spots from the Get a Mac Ad campaign (2006-2009) are analyzed. For the Iranian part (Chapter Three and parts of Chapter Four), the main focus is put on the contemporary Qazvini and Rashti joke cycles, the sexual humor of the classical Persian satirist Ubeyd Zakani (d. ca. 1370), and his modern counterparts. My main argument, given humor’s well-known potential for subversion, may arouse the objection that ridicule always exists as a counterhegemonic tool to resist hegemonic gender norms. I tackle this possibility in the last Chapter Five, where I discuss the possibilities and restraints of feminist and in-group lesbian humor as representative categories of fringe or non-mainstream gender humor. I argue that this resistant humor, due to its minimal normalizing power—compared to the heft of mainstream gender humor—apparently cannot offset the latter’s disciplinary power and thus be effectively subversive of patriarchy. The second problem I focus on is the way gender theories inform prevalent textual analyses of gender humor. Examining the pertinent literature, I argue that the critical blind spots need redress and enrichment. While analyzing gender humor, I argue, many humor scholars either resist gender theories or employ theories incapable of explaining intricacies related to gender. To address this insufficiency, I suggest that we use—as I have done throughout—comprehensive theories that not only embrace multiple masculinities and femininities but also heed the intersection of gender and other identity elements. I use Raewyn Connell’s gender hierarchy model as a case in point. In contrast to much work in gender studies that recognizes, yet understates, ridicule’s political force in favour of gender hierarchy, this research contends that the above force is universal and central, and therefore must be foregrounded in gender studies. Within humor studies, too, the research contrasts with exculpatory accounts of humor that downgrade or deny humor’s effect on the social order. My findings indicate that mainstream gender humor, while reflecting the gender order, is most likely to affect that order, too. Finally, unlike much research in feminist humor studies that puts too much hope in seditious functions of fringe or marginal gender humor, I find that such humor cannot find recognition among mainstream audiences unless its underlying assumptions find cultural ascendancy.