Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television

Silas Kaine Ezell is Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, USA

• Preface; Irony and incongruity in American humor; Frontiers, suburbs, politics, and poop: setting, episodic structure, and the American carnivalesque in the southwest humorists and animated television programs; No laughing matter: the relationship between American humor and American collective memory and history; African-American multiculturalism in The PJs and The Boondocks; The unkindest cut: animated television programs and postmodernism; Conclusion: irony and nihilism: postmodern, or American?; Bibliography; Index.

’Humor is one of those elusive things that we think we understand until we try to explain it. Therefore only the brave and foolhardy among scholars try. But Silas Kaine Ezell, in Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television, has not only accepted the challenge but acquitted himself with wit, intelligence, and critical success. This is an invaluable addition to the growing bookshelf of thoughtful and enlightening studies in American humor.’ M. Thomas Inge, Randolph-Macon College, USA ’Every now and then, an outstanding work of original research and judicious insight expands the horizons of scholarship. This book adroitly explores the comedic link between the canons of American literary humor and its reach to contemporary animated television programs. The author's assessment that animated humor has evolved into a distinct art form that reflects the cultures' collective memory is an incisive contribution to the expanding studies of humor.’ Joseph Boskin, Boston University, USA