After a slow and inauspicious beginning, Seinfeld broke through to become one of the most commercially successful sitcoms in the history of television. This fascinating book includes classic articles on the show by Geoffrey O'Brien and Bill Wyman (first published in the New York Review of Books and Salon.com respectively), and a selection of new and revised essays by some of the top television scholars in the US - looking at issues as wide-ranging as Seinfeld's Jewishness, alleged nihilism, food obsession, and long-running syndication. The book also includes a comprehensive episode guide, and Betty Lee's lexicon of Seinfeld language.

Examines the bleak television comedies that illustrate the obsession of the white left with its own anxiety and suffering At the same time that right-wing political figures like Donald Trump were elected and reactionary socio-economic policies like Brexit were voted into law, representations of bleakly comic white fragility spread across television screens. American and British programming that featured the abjection of young, middle-class, liberal white people—such as Broad City, Casual, You’re the Worst, Catastrophe, Fleabag, and Transparent—proliferated to wide popular acclaim in the 2010s. Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey track how these shows of the white left, obsessed with its own anxiety and suffering, are complicit in the rise and maintenance of the far right—particularly in the mobilization, representation, and sustenance of structural white supremacy on television. Nygaard and Lagerwey examine a cycle of dark television comedies, the focus of which are “horrible white people,” by putting them in conversation with similar upmarket comedies from creators and casts of color like Insecure, Atlanta, Dear White People, and Master of None. Through their analysis, they demonstrate the ways these non-white-centric shows negotiate prestige TV’s dominant aesthetics of whiteness and push back against the centering of white suffering in a time of cultural crisis. Through the lens of media analysis and feminist cultural studies, Nygaard and Lagerwey’s book opens up new ways of looking at contemporary television consumption—and the political, cultural, and social repercussions of these “horrible white people” shows, both on- and off-screen.

Seinfeld and the Comic Vision analyzes the television situation comedy Seinfeld to form a theory of comedy—the comic vision—arguing that comedy should not be seen merely as entertainment, but deserves to be taken seriously as expressing a philosophical worldview. Whitley Kaufman demonstrates how in Seinfeld, and in comedy on a larger scale, characters are given license to violate social norms and to fail to live up to societal ideals in a way that shows they remain fundamentally decent people. Kaufman examines how comedy can be seen as a celebration of the “lower” aspects of human nature—our more animal or bodily side—but argues that the comic vision is not cynical or pessimistic, but rather fundamentally affirmative of human nature and of life, despite the many human limitations. Scholars of television studies, media studies, pop culture, and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.

This fascinating and thought-provoking read challenges readers to consider entertainers and entertainment in new ways, and highlights figures from outside the worlds of film, television, and music as influential "pop stars."

The never-before-told story of how Jerry Seinfeld made his dream come true -- of how this very ambitious, extremely driven, compulsively perfectionistic carefully worked his way up through the knock-down-drag-out world of stand-up comedy as it began to explode in the mid-1970s, & how he went on to co-create in the late 80s what is considered to be the most successful TV sitcom in its history. From the start, Jerry has been extremely private about all aspects of his personal life. For more than a year, Oppenheimer conducted in-depth interviews with scores of Jerry s closes friends, family members, bus. assoc., lovers, & fellow comedians who spoke candidly, painting a riveting portrait of the beloved & talented comedian.

Presents a guide to the names and specialities of American and Canadian publishers, editors, and literary agents, including information on the acquisition process and on choosing literary agents.

Celebrating the nine-year run of the popular sitcom, a compendium of trivia from the series includes an episode guide, the "Seinfeld" rules of dating, and a collection of celebrity tributes

A longtime friend of Jerry Seinfeld's discusses how the television comedian got his start, what the hit television show Seinfeld was really about, and some of Jerry's private jokes

In a cautionary attempt to dissuade those who might be tempted to write such material, Teleparody is a compilation of reviews of fictional - but all to possible - contributions to academic Television Studies.

Intertextual encounters occur whenever an author or the author s text recognizes, references, alludes to, imitates, parodies, or otherwise elicits an audience member s familiarity with other texts. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West use the fiction of Horatio Alger, Jr., as an intertext in their novels, The Great Gatsby and A Cool Million. Callie Khouri and Ridley Scott use the buddy-road-picture genre as an intertext for their Thelma and Louise. In all these cases, intertextual encounters take place between artists, between texts, between texts and audiences, between artists and audiences. Michael Dunne investigates works from the 1830s to the 1990s and from the canonical American novel to Bugs Bunny and Jerry Seinfeld."

Consistently a top 10 show, Seinfeld continues to fascinate its fans. This celebration of the popular show includes profiles of the characters--revealing who inspired them--provides a tour of the New York locations made famous by the show, offers synopses of the "Episodes That Mattered", analyses of memorable lines, an interview with Wayne "Newman" King, and more. Photos & illustrations throughout.

Presents 500 of the most popular and meaningful events and shows in television history, including sitcoms, news events, dramas, game shows, mini-series, and classic TV shows