Introduction

Sitcoms have been one of the most popular forms of programming since the earliest days of television. Although pundits periodically proclaim that the genre is dead or dying, it is clear to us that sitcoms are quite healthy. Not only are conventional, live-action sitcoms among the most popular series of several networks’ primetime schedules, but such inventive hybrids as The Office are taking the familiar form in new directions as well. Furthermore, syndicated sitcoms from various eras are mainstays of broadcast and cable stations at all hours of the day and night. Sitcoms are not only surviving; they are thriving.

When we distributed a call for our 2005 anthology The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed, we were not surprised by the enthusiastic response from scholars and the large number of abstracts and completed chapters submitted, but we were a bit surprised by the strong interest among scholars in animated sitcoms. From those submissions alone, we could have produced interesting, singular anthologies on The Simpsons and on South Park as well as a third covering other animated series. Several chapters in the completed volume deal with shows such as The Simpsons and South Park, but we barely scratched the surface of this topic in The Sitcom Reader and wanted very much to spend some more time with animated sitcoms in this special issue of the Journal of Film and Video.

In “Beyond a Cutout World: Ethnic Humor and Discursive Integration in South Park,” Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx look at ways offensive ethnic humor operates within a broader discursive context. Close readings of several episodes of South Park alongside concurrent cultural events bolster their argument that “the program’s integration of offensive humor into contemporaneous media discussions of ethnic prejudice works to show such prejudice as a systematic, social problem, not one that can be blamed on certain ‘bad’ individuals,” but the authors also acknowledge that the openness of the issues presented on the show leaves space at times for the positions of the prejudiced characters to remain unchallenged. Ultimately, Sienkiewicz and Marx provide a useful framework for examining offensive humor in animated sitcoms (and in other media texts) and point out negative and positive elements of the ways controversial topics are debated in certain comedic texts.

Chiara Ferrari examines strategies employed in translating The Simpsons to make the show appealing to Italian audiences. In “Dubbing The Simpsons: Or How Groundskeeper Willie Lost His Kilt in Sardinia,” Ferrari looks specifically at three main areas. She explores how the translation of The Simpsons modifies the characters within a national framework of reference, how the translation reproduces the ethnic and racial multiplicity of The Simpsons within Italy’s geographic borders, and how Italian television translates and adapts the many cultural references in The Simpsons to recreate the show’s humor, satire, and irony. Her analysis reveals a complexity in the interplay among nations producing, distributing, and showing television programs that suggests some models of cultural imperialism seem reductive without an adequate consideration of how “dubbing provides a rich array of tools that allow national media industries to domesticate distributed television texts for national audiences.”

The essay “‘I Am Not Down with That’: King of the Hill and Sitcom Satire” gives Ethan Thompson an opportunity to make a case for one of the only shows I (Dalton) record whenever a new episode appears on the FOX schedule. Casual viewers (and some critics) underestimate creators Greg Daniels and Mike Judge and suppose that the series is poking fun at Hank Hill rather than identifying with him. In this essay, Thompson sets out “to understand how the series has balanced twin imperatives of being funny and being relevant through an examination of the show as ‘sitcom satire.’” His analysis includes an industrial history of the series, textual analysis of several illustrative episodes, and comments from focus group members who watched selected episodes and then discussed them together. Thompson attributes the resiliency of King of the Hill to several factors, including the fact that it is animated and that it is a domestic sitcom.

Although the series Family Guy is mentioned in a couple...