Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Situating Saturday Night Live within American Television Culture / Nick Marx, Matt Sienkiewicz, and Ron Becker
Part I: Live from New York on NBC
2. The Evolution of Saturday Night / Michele Hilmes
3. "Live from New York!" / Susan Murray
4. Michael O'Donoghue, Experimental Television Comedy, and Saturday Night Live's Authorship / Evan Elkins
Part II: Staying Alive on Saturday Night
5. Politics and the Brand: Saturday Night Live's Campaign Season Humor and Cultural Relevance / Jeffrey P. Jones
6. Speaking Too Soon: SNL, 9/11 and the Remaking of American Irony / Matt Sienkiewicz
7. Live Music: Mediating Musical Performance and Discord on Saturday Night Live / Alyxandra Vesey
8. Going Backstage: Network Heritage, Industrial Identities, and Reiterated Mediation of Saturday Night Live's Work Worlds / Derek Johnson
Part III: Social Politics and Comedic Representation
9: Bringing the Black: Eddie Murphy and African American Humor on Saturday Night Live / Racquel Gates
10. "Is this the Era of the Woman?": SNL's Gender Politics in the New Millennium / Caryn Murphy
11. "Reading Fauxbama: 'Honeyface' Performance on SNL" / Mary Beltrán
Part IV: Beyond Saturday Night, Beyond Television
12.Skits Strung Together: Performance, Narrative, and the Sketch Comedy Aesthetic in SNL Films / Nick Marx
13. Andy Samberg's Digital Success Story and Other Myths of the Internet Comedy Club / Ethan Thompson and Ethan Tussey
14. Sketches Gone Viral: From Watercooler Talk to Participatory Comedy / David Gurney
Contributors
Index

Promotional Information

Exploring the evolution of media culture through SNL

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.

Reviews

"The editors of this volume have produced a book that is not just important but vital. "Saturday Night Live" and American Television Culture offers a diversity of perspectives, and the essays are strong from start to finish. It stands out as distinctive." - Christine Becker, author of It's the Pictures That Got Small: Hollywood Film Stars on 1950s Television