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A01=Victoria Sturtevant
abortion
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Ali Wong
Author_Victoria Sturtevant
automatic-update
Baby Cobra
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=APFA
Category=APT
Category=ATFA
Category=ATJ
Category=ATMC
Category=JBSF
Category=JFSJ
childbirth
comedy
contraception
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
feminism
film and television
gross-out comedy
humor
I Love Lucy
infertility
Jane the Virgin
Junior
Juno
Language_English
Lucille Ball
Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
miscarriage
Obvious Child
PA=Not yet available
popular culture
Pregnant
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Forthcoming
reproduction
reproductive justice
rom com
softlaunch
stand-up comedy

Product details

  • ISBN 9781477330432
  • Weight: 454g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 03 Dec 2024
  • Publisher: University of Texas Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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How changing depictions of pregnancy in comedy from the start of the twentieth century to the present show an evolution in attitudes toward women’s reproductive roles and rights.

Some of the most groundbreaking moments in American film and TV comedy have centered on pregnancy, from Lucille Ball’s real-life pregnancy on I Love Lucy, to the abortion plot on Maude; Murphy Brown’s controversial single motherhood; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pregnancy in Junior; or the third-trimester stand-up special Ali Wong: Baby Cobra.

In the first book-length study of pregnancy in popular comedy, Victoria Sturtevant examines the slow evolution of pregnancy tropes during the years of the Production Code; the sexual revolution and changing norms around nonmarital pregnancy in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the emphasis on biological clocks, infertility, adoption, and abortion from the 1980s to now.

Across this history, popular media have offered polite evasions and sentimentality instead of real candor about the physical and social complexities of pregnancy. But comedy has often led the way in puncturing these clichés, pointing an irreverent and satiric lens at the messy and sometimes absurd work of gestation. Ultimately, Sturtevant argues that comedy can reveal the distortions and lies that treat pregnancy as simple and natural “women’s work,” misrepresentations that rest at the heart of contemporary attacks on reproductive rights in the US.

Victoria Sturtevant is an associate professor of film and media studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of A Great Big Girl Like Me: The Films of Marie Dressler and co-editor of Hysterical! Women in American Comedy.