Transgressing Later Life Sexualities in British Sitcoms

By (author) Franziska Röber

ISBN13: 9781350473508

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format: Hardback

Published: 24/07/2025

Availability: Not yet available

Description
Based on close readings of three major sitcoms, this book unpacks how sitcoms understand later life sexualities and focusses on how they represent sexually active older adults. Focusing on three representative sitcoms - Waiting for God, The Old Guys and Vicious - it demonstrates the ways in which sitcoms specifically enable and restrict representations of later life sexualities. Tracing how transgressive portrayals of sexually active older adults are couched in comedic terms, it opens up new critical perspectives on later life sexualities that will critically inform public debates and academic research – in Britain and beyond.
Acknowledgements Introduction: Opening Sequence 1.1 Understanding Later Life 1.2 Understanding Later Life Sexuality 1.3 Later Life Sexuality on Screen 1.4 Materials and Aims Chapter 1: Conventionally Unconventional: The Sitcom 2.1 Ordinariness and Domesticity 2.2 Humour and Laughter 2.3 Seriality Chapter 2: In The Back Of A Mini: Waiting For God And Later Life Sexualities 3.1 Wouldn't Look Good in the Papers: Sexuality in Waiting for God 3.1.1 The Top-Dude: Basil Makepeace 3.1.2 A Middle-Class Dugout: Diana Trent 3.2 Mostly Talk, Some Action: Conclusion Chapter 3: Pretty Fly For Two Old Guys: Homosociality And Later Life (Male) Sexualities 4.1 Good, Clean, Dirty Fun: Sexuality in The Old Guys 4.2 I May Swing a Bit: Queered Sexualities in The Old Guys 4.3 90% Straight: Homosociality and The Old Guys 4.4 A Sexy Blitz: Sally as the Idealised Woman 4.4 All Talk, Little Action: Conclusion Chapter 4: Walking Into Elton John's Closet: Vicious And Queer Sexualities 5.1 Let's Get This Straight: Queering Later Life 5.2 Broad Tastes and Over 40: Framing Violet Crosby 5.3 It's Like Living in Disneyland: Framing Freddie Thornhill and Stuart Bixby as Respectably Queer 5.3.1 Queer Spaces: The Sitcom 5.3.2 Keeping it Respectably Queer 5.4 Some Talk, Even Less Action: Sexualities in Vicious Chapter 5: Closing Sequence 6.1 Domesticity and Later Life Sexuality 6.2 Laughter, Comedy, and Later Life Sexuality 6.3 Seriality and Later Life Sexuality 6.4 End Credits BIBLIOGRAPHY Films Series References
  • Television
  • Performing arts: comedy
  • Professional & Vocational
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