| This dissertation examines sketch comedy on television, film, and the Internet in the last 30 years, particularly its role within media industry constructions of innovation and differentiation. I argue that sketch comedy's textual qualities mirror recent media industrial infrastructures and practices that prize malleable content able to move flexibly across platforms and serve a number of commercial needs. But at the same time, the producers and performers of sketch comedy use this textual variability to negotiate their own notions of distinction, ones that often do not align with the industry's pursuit of profit. I elaborate the tension between these two forces in case studies of the television sketch comedy The State, the comedic film performances of former Saturday Night Live stars, and Internet shorts from FunnyorDie.com and The Onion, utilizing original archival material, production ethnography, interviews, and scholarly, trade, and popular press resources. These analyses shed new light on the production and performative strategies of popular comedic media, as well as how those media serve as a site for negotiating preferred industry practices. |
