A State of Arrested Development: Critical Essays on the Innovative Television ComedyKristin M.Barton, Editor. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.

Abstract

A State of Arrested Development: Critical Essays on the Innovative Television Comedy Kristin M. Barton, Editor. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.In his collection of scholarship on the beloved Fox and Netflix sitcom, A State of Arrested Development: Critical Essays on the Innovative Television Comedy, editor Kristin M. Barton promises new and enlightening insight into Arrested Development from a multitude of backgrounds and academic viewpoints (6). With the wide variety of books focusing on a single television program or movie (most notably the Popular Culture and Philosophy series that covers everything from Doctor Who to Big Lebowski), another book doing this work might come across as white noise. Barton's anthology, however, delivers on its promise with compelling pieces from scholars of communication, literature, philosophy, theology, composition and rhetoric, among other disciplines.Because of the breadth of knowledge among its authors, A State of Arrested Development can boast a diverse range of approaches to its subject. first section offers analyses of the sitcom's treatment of such cultural issues as money, charity, conservation, race, and sexuality. Edwin Demper's piece, Living in Sudden Valley: Bluth Family and the Fault Lines of Ideology, provides an especially insightful Althusserian reading of the Bluths' misconceived ideology about finances. Another standout is Navid Sabet's The Ways of the Secular Flesh: Destabilizing the He tero - normative and Negotiating Non-Monolithic Sexualities. Sabet's analysis offers nuance and intricacy worthy of its subject matter.Barton's second section takes a psychological approach to the Bluth family. Jonah Ford's T'm a monster!': Monstrous and the Comedic supplies a particularly compelling analysis of Arrested Development's observation of the fine line between humor and horror. Joseph S. Walker rounds out this section brilliantly with his 'Obviously this blue part here is the land': Bluths, Decadence and Logic Adrift. He not only observes the show's resistance to interpretation but also its commentary on the decadence of American culture.In the third segment of the book, the writers consider Arrested Development in relation to literary and cinematic texts as diverse as Hamlet, Godfather, and Franz Kafka's Trial. Far from being mere exercises in comparative analysis, these essays reveal ongoing cultural anxieties about family, power, and subjectivity explored through the lens of Mitchell Hurwitz's satirical comedy. …