One right-on sister: Gender politics in Maude

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores representations and interactions of gender, humor and humanist—feminist thought in the American sitcom Maude. Starring Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan and produced by Norman Lear, this sitcom is explicitly, perhaps uniquely, feminist in content. Its privileged, white central character constantly challenges gender and other social inequalities in such a blunt manner that Dow dubbed her the ‘nightmare’ that second-wave feminism might produce. This article will explore Maude with reference to its societal context, and argue that the United States in the 1970s provided a uniquely accommodating cultural Zeitgeist (itself a result of the interconnected 1960s civil rights, student counterculture and emerging feminist activist movements) for the production of progressive television texts. Maude's eponymous protagonist emerges as all the more outrageous by comparison with then contemporary sitcom women in the United Kingdom, and by juxtaposition with Arthur's and McClanahan's subsequent collaboration in The Golden Girls (Hughes 1985–1992). This article focusses on the role of humor in Maude to communicate an awareness of social injustice, by deconstructing the interplay of various types of humor and comedic styles in the expression of politicized statements in the show's content, with particular reference to the sitcom format, the genre's popular appeal and its relation to wider social change.