Sketching Out Portlandia's Musical Layers

Driver, E; Attfield, SJ

Sketching Out Portlandia's Musical Layers

Driver, E Attfield, SJ

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Publisher:: Routledge
Publication Type:: Chapter
Citation:: Music in Comedy Television Notes on Laughs, 2017, pp. 142 - 156
Issue Date:: 2017

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Driver, E	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Attfield, SJ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2265-6284	en_US
dc.contributor.editor	Giuffre, L	en_US
dc.date.issued	2017	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Music in Comedy Television Notes on Laughs, 2017, pp. 142 - 156	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9781138193581	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/126889
dc.description.abstract	Sketch comedy is not new. It has its roots in variety television and radio, and further back in vaudeville, music hall, nineteenth-century theatre “afterpieces,” and even Renaissance commedia dell’arte (Neale, 1990: 182). American show Portlandia (2011–present) is a conventional TV sketch comedy in that its sketches include a variety of devices such as satire, parody, slapstick, and catchphrase comedy (Mundy and White, 2012: 123), and there are musical number sketches (common to many sketch shows such as Saturday Night Live). But Portlandia is arguably the only sketch show so far—at least in the English-speaking world—to fully integrate popular music. Music not only features in the show in a variety of ways to be discussed in this chapter, but the show also uses a music industry model both in its structure and in the way it is produced and promoted (Powers, 2014). Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the stars and co-creators of Portlandia, use music as one their principal devices for generating storylines and depicting characters.	en_US
dc.publisher	Routledge	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Music in Comedy Television Notes on Laughs	en_US
dc.title	Sketching Out Portlandia's Musical Layers	en_US
dc.type	Chapter
utslib.location	UK	en_US
utslib.for	1902 Film, Television and Digital Media	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/e-Press
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Creative Writing Program
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	false	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	UK	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

Sketch comedy is not new. It has its roots in variety television and radio, and further back in vaudeville, music hall, nineteenth-century theatre “afterpieces,” and even Renaissance commedia dell’arte (Neale, 1990: 182). American show Portlandia (2011–present) is a conventional TV sketch comedy in that its sketches include a variety of devices such as satire, parody, slapstick, and catchphrase comedy (Mundy and White, 2012: 123), and there are musical number sketches (common to many sketch shows such as Saturday Night Live). But Portlandia is arguably the only sketch show so far—at least in the English-speaking world—to fully integrate popular music. Music not only features in the show in a variety of ways to be discussed in this chapter, but the show also uses a music industry model both in its structure and in the way it is produced and promoted (Powers, 2014). Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the stars and co-creators of Portlandia, use music as one their principal devices for generating storylines and depicting characters.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/126889