Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis

D.T. Klika is Senior Lecturer in TV and Film Production at Middlesex University, UK. Klika has worked as a writer, producer, script advisor and written three sitcom pilots, one of which came fourth in the 2015 London Film Awards; another was awarded third place at the 2016 Cannes Screenplay Contest for best TV Comedy Pilot and has been produced as a research project for a book on writing and producing the fifteen minute TV Sitcom teaser pilot.

LIST OF FIGURES
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION: (re)Reading the sitcom.
0.1 – What is the sitcom?
0.2 – The psychology of the character.
0.3 – Using Psychoanalysis
0.4 – An overview: finding sitcom’s subversive side.
CHAPTER ONE: It begins with the (key) character.
1.1 – Narcissism and the comic character.
1.2 – The comic character’s struggle.
1.3 – Post-Freud and the comic.
1.4 – The character trapped in the gaze.
1.5 – Narcissus and Echo as comic characters.
1.6 – The key character as master of their world?
CHAPTER TWO: The perpetual (power) struggle of sitcom relationships.
2.1 – Fear and behaviour.
2.2 – Fear and desire.
2.3 – Fear and power.
2.4 – The key character’s struggle for a cohesive ‘self.’
CHAPTER THREE: Echoing the key character.
3.1 – The key character and their echo.
3.2 – Echo comic characters.
3.3– Group Shows: the echo that lies within.
3.4 – A return to the myth of Narcissus and Echo and its psychoanalytic roots.
3.5 – Echo and Narcissus: two sides of the psyche?
CHAPTER FOUR: The tension of the (closed) narrative.
4.1 – The key character and the narrative.
4.2 – Tension through the ‘diegetic reality’ of the narrative.
CHAPTER FIVE: Premise, performance and the discursive frame.
5.1 – Tension in the premise.
5.2 – The key character’s ‘frame.’
CONCLUSION: Sitcom: a (comic) site of struggle.
APPENDIX: Theory in Practice
Putting it on the page.
A.1 – To (re)Cap: questions from the chapters.
A.2 – (re)Reading the sitcom.
A.3 – (re)Developing the sitcom
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROGRAMOGRAPHY
INDEX