Comic Interventions: Passion and the men's movement in the situation comedy, Home Improvement

In the 1990s, the media has taken an important role in the interrogations a nd negotiations of masculinity that constitute a politics of masculinity. T o this end, individual products may be seen in terms of discourses constitu tive of the politics of masculinity interrogating themselves in ways which reveal inherent tensions and contradictions. At the same lime they also rev eal much about cultural attributes of masculinity which seem to resist rede finition and renegotiation. The American situation comedy, Home Improvement , is taken as an example of these media political processes, the reflexive potential of its comic form being directed as the 'spiritualist' strand of the men's movement in the late twentieth century. The paper shows that by r e-locating the discourse in the world of work, about which the 'spiritualis ts' have little to say, and then using comedy to interrogate the subject po sitioning and discursively constructed relations of the discourse, the sitc om raises problematic areas of authenticity and male passion, areas which a lso link the concerns of the 'spiritualists' to other cultural construction s of masculinity and other discourses and areas in the politics of masculin ity.