The “mock‐macho” situation comedy: Hegemonic masculinity and its reiteration

This essay examines how Home Improvement and Coach play off the stereotypes of conventional masculinity in order to describe how these texts work to reiterate hegemonic masculinity. The analysis focuses on how the “mock‐macho” sitcom takes masculinity as an object of its own discourse and induces pleasure in the realization of masculinity as a gender performance. This study suggests some of the features and complexities of this discursive strategy and draws on Butler's (1990) concept of “gender parody” to theorize “mock‐macho” gender performances and their comic effectivity. The essay concludes with an assessment of the ambivalent gender politics of “mock‐macho” situation comedies.