Bob's Burgers And The Simpsons: Textual Analysis

The dissertation will use textual analysis to help to build the argument. This method allows a more in-depth look at the text and apply relevant theories that have emerged in the reading. As Jane Stokes writes, textual analysis or, semiotics analysis, “addresses the ways in which the various elements of the text work together and interact with out cultural knowledge to generate meaning […] semiotics is about revealing the processes by which ideology is normalized” (2013, p. 124). At first I thought I could do a comparative analysis between Bob’s Burgers and the Simpsons, for example, but that would have ended up drawing the attention away from Bob’s Burgers. The dissertation will establish the show’s relationship with gender on the show’s own

This supposes that the rest of the show aligns itself with the suggested sample, even when most of the episodes have different writers and directors working on them. However, by choosing five episodes across multiple seasons, it is possible to construct arguments that provably resonate through the course of the show. From having seen the episodes of Bob’s Burgers now multiple times, I have been able to start to map out the possible findings my research will lead to. There is a reason for why the research question specifically frames the lack of irony in relation to gender representation, and that is due to Bob’s Burgers’ refusal to turn its characters themselves into the butt of the joke. The show steers away from malice, and in that regard the Belcher family is able to exist in a world where their individual gender performances are not laughed at nor belittled, at least within the family. Yet the dissertation will also have to acknowledge the perfunctory heteronormativity of the show, as Bob’s Burgers does feature a heterosexual couple with three children and the queerness of characters is only alluded to, never outright discussed. To contextualize this argument, Cooper states in her essay, that “at the center of heteronormativity is the traditional nuclear family” (2002, p. 49). Yet “one strategy to problematize a ‘primary site of heteronormativity’ is to depict the traditional family unit in ‘counter-normative ways’” (2002, p. 50). There is the possibility to argue, that while Bob’s Burgers does involve a nuclear family, the gendered performances manage to shift the portrayal to be “counter-normative” or at least close to it. However, at this point in the research, this issue as well as many others cannot be argued further due to lack of close engagement