Maybe it is a big deal? Portrayals of erectile dysfunction in television comedy

This paper explores a surprisingly common yet critically overlooked televisual trope that regulates gender roles and sexual interactions: jokes about male impotence. Drawing from a close textual analysis of 40 episodes that deal with erectile dysfunction from 30 American and British television comedies spanning five decades, I argue that the humor surrounding depictions of impotence establishes norms that determine who has and deserves power and pleasure in sexual relationships. As a genre known for its proclivity to expose sexual taboos and anxieties, television comedy poses a rare site in which the causes of impotence, its ramifications, and the methods of coping with the condition are featured more prominently and discussed more openly compared to other media texts. Consequently, this paper is able to encompass many comedic scenes in many programs, providing a deeper understanding of the various mechanisms through which sexual scripts and notions of masculinity are constructed, normalized, and renegotiated.