Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in the Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy

Feltmate’s enticing title promises much, but delivers most of it in a humorless and dreary manner. Feltmate, a sociology professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, wisely focuses on three popular television programs that not only overflow with religious references but also often humorously subvert accepted ideas about religious beliefs and practices. Engaging in close readings of over 200 episodes of these shows, Feltmate explores the ways that they satirically question sacred texts, cults, Jesus, sacred sites, and various world religions. Such readings are the highlight in a book otherwise weighed by the heavy dullness of jargon: “Satirists take appropriate incongruities that arise from a conflict between the moral boundaries established by the different legitimations that support institutionalized religious plausibility structures and reinforce their own plausibility structures by denigrating their opponents.” Feltmate’s sometimes intriguing book loses its sense of humor in tiresome and repetitious language that obscures the real value of these television programs. (Apr.)