Abstract
The focus in this chapter is on Mitchell Hurwitz’s Netflix show, Lady Dynamite (2016–2017)—an audacious and challenging comedy, drawn from the real life of comedian Maria Bamford. In formal terms, the show moves fluidly across time periods, signalled by a number of different visual ‘looks’, with Bamford’s life and work treated as a kind of experimental memoir or scripted stand-up special. Beyond the relentless structural and stylistic zaniness, argues Taveira, lies a sobering and unflinching exploration of mental illness and resilience, presented as ‘Self-Help TV.’ By exploiting the genre of the self-help manual and its adaptation histories, Taveira explores Lady Dynamite’s attempts to both appropriate therapeutic ambition and also subject it to unsparing ridicule. Considering adaptation alongside its source text, Bamford’s stand-up oeuvre, and a history of adapting women’s stand-up for TV, including Roseanne (1988–2018) and Fleabag (2016–2019), Taveira introduces both scripted stand-up and the self-help book as ‘performative infidelities’ (Stam, 2017), literature worthy of study and adaptation that sprouts texts with their own extended, limitless afterlives.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Stam, “Revisionist Adaptation: Transtextuality, Cross-Cultural Dialogism, and Performative Infidelities,” The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. Thomas Lietch (Oxford University Press, 2017), 240.
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Stam, “Revisionist Adaptation,” 247.
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Kyle Ryan, “Maria Bamford is no longer terrified of her TV show,” AV Club, November 6, 2017, https://www.avclub.com/maria-bamford-is-no-longer-terrified-of-her-tv-show-1820081050
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Kaitlyn Tiffany, “Lady Dynamite’s brilliant second season is openly hostile toward Netflix, its platform,” The Verge, November 16, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/15/16635320/lady-dynamite-season-two-review-netflix-maria-bamford
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Sara Corbett, “The Weird, Scary and Ingenious Brain of Maria Bamford,” New York Times, July 17, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/magazine/the-weird-scary-and-ingenious-brain-of-maria-bamford.html
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I will refer to the character Maria Bamford as Maria and the real-life Maria Bamford as Bamford.
- 9.
Lady Dynamite, season 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” directed by Mitchell Hurwitz, written by Pam Brady and Mitchell Hurwitz, aired May 20, 2016, on Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80046194
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Lady Dynamite, “Pilot.”
- 11.
Lady Dynamite, season 2, episode 1, “Wet Racoon,” directed by Ryan McFaul, written by Pam Brady, aired November 10, 2017, on Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80133246
- 12.
Maria Bamford, “Maria Bamford: The First Time Someone Loved Me for Who I Really Am,” New York Times. October 31, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/arts/television/maria-bamford-lady-dynamite.html
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Lady Dynamite, season 1, episode 9, “No Friend Left Behind,” directed by Ben Berman, written by Theresa Mulligan Rosenthal, aired May 20, 2016, on Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80046402
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Lady Dynamite, season 1, episode 12, “Enter the Super Grisham,” directed by Max Winkler, written by Pam Brady, aired May 20, 2016, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80046405
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In Season 2, Maria/Bamford explicitly laments, direct-to-camera, what she critiques as discrimination against bisexuals in this episode.
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Lady Dynamite, season 1, episode 2, “Bisexual Because of Meth,” directed by Andrew Fleming, written by Theresa Mulligan Rosenthal, aired May 20, 2016, on Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80046195
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Blum, The Self-Help Compulsion, 3.
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Lady Dynamite, “Wet Racoon.”
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Fleabag, season 1, episode 1, “The Business Loan Refusal,” written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, directed by Harry Bradbeer, aired on July 21, 2016, on BBC Three.
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“The Special Special Special!” written by Maria Bamford, directed by Jordan Brady, aired on May 30, 2017, on Netflix.
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“Old Baby,” written by Maria Bamford, directed by Jessica Yu, aired on May 2, 2017, on Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80133663
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Taveira, R. (2024). Genre Trouble: Netflix’s Lady Dynamite and Self-Help Television. In: Worthy, B., Sheehan, P. (eds) Adapting Television and Literature. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50832-5_4
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