For this week you will watch two episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979) on Amazon.com. The episodes I would like you to watch are these: “Basket Case” (September 16, 1975) and “Welcome Back” (September 23, 1975).
Your readings are here:
- Robert Stam-Bakhtin, Polyphony, and Racial-Ethnic Representation
- who’s in on the joke-parody as narrativized discourse-Jeffrey Rush
I would like you to think about Kotter (Gabriel Kaplan) in terms of ethnicity. Here are some questions you might consider–pick one among them rather than answering them all.
- How does Kotter differ from Woody Allen’s characters in his relationship to whiteness and to his natal ethnic group?
- How is humor, in particular, being used here in relationship to ethnicity?
- And what kind of urban space does Kotter occupy? Is this space inviting? Why?
