Alf (NBC, 1986-1990) : Quand la sitcom devient subversive

Abstract

Alf was created by Paul Fusco and Ed Weinberger and broadcast on the NBC network from September 1986 to March 1990. Over the course of the series's four seasons, we follow the weird and wacky adventures of an alien from the planet Melmac whose spaceship crashed into the garage of an average American family: the Tanners. The latter decide to harbour the strange little creature and hide him to prevent the army from seizing him and using him as a guinea pig. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, this alien is the sitcom character par excellence. The first point of this article will be to define the specific features of television puppets, before presenting the character of Alf himself in greater detail. Secondly, I will attempt to highlight the mise en abyme of television within the sitcom itself. The television as object plays a central role in the show’s narrative structure. It serves as a revealing mirror of sorts, notably on the way in which American television and the major networks of the 1980s worked and developed. Finally, using a few examples chosen from the episodes of the show’s first two seasons, I will try to demonstrate how Alf may also be viewed as an echo chamber of the political, social and economic issues that peppered the Reagan/Bush years.

Keywords

• Alf
• metafictionality
• sitcom
• soap
• subversion
• puppets