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Caricatures of sixties television--called a "vast wasteland" by the FCC president in the early sixties--continue to dominate our perceptions of the era and cloud popular understanding of the relationship between pop culture and larger social forces. Opposed to these conceptions, The Revolution Wasn't Televised explores the ways in which prime-time television was centrally involved in the social conflicts of the 1960s. It was then that television became a ubiquitous element in American homes. The contributors in this volume argue that due to TV's constant presence in everyday life, it became the object of intense debates over childraising, education, racism, gender, technology, politics, violence, and Vietnam. These essays explore the minutia of TV in relation to the macro-structure of sixties politics and society, attempting to understand the struggles that took place over representation the nation's most popular communications media during the 1960s.
List of contents
CONTENTS: Part I: Home Fronts and New Frontiers; 1. At the Outer Limits of Oblivion - Jeffrey Sconce; 2. White Flight - Lynn Spigel; 3. Nobody's Woman? Honey West and the New Sexuality - Julie D Acci; 4. Patty Duke and Girl Culture - Moya Luckett; 5. Bad Boys on TV: Dennis the Menace , the All-American Handfull - Henry Jenkins; Part II: Institutions of Culture; 6.The Independents: Rethinking the Television Studio System - Mark Alvey; 7. Senator Dodd Goes to Hollywood: Investigating Video Violence - William Boddy; 8. James Dean in a Surgical Gown : Making TV's Medical Formula - Joseph Turow; 9. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and the Youth Rebellion - Aniko Bodroghkozy; 11. Blues Skies and Strange Bedfellows: The Discourse of Cable TV - Thomas Streeter; Part III: Nation and Citizenship; 12. Dynasty in Drag: Imagining Global TV - Michel Curtin; 13. Citizen Welk: Bubbles, Blue Hair, and Middle America - Victoria E. Johnson; 14. From Old Frontier to New Frontier - Horace Newcomb; 15. Southern Discomforts: The Struggle over Popular TV - Steven Classen; 16. White Network/Red Power: ABC's Custer - Roberta Pearson; 17. Remembering Civil Rights: Television, Memory, and the 1960's - Herman Gray
About the author
Lynn Spigel, Michael Curtin
Summary
Explores the many ways that prime-time television played a central role in the social conflicts of the 1960's in America.
