From Golden Age to Wasteland: US Television in the 1950s and 1960s

3 units

How did television become the dominant news and entertainment medium of the second half of the 20th Century? How did the medium come to define itself and American identities in the post-WWII era? In an era where various social movements began to lay claim to the cultural center, why did mad men eventually give way to magical women and fantastic families? This course examines the cultural, industrial, and aesthetic changes in U.S. television broadcasting during a time that was crucial to defining its relationship to the public as well as to Hollywood, the government, critics, and American commerce. The class explores the relationships and shifts that made television the U.S.'s most popular consensus medium but one that also would profit by the expression of alternative tastes, politics and identities. Required screenings.