Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture / Edition 1

Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture / Edition 1

by Thomas Doherty
ISBN-10:
023112953X
ISBN-13:
9780231129534
Pub. Date:
03/10/2005
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
ISBN-10:
023112953X
ISBN-13:
9780231129534
Pub. Date:
03/10/2005
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture / Edition 1

Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture / Edition 1

by Thomas Doherty
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Overview

Conventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming.

To the unjaded viewership of Cold War America, the television set was not a harbinger of intellectual degradation and moral decay, but a thrilling new household appliance capable of bringing the wonders of the world directly into the home. The "cool medium" permeated the lives of every American, quickly becoming one of the most powerful cultural forces of the twentieth century. While television has frequently been blamed for spurring the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was also the national stage upon which America witnessed—and ultimately welcomed—his downfall. In this provocative and nuanced cultural history, Doherty chronicles some of the most fascinating and ideologically charged episodes in television history: the warm-hearted Jewish sitcom The Goldbergs; the subversive threat from I Love Lucy; the sermons of Fulton J. Sheen on Life Is Worth Living; the anticommunist series I Led 3 Lives; the legendary jousts between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy on See It Now; and the hypnotic, 188-hour political spectacle that was the Army-McCarthy hearings.

By rerunning the programs, freezing the frames, and reading between the lines, Cold War, Cool Medium paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many black-and-white clichés. Doherty not only details how the blacklist operated within the television industry but also how the shows themselves struggled to defy it, arguing that television was preprogrammed to reinforce the very freedoms that McCarthyism attempted to curtail.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231129534
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 03/10/2005
Series: Film and Culture Series
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 845,165
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Thomas Doherty is a professor in the American studies department and chair of the film studies program at Brandeis University. He is the author of Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II; PreCode Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934; and Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s, and is associate editor of the film journal Cinéaste.

Table of Contents

1. Video Rising
2. The Gestalt of the Blacklist
3. Controversial Personalities
4. Hypersensitivity: The Codes of Television Censorship
5. Forums of the Air
6. Roman Circuses and Spanish Inquisitions
7. Country and God
8. Edward R. Murrow Slays The Dragon of Joseph McCarthy
9. "The Speaktacular": the Army-McCarthy Hearings, April 22-June 17, 1954
10. Pixies: Homosexuality, Anti-Communism, and Television
11. The End of the Blacklist
12. Exhuming McCarthyism: the Paranoid Style in American Television

What People are Saying About This

Mark Crispin Miller

A learned and astute historian (and also something of a poet), Thomas Doherty has written an extraordinary book about the close relationship between the Cold War and the rise of television...Doherty has demonstrated that the medium -- a various and even feisty forum in its early days -- would often challenge the prevailing creed of paranoid anti-communism....An exhilarating work of scholarship, revealing that there was another, livelier, and more complex dimension to the period of 'brinksmanship' and blacklists.

Mark Crispin Miller, New York University, and author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV

George Littlefield Professor of History - David M. Oshinsky

For those who think that too many words already have been written about McCarthyism and television, this book will come as a most welcome surprise. Cold War, Cool Medium connects these two vital currents of modern American history in remarkably perceptive ways, demonstrating the impact of television upon the rise and fall of extremist politics in this era, and the powerful legacy that survives to this day. Cold War, Cool Medium is a wonderful read — riveting as a cultural history, perfect as a teaching tool.

David M. OshinskyGeorge Littlefield Professor of HistoryUn

For those who think that too many words already have been written about McCarthyism and television, this book will come as a most welcome surprise. Cold War, Cool Medium connects these two vital currents of modern American history in remarkably perceptive ways, demonstrating the impact of television upon the rise and fall of extremist politics in this era, and the powerful legacy that survives to this day. Cold War, Cool Medium is a wonderful read—riveting as a cultural history, perfect as a teaching tool.

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