The Revolution Wasn't Televised: Sixties Television And Social Conflict Afi Film Readers

The book "The Revolution Wasn't Televised" challenges the common belief that television in the 1960s was a "vast wasteland" and instead argues that it played a significant role in the social conflicts of the era. The book explores how television became a ubiquitous presence in American homes and how it sparked debates over various issues such as childraising, education, racism, gender, technology, politics, violence, and the Vietnam War. The essays in the book examine the relationship between television and the larger political and social structures of the 1960s, shedding light on the struggles that occurred over the representation of the nation's most popular form of media during this time period.

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.