The Art of Democracy: A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States by Jim Cullen

Author:Jim Cullen [Cullen, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Democracy, Political Science, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781583673782
Google: FUWhBwAAQBAJ
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2002-07-01T06:28:16+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

SMALL SCREENS: POPULAR CULTURE IN THE AGE OF TELEVISION AND BEYOND, 1945 - 2000

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz around the time of the debut of I LOVE LUCY (1951). The show raised the hackles of programmers, who feared that an interracial couple would not be accepted by the American public. It is now remembered as one of the most beloved situation comedies in television history.

A HALF-CENTURY after the end of World War II, the United States was the richest, most powerful nation in the world—probably the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever known. Even many of the poorest Americans in 1995 enjoyed a standard of living more affluent ones living fifty years earlier could only envy, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States the sole remaining global power. And yet Americans at the end of the century looked back to the tumultuous decades of the thirties and forties with a sense of nostalgia, even longing, typified by Tom Brokaw’s 1998 bestselling book The Greatest Generation. Living in an age of AIDS, school violence, and domestic terrorism, today’s college student may well imagine that those were simpler times, when the enemies (Hitler, then Stalin) were obvious and the problems (such as racial discrimination) had clear villains and straightforward solutions.

Yet for many Americans in the early postwar era, life was anything but charmed or simple. A suggestion of the national mood can be glimpsed from the Oscar-sweeping film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which depicted weary and cynical war veterans facing an uncertain future.1 Millions of lives were shattered by war casualties, and the Great Depression was no distant memory—indeed, many feared that it would return with military demobilization. Moreover, while victory over the Axis powers had supposedly made the world “safe for democracy” (something World War I was supposed to do), the treatment of some groups within U.S. society, notably African and Japanese Americans, raised troubling questions about the degree of difference between the victors and the vanquished. Such questions were again raised during the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when dissent was crushed in the name of freedom.

Besides reflecting the tensions of the times, films like The Best Years of Our Lives symbolized the intensely contradictory character of the film industry during the immediate postwar years. In some important ways, it was indeed the best of times: in the fifty years since the advent of the motion picture, film had become the premiere form of popular culture in America. In 1946, its popularity stood at an all-time high: nearly 75 percent of the potential audience (in other words, excluding young children, the elderly, and the infirm) went to the movies at least once a week.2 And with Europe once again shattered by war, the United States could further tighten its grip over the world market. Ever since, films have remained among the most reliable of U.S. exports, with the country’s large domestic market, extensive distribution

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