Television in black-and-white America
Subtitle: race and national identity
By: Alan Nadel.
Series: Culture America
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Lawrence
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: Blacks on television -- United States; Whites on television -- United States; Television broadcasting -- Social aspects -- United States; National characteristics, American; United States -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century
Description: "Alan Nadel's new book reminds us that most of the images on early TV were decidedly Caucasian and directed at predominantly white audiences. Television did not invent whiteness for America, but it did reinforce it as the norm - particularly during the Cold War years. Nadel now shows just how instrumental it was in constructing a narrow, conservative, and very white vision of America." "During this era, prime-time TV was dominated by "adult Westerns," with heroes like The Rebel's Johnny Yuma reincarnating Southern values and Bonanza's Cartwright family reinforcing the notion of white patriarchy - programs that, Nadel shows, bristled with Cold War messages even as they spoke to the nation's mythology. America had become visually reconfigured as a vast Ponderosa, crisscrossed by concrete highways designed to carry suburban white drivers beyond the moral challenge of racism, racial poverty, and increasingly vocal civil rights demands."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-209) and index.