Cold War, Cool Medium : Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture (Film and Culture)
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Invigorating and wide-ranging scholarship... The heart of Cold War, Cool Medium is a lively and compelling retelling of the effect of McCarthyism on television." -- Cineaste
"[A] seriously intelligent history." -- Library Journal
"fresh and important insights...an accurate and engrossing account for the nonspecialist, and its methodology provides a revealing context for the specialist as well" -- Brenda Murphy, The Journal of American History
"thoughtful and nuanced" -- Michael C. C. Adams, Film & History
"Thomas Doherty's groundbreaking new volume, Cold War, Cool Medium, [is] a sweeping examination of the collision of television and McCarthyism, and one of the most searching looks at the intersection of popular and political culture in years." -- Boston Globe
"A witty, often riveting account of the simultaneous rise of television and McCarthy." -- Film Comment
"A wide-ranging, impressionistic portrait of the era... Mr. Doherty, a professor of American studies at Brandeis University and a noted film historian, deftly recaps this familiar story." -- New York Observer
"Doherty succeeds in illuminating both the history of television in the US in the 1950s and television's relationship to the era's anticommunist crusade.... this volume carefully examines the often-overlooked political side of 1950s television. Essential." -- Choice
" Cold War, Cool Medium is an excellent overview of television and American culture at a pivotal moment in United States history. It is also wittily written, with Doherty's sense of humour and irony coming through on nearly every page." -- Jennifer Frost, University of Auckland, Australasian Journal of American Studies
"It is not only readable, enlightening and amusing, it does what all good books on the televisual Cold War should do: it can distinguish between hype and substance." -- Adam Piette, Journal of American Studies
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"Doherty delivers an enlightening and critical reassessment of television, culture, and politics in the early 1950's." -- Michael Curtin, American Historical Review
" Cold War, Cool Medium is an engaging and complex account of US commercial television during the 1950's." -- Megan Mullen, Technology and Culture
"[A] superbly written analysis of the link between the rise of American television and the fall of Senator McCarthy." -- Vincent Brook, American Studies
" Cold War, Cool Medium is engagingly written, offering prose that is brimming with wit and insight." -- Christine Becker, Film Quarterly
Book Description
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.
Cold War, Cool Medium : Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture (Film and Culture)
Cold War, Cool Medium : Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture (Film and Culture),Thomas Doherty,Columbia University Press,023112953X,Anti-communist movements,General,History,McCarthy, Joseph,,Performing Arts,Performing Arts/Dance,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Social History,Television - General,Television - History & Criticism,Television and politics,Television broadcasting of new,Television broadcasting of news,United States,United States - 20th Century (1945 to 2000)
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