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Product Description
How did Dallas pave the way for the Reagan era?
Would Oswald have been assassinated if the cameras weren't rolling?
Who really loved Lucy more--Ricky or Ethel?...and what does that say about relationships?
You may think you know television--but when NPR commentator Steven Stark is finished pushing your buttons with fighting words and brilliant insights, you'll see in a whole new way what television has done to us as a nation. From Beaver to Roseanne, Ed Sullivan to Oprah, Monday Night Football to MTV, Stark takes us on a guided tour of the tube, providing startling revelations about the power of its sixty most important shows and events in the history of television. He catches in bright focus a hilarious, strange, and compelling image of ourselves as reflected on the small screen, and he shows us, with striking logic, the awesome power of television over our future and our fate.
Discover:
The most revealing and significant leading man on TV...Bob Newhart
Bill Cosby as racial trailblazer...and failure
Why The Beverly Hillbillies was the watershed program that kicked off the ongoing values debate--and the rise of the Christian Coalition
How Wheel of Fortune helped bring down communism and end the Cold War
Amazon.com Review
Do you love TV? Do you want a way to silence those poor souls who chastise you for spending too many hours in front of the tube? Glued to the Set is what you've been looking for. NPR commentator, cultural critic, and unapologetic TV-watcher Steven Stark explores six decades of television to find the shows and the events that prove how important this medium has been in the shaping of modern American culture. From Milton Berle's invention of TV-comedy to "ER and the fight for health-care reform," Stark engages in serious, thoroughly researched analysis while occasionally moving his tongue towards his cheek.
He examines the subversive pleasures of The Monkees, and the ways in which sitcoms both reflect and create ideas about family. The book's serious premise is kept afloat by Stark's lively prose, and this allows his points to hit home with a force that would be lost in a more academic arena. After reading Glued to the Set, America's Funniest Home Videos will never seem the same again: "As the theme song says: 'America, America, this is you.'" --Simon Leake
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