Gold dust on the air : television anthology drama and midcentury American culture /
"Schneider examines the neglected genre of the television anthology drama in midcentury America. These anthologies featured stand-alone television plays, a new one each week, and were treated as 'quality' programming that was meant to satisfy networks' promises to serve and bette...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Austin :
University of Texas Press,
2024.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "Schneider examines the neglected genre of the television anthology drama in midcentury America. These anthologies featured stand-alone television plays, a new one each week, and were treated as 'quality' programming that was meant to satisfy networks' promises to serve and better society. The three networks all had shows of this ilk during the genre's heyday of the late 1940s to early '60s, including Playhouse 90, U.S. Steel Hour, Goodyear Television Playhouse, and better remembered programs like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Schneider traces what made these anthologies so important to early television and how the anxieties of American culture and attempts to frame American identity of the time played out in their offerings. Although these programs often played to the conservative paranoia of the Cold War age, they also were a stage for progressive writers such as Rod Serling and Gore Vidal. She also looks at the decline of the format in the 1960s as production moved from videotape in New York (with echoes of highbrow Broadway) to film in Hollywood (giving it a cheaper feel). With chapters on Method acting and slice-of-life dramas, conformity, Serling and censorship, dramas about the Holocaust, and the traumatic history of war, Schneider argues for the importance of this genre in both television and American history. She concludes by looking at the difficulties of researching these dramas as well as the current resurgence of the genre in programs like Black Mirror and Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone"-- |
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| Physical Description: | ix, 252 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781477329276 1477329277 9781477329283 1477329285 |