The bad sixties : Hollywood memories of the counterculture, antiwar, and Black power movements / Kristen Hoerl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoerl, Kristen, author.

Contributor:

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Race, rhetoric, and media series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Politics in motion pictures.

United States.

Motion pictures and history.

Nineteen sixties.

Politics in motion pictures--20th century.

Black power--United States--History--20th century.

Black power.

History.

Motion pictures--Social aspects--United States.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Social aspects.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 229 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2018]

Summary:

"Ongoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the "bad sixties." These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : selective amnesia in Hollywood's imagined sixties

The sixties in history and entertainment memory

Growing up from the counterculture in Family ties and The wonder years

Good citizens, ambivalent activists, and macho militants in Forrest Gump and The '60s

Traumatic victimhood or Black rage? Contrasting visions of Black power

The criminalization of late sixties militancy in television police procedurals

Conclusion : contestation over sixties memory in the new millennium.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-217) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Hoerl, Kristen. Bad sixties.

ISBN:

9781496817235

1496817230

OCLC:

1011179353