How classic television foresaw the future

Xx  Unless you're a complete stranger to this website—and if so, what took you so long?—you know that for years, I've been beating the drum for the value of classic-era television as a primary document of sorts, a glimpse into not just the history of television itself, but of our culture: the trends, the influences, how it reflects our national and cultural history, and how, in turn, how it has been influenced by it. 

However, if you require any further proof of this, my new book Darkness in Primetime: How Classic-Era TV Foresaw Modern Society's Descent into Hell gives you a precise look at our current world—as it was envisioned by the writers of television shows in the 1950s and 1960s. With remarkable foresight, these writers applied the lessons they'd learned from history—the French Revolution, the rise of Communism, the McCarthy era of the Blacklist—to a view on what the world might be like twenty, thirty, fifty years from now. It was, in many ways, a depressing look, filled with totalitarian images, widespread consumerism, constant surveillance, oppressive governments, and a purposeless society that had descended into an endless quest for pleasure. By then, many people had abandoned God altogether, content with their reinvention as their own gods, masters of the environment, controllers of the mind, arbiters of the soul. In place of the individual, there was only the monolith: the State, the collective, the society in which all must look alike, think alike, be alike, in order to avoid confronting our worst fears.

If we'd paid more attention to these programs at the time, and what they were saying—ah, but that ship has long since sailed. As cultural historians, we can only look back at the themes of these shows and what they reveal about the world that helped spawn them. These programs served as more than simple entertainment, though entertaining they often were; the problem was that even the television industry didn't take them seriously enough. My efforts to track down some of these programs were ample proof that when it came to preserving its own history, television took itself no more seriously than many of its critics did. It was, as I write, as if "painters were to throw out their canvases following an exhibition, or playwrights burned their manuscripts after a performance." Hopefully, in addition to informing readers about the fascinating history of these programs, it will serve as a reminder that television can do more than produce cheap laughs, real-world exploitation, and dramas that carry no moral weight.

Many of you have probably seen this already, but for those of you who haven't, this is the trailer for Darkness in Primetime. Please take a couple of minutes to watch it, and feel free to share with others who have an interest in classic-era television.

Darkness in Primetime will be available in August; you can sign up for updates on when you can preorder, as well as information not only about this book but the others that I've written. I feel confident that after you've read Darkness in Primetime, you'll have a new appreciation for the value of classic-era programs, and the light they can shed on our history: who we were and who we are. TV