Question

Television programs in the 1950s often

A. did not allow commercial advertising.

B. dealt with real-life problems, such as illness, alcoholism, and depression.

C. gave equal air time to African American and other minority characters and stories.

D. idealized families centered around the father as breadwinner and the mother as homemaker. Reset Selection

Answer 1

D.

Answer 2

Television in the 50s just as it does now presented the popular mythology of the day. It "idealized" families no more and no less than families are "idealized" on the TV today. For example, in both cases problems are readily solved in 30 minutes or less (including commercial breaks) by just talking about things, a hug or two, maybe blaming some ill-defined "Them" that confused you as to your true loyalties.

Television never deals in "real life" problems, such as alcoholism, illness or depression, because those real-life problems have no simple solutions, like joining AA, finding the right doctor or "accepting" death, or finding the right pill. Real-life problems are problems by definition because they aren't easily souble or understandable. They are by definition unsuited to TV programs, which are a source of amusement and distraction. TV by definition presents what we wish the world were like, because it makes us feel better. If TV were remorselessly realistic, it would be depressing and pointless, because we already get as much of real life as we want in....well, our real lives. Duh.

Nevertheless, each succeeding generation of TV producers -- and the media and academic elites who fawn on them -- presents itself as being much more "real" (as well as more just, unprejudiced, et cetera) than the past, because TV also depends on seeming perpetually new and fresh and evolving. TV exists to sell products -- commercials pay for everything -- so in order to get people to tune in once they're used to what you're offering, you need to continually present youself as being new and fresh and innovative, even when you're anything but. So TV perpetuates the endless fraud that it is continually getting newer, more just, and more real. The actual truth is that it just shifts the butt of its jokes and the objects of its prejudice around -- once it was black men, now it's white men, once it was wives, now it's husbands, once children were the screw-ups rescued by their parents, now it's more often the parents are screw-ups rescued by their children. They hope you don't notice this.