Bad As TV May Be, We’re Hooked
“Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We Are Today” By Steven D. Stark (Free Press, 340 pages, $25)
And you thought it was just a box that spewed inanities and occasionally made you laugh.
Perhaps no other means of popular culture gets abused as much as television. Dismissed, disdained, dissed. Everybody takes a shot at the tube. But as you’re well aware, we’re all hooked. And, in the right hands, the history of television can be used as a reflection of society, a mirror into our hearts and minds.
That’s why it’s impressive to know that, filed under “pop culture/history,” you’ll find a just-released guide to the medium that is not only immensely entertaining but deeply insightful as well.
“Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We Are Today,” by Steven D. Stark (Free Press, 340 pages, $25) is a must-read for anyone interested in TV, history and social studies.
Stark, a former Boston Globe columnist, Harvard Law School lecturer, writer and commentator for National Public Radio and the Voice of America, has linked historical events to the bastard machine in ways that are often amazing, hilarious and, well, far-fetched.
He posits that Barbara Walters was more influential to television than Edward R. Murrow. That “Dallas” led to the “Reagan revolution.” That Lee Harvey Oswald wouldn’t have been killed if not for television. That “Wheel of Fortune” won the Cold War.
The book is a giddy blend of highbrow intellectualism mixed with an affection for lowbrow entertainment. Stark’s arguments are so cogent that not only do his analyses sound possible, but even linked, fated and prophetic.
Reading “Glued to the Set,” you don’t know whether to scoff loudly or think, perhaps for the first time, that “Sesame Street” is indeed “the last remnant of the counterculture.”
With this book, Stark is either going to be viewed as a misunderstood visionary or adopted as a pop culture genius, a man who looked beyond lame sitcoms, soap operas and tabloid trash and saw the cold hard truth: That “ER” killed the Clinton health care plan.
“Glued to the Set” is about the smartest piece of summer reading you’ll come across. Like the essays of Camille Paglia, Stark’s prose entertains while it construes all kinds of wild theories (some believable, some preposterous). It is without question a great, fun read. the kind of book that makes you smarter as you read about it even though the topics concern some of the dumbest bits of television ever invented.
As for Stark’s 60 shows that made us who we are today, there are the obvious (“I Love Lucy,” “Bob Newhart,” “Hill Street Blues” etc.) and the eye-opening (“The Monkees,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Life is Worth Living” etc.). How they all came together to create history, well, don’t wait for the miniseries.