Electronic Hearth Creating an American Television Culture

This is an insightful look at the ways in which Amercan cultural attitudes have been shaped by - and represented in - television. It draws upon some 40 years of advertisements, cartoon humour, art, journalism and fiction to show the bases on which Americans have been led to understand the social changes - and the cultural continuities - of television.;"Electronic Hearth" demonstrates, for instance, the deep involvement of television in such national values as individualism, domesticity, and patriotism, and it shows how television has been configured in the discourse of Cold War ideology. It probes unexpected but related issues, including the role of urban mass transit in the public's preparation for television, and the vexed issue of activity and passivity in post-war American culture. It examines TV-era ideas of leisure and of sexual politics. It also looks at recent fiction and visual images now available from a generation of writers and artists who have grown up in the television environment and are now reflecting - and reflecting upon - its forms, traits, values, and a generation which was, in the words of David Byrne, "born in a house with the television always on."