Primetime Blues (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Donald Bogle
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: Media and sociology
- Time of Work: The 1950’s to 2000
- Setting: The United States
- Principal Characters: Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Diahann Carroll, Bill Cosby, Redd Foxx, Sherman Hemsley, Sidney Poitier, Cicely Tyson
- Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology
- Subjects: African Americans, Mass media, Television or television broadcasting
- Locales: United States, Los Angeles, CA
Like it or not, television is the crude but accurate measure of the American character. The ultimate simplifier, it takes the puzzling questions of just who and what Americans are and gives them answers which must be true because they are large, broad, and often come complete with a laugh track. It distills the complications of public policy into ten-second sound bites; transforms political debate into Sunday morning shouting matches; forces all sports to dance to its own commercial rhythms; and, in its most impressive display of mastery, packages reality into thirty- and sixty-minute...
[The entire page is 1924 words long]
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