OLLI0054 - All in The Decade: 70 Things About 70s TV That Turned Ten Years into a Revolution

Course Description

At some point between Watergate and The Love Canal, between Nixon and Carter, between Vietnam and Afghanistan, between POWs and Americans Held Hostage, between Robert Altman and Steve Martin, between The Supremes and The Ramones, between Helen Reddy and Blondie, between Joe Namath and Pete Rose ... the 1970s happened. And TV tried to keep up. Or did the country try to keep up with TV? Heavy with clips and memories and shared history, the six-session class is based on the recently published book written by a longtime Hollywood TV executive. Like the book, it’s divided up into five topics: FEMINISM (which identifies innovators and innovations in gender-based shows, from That Girl to Charlie’s Angels); INDIVIDUALISM (which spotlights the beginnings of minority inclusions, from Chico and the Man and Roots to TV’s first gays and Asians); COMMERCIALISM (which recounts the growth of TV as a business in the 1970s, from the arrival of HBO to the introduction of a fourth network); REALISM (which focuses on how TV turned from reflecting how things might be to how they really are, as seen in PBS’s culture-defining An American Family and in taboo movies like Born Innocent, which led to the infamous Family Hour); and ESCAPISM (which offered a break mid-decade with mindless fun like The Love Boat). ALL IN THE DECADE recounts ten years in the life of television and us! Video