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How TV's Leftist Elite Seeks to Change America
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19620 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
2,578 Words |
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S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman
S. Robert Lichter and Linda S. Lichter direct the Center for
Media and Public Affairs, a nonprofit media watchdog group in
Washington, D.C. Stanley Rothman is a professor of government
at Smith College, where he directs the Center for the Study of
Social and Political Change. |
On October 3, 1986, Crockett and Tubbs took on G. Gordon Liddy and the Nicaraguan Contras. In the opening scene of that night's "Miami Vice" episode, American "advisers" help the anti-Sandinista rebels attack a peaceful village. The Contras murder innocent peasants and an American Jesuit missionary who tries to help them. Meanwhile the famous "Miami Vice" sound track resounds with a vocalist who sings, "where is the love ... where is the mercy?"
As entertainment, this slice of "Managua Vice" was on a par with other episodes of the series' slick music-video style. As political commentary it was devastating. According to New York Times television critic John J. O'Connor, it portrayed the Contras as "hired hoods breaking the law," backed by American "corporate and government leaders [who were] at best scheming liars." The script suggests that our real motive in Nicaragua is to make the country safe for American business.
Why does all this matter? Because it is on our minds and in our lives so continuously. During the past four decades, television has transcended its role as mere entertainment to become a potent force shaping everyday life. The average American now watches more than four hours of TV each day, and the average household keeps a set on for more than seven hours a day.
Political controversies are played out in TV movies as quickly as news stories can be transformed into screenplays. The stars of hit shows spend their nights battling social injustice on the tube and their days testifying before Congress on the issue they dramatize. Docudramas blend reality with fantasy as quickly as the real world can provide dramatic material. (A network docudrama on the career of Oliver North aired while the controversial colonel's trial was still in progress.)
The men behind the tube
Isn't the aim of television to entertain rather than to educate or enlighten? Not according to Hollywood's creative community. In the words of Leonard Goldberg, whose productions have ranged from "Fantasy Island" and "Starsky and Hutch" to "Something about Amelia," a TV movie about incest, "I think it is the responsibility of television not only to entertain, but present contemporary problems facing our society and to offer some guidance, some hope, and just to make people think about them."
They see themselves as educators, with the tube as their schoolroom. And
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