Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010
From: Ted Morgan <[email protected]>
Subject: Book Announcement: What Really Happened to the 1960s
All,
I thought some on the list would be interested to hear that my book
project of the last 11 years has come to an end and "What Really
Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American
Democracy," is being published by the University Press of Kansas
--just published. I've included the catalog copy about the book and
the cover blurbs below and would appreciate your sharing it with any
others you think may be interested.
Many thanks,
Ted
-----------
*What Really Happened to the 1960s*
*How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy *
*Edward P. Morgan *
November 2010
456 pages, 35 photographs, 6 x 9
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1756-2, $39.95
Book cover imageWherever we turn these days, we encounter reminders
of the sixties. They're invoked in presidential campaigns, American
military actions, and outbursts of mass protest. We're bombarded
with media-saturated anniversaries of iconic events, from JFK's
inauguration (and assassination) to urban riots and Woodstock. But
as Edward Morgan suggests, these references offer little more than
an endless stream of distracting imagery that has more to do with
today's politics and economics than with the reality of yesterday's
social movements.
In his provocative look at mass media's connection with those
turbulent years, Morgan simultaneously seeks to explain what
happened in the 1960s and what happened to how we remember it. His
comprehensive overview and critical analysis reveal how the mass
media have shaped the popular image of a raucous decade in ways that
have curtailed its promise of democracy.
Morgan's in-depth study of sixties social movements and their
depictions in corporate America's print media, film, and television
helps to explain why the past still provokes deep emotions—even
antagonism—half a century later. He blends history, sociology,
political science, media and cultural studies, and critical theory
to explain why the 1960s have been so virulently targeted,
particularly by critics on the right who blame today's
self-indulgent culture on baby boomers and "sixties permissiveness"
instead of the real culprits: consumer-driven capitalism and
neoliberal politics.
Emphasizing the tensions between capitalism and democracy, Morgan
investigates the fate of democracy in our media-driven culture,
first by examining the ways that the 1960s were represented in the
media at the time, then by exploring how popular versions of the
sixties have glossed over their more radically democratic qualities
in favor of sensationalism and ideological constructions. He reminds
us of what really happened—then shows us how the media trivialized
and satirized those events, co-opting and commercializing the
decade's legacy and, in doing so, robbing it of its more radical,
democratic potential.
By revisiting this chapter of the past, Morgan shows that it has
much to tell us about where we are today and how we got here.
Whether you lived through the sixties or only read about them—or
only saw Hollywood's version of them in 'Forrest Gump'—this book
will put their lessons in clearer perspective.
"This important book provides an illuminating historical overview,
critical analysis, and appraisal of the 1960s. Drawing upon
historical and media studies, theories of capitalism and democracy,
and in-depth study of the era's social movements, Morgan provides an
extremely comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the events and
aftermath of the 1960s. Based on highly impressive research, his
study should appeal to a large audience interested in how that
decade's more radical spirit continues to live on in our
society."—*Douglas Kellner,* author of /Media Spectacle and the
Crisis of Democracy/ and /Media Culture/
"In this sophisticated and provocative analysis, Morgan demonstrates
that while the mainstream media has been obsessed with the 1960s,
its portrayal has consistently stressed the sensational and violent
aspects of that decade while downplaying two of its most important
components: a sense of hope that society could be changed and the
sense that the basic social, economic, and political structures of
American society, in particular the power of corporate capitalism,
were at the heart of our problems. Such an approach, Morgan
convincingly demonstrates, has helped to create a society in which
the mass of the population feels ever more hopeless, alienated, and
disconnected from one another, in which our fundamental problems can
never even be addressed, much less solved."
*Robert Justin Goldstein,* author of /Political Repression in Modern
America/ and /Flag Burning and Free Speech/
"By detailing how our historical memory and images of the sixties
differ in major respects from what actually happened, Ted Morgan has
produced a case study of the past that teaches us a great deal about
contemporary political discourse. He shows how the mainstream mass
media, in its norms and practices, simultaneously promotes—but also
limits and contains—democratic engagement."
*William A. Gamson*, author of /The Strategy of Social Protest /
"Political scripts left behind by the corrosive cultural convulsions
of the 1960s and 1970s, endlessly depicted and recast by the mass
media, are recoded as self-satire, corporate backlash, institutional
failure, generational conflict, belligerent discourse, televised
violence, and distrusted authority. Morgan's analysis is a valuable
exploration for anyone interested in how the workings of mass media
and popular culture in America since the 1960s led us to where we are today."
*Timothy W. Luke,* author of/ Screens of Power: Ideology,
Resistance, and Domination in Informational Society/
*EDWARD P. MORGAN *is University Distinguished Professor of
Political Science at Lehigh University and author of /The Sixties
Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America./
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