Where I Go: Coming Together ’Round the Telly

In Praise of TV-Watching, the Pinnacle of Evening Entertainment

I wish I was watching TV right now. When I’m not watching TV, I like to reflect on all the previous times I’ve watched TV or look forward to the times when I will again.

I’ve held telly as the pinnacle of all possible evening activities for a good few years now. When I’m glued to the screen, slumped out on an oversized cushion because my housemates have bagged the sofa, I never worry I should be somewhere else; I don’t question whether I ought instead to be broadening my …

by Lamorna Ash | December 9, 2020

Why Americans Love Andy Griffith’s Toothy Grin

In the Post-Civil Rights Era, Images of Southerners as ‘Slow-Witted Rubes’ Soothed White Anxieties

by Sara K. Eskridge | August 22, 2019

Today, when many Americans think of the “good old days”—when neighbors knew each other and the world seemed safer and simpler—they often conjure visions of the 1950s and early 1960s, …

Why Color TV Was the Quintessential Cold War Machine

The Technological Innovation Transformed How Americans Saw the World, and How the World Viewed America

by Susan Murray | January 24, 2019

In 1959, at the height of the space race, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev stood together, surrounded by reporters, in the middle of RCA’s color television …

At India’s TV Repair Shops, a Worker Discovers Technology’s False Promises

Is the ‘Use-and-Throw-Away’ Consumer Ethos Keeping Us Dependent on Corporate Giants?

by Padma Chirumamilla | October 10, 2018

In a repair shop in South India, an employee was sitting next to me, trying to figure out what was wrong with the circuit board on his worn blue work …

How Movies and TV Are Helping Venezuelans Negotiate Their Country’s Collapse

Amid Food Shortages and Rising Crime, My Students Turn to The Hunger Games and Walking Dead

By José González Vargas | February 28, 2018

Last March, I was teaching twice a week at the Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua, 75 miles west of Caracas, Venezuela. While protests were breaking out in the streets around the …

How Bullwinkle Helped Us Laugh Off Nuclear Annihilation

The Dim-Witted Moose and His Squirrelly Sidekick Calmed Our Cold War Fears with Subversive Humor

By Beth Daniels | September 25, 2017

“Mr. Chairman, I am against all foreign aid, especially to places like Hawaii and Alaska,” says Senator Fussmussen from the floor of a cartoon Senate in 1962. In the …

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