Revolution Televised.pdf

26 Was the Revolution Televised?
Yet, this era’s major network documentary series such as Murrow’s
See It Now, CBS Reports, NBC White Paper, and ABC’s Bell and
Howell Close-Up! are not a part of our everyday experience in the
way that reruns of Bewitched and Father Knows Best are. 4 So why
as a culture do we retain these nostalgic connections between news
and social change? This ongoing process occurs in two central
ways: through television’s contemporary construction of its past,
and through the rhetoric of television news journalists in general
and in that era specifically.
The United States is constantly involved in a process of mediation
with its history, and television has played a significant role in this
negotiation and recuperation of our national memory. Beliefs of the
1960s are often enmeshed in impressions garnered through contemporary
media recuperations of the time, and the 1990s brought an
increased interest in the era. Television shows such as I’ll Fly Away
(1991–93) and Cronkite Remembers (1997) and films such as Mississippi
Burning (1988), Forrest Gump (1994), and Ghosts of Mississippi
(1997) are contemporary imaginings of black America’s
racial past. These television programs and films work as revisionist
history, modifying and often improving white America’s role in the
civil rights past. One of the common tropes of these shows is the incorporation
of television news footage from the ’60s. Through the use
of the news footage, television is positioned in the role of catalyst to
white individuals’ action.
The NBC miniseries The ’60s (1999) provides a clear example of
this process. Released during February sweeps of 1999, the advertising
for the program was aired weeks in advance and arrived with
CD soundtrack and web site in tow. 5 NBC touted the production as
“the Movie Event of a Generation,” the story of two families—one
white (the Herlihys) and one black (the Taylors). According to the
network, “the story of these families is the story of America.” In actuality
the series spent more time on the lives of the white family and,
in doing so, revisited black history from a white perspective.
Within the first thirty minutes, younger son Michael Herlihy,
sitting in his living room in the North, is mesmerized by what he
is watching on television. There is a clip of George Wallace’s “Segregation
now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”
speech, followed by a montage of images, identified as footage from
Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, of black protesters marching
peacefully and the infamous assaults with hoses and dogs. Each