Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History Summer 8-2011 The Apocalypse will be Televised: Representations of the Cold War on Network Television, 1976-1987 Aubrey Underwood Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Underwood, Aubrey, "The Apocalypse will be Televised: Representations of the Cold War on Network Television, 1976-1987." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2011. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/27 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE APOCALYPSE WILL BE TELEVISED: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE COLD WAR ON NETWORK TELEVISION, 1976-1987 by AUBREY N. UNDERWOOD Under the Direction of Michelle Brattain ABSTRACT This dissertation examines how the major television networks, in conjunction with the Reagan administration, launched a lingering cloud of nuclear anxiety that helped to revive the Cold War during the 1980s. Placed within a larger political and cultural post-war context, this national preoccupation with a global show-down with the Soviet Union at times both hindered and bolstered Reagan‘s image as the archetypal conservative, cowboy President that could free America from its liberal adolescent past now caustically referred to as ―the sixties.‖ This stalwart image of Reagan, created and carefully managed by a number of highly-paid marketing executives, as one of the embodiment of peaceful deterrence, came under attack in the early 1980s when the ―liberal‖ Nuclear Freeze movement showed signs of becoming politically threatening to the staunch conservative pledging to win the Cold War at any cost.