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(Arof J. Sta6i[E CHAPTER 6 WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE,' LESSONS OF THE BROADCAST BLACKLIST (arofJ. Sta6i[e What the world supplies to myth is an historical reality, defined, even if rhis goesback quite a while, by the way in which men have produced or used it; and what mych gives in return is a natural im- age of this realiry.And just as bourgeois ideology is defined by the abandonment of the name'bourgeois,' mych is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory thar they once were made. (Barthes 1989, I42) N PHILIP K. DICK'S STORY,,,WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU wHoLESALE/'Douglas Quail purchases implanted or "extra- factual" memories in order to inexpensivelyfu16l1 his dream of visiting Mars. But the implantation revealsthat that Quail s memory has alreadybeen tampered with-he actually is a gov- ernment assassin-and further attempts to implant memories reveal older suppressedmemories. The metaphor of Quails extra-factual, manipulated memories ofFersa starting-point for understanCingwhy U.S. culture recalls the 1950s through a certain set of images and ideas.In particular, U.S. culrure "remembers"the 1950s as the foun- tainhead of family and family valueslargely becauseour memories of family and the gender roles that underwrite this construction were in facr rememberedfor us "wholesalej'through a processof industrial production rhat has repressedeven the memory of any challengesto what would soon becomeche ideologicalstatus quo. "1!)e 107 106E J -hlomentoJ'Danger 6 tr" canremem\er it fortou w\ofesale" The following essay considers the ways in which the broadcast of television.Of course,in order to document resistanceto 1950sgen' blacklisr affectedhow media studies scholarsthink about and srudy der ideologieson the part of culrural producers we must also under- the 1950s, as well how we understand the role of gender and family stand the impact of what Raymond Williams (2001) describedas rhe in 1950spopular culture. At the start of the 1950s-ar the very mo- selectivetradition in order to seektraces of content that never made ment in which television was emerging, in the words of blacklisted it onto the air. Focusingonly on what was actuallybroadcast does nor writer Shirley Graham DuBois, as'the newest,the most powerful, the allow us glimpsesinto alternativesto the genderednarratives thar ulti- most directmeans of communicationdevised by Man ... [whose]po- mately becamehegemonic. Fundamencally, understanding the history tentialities for Good or for Evil are boundless"-a massiveideological of what was made and broadcaston relevisionalso meansresearching crackdown occurred in broadcasting(Graham 7964,7). By focusing what it was not possibleto make. on how the blacklist made strugglesover gender,race, and classun- Although the blacklist played a determining role in what made it speakablein the new medium, this essayseeks co restorethe memory onto the air, as well as what would make it onto the air in years to of these strugglesand cheir participanrs to accounrsof the 1950s, to come,the impact of the Red Scareon the content of 1950s television underscorethe strategicmanipulation of culture and memory by con- has yet co be reckoned with. Scholarship on the broadcast biacklist servativeforces, and to remind us iust how crucial historical research remains thin, although a large body of literature in 6lm history and is for mediastudies. studiesaddresses the blacklist in the motion Picture industry' But no researchfocuses specifically on the impact of the blacklist on women GENDER, HISTORY, AND PRODUCTION working in 61m or television industries or the progressivefeminist Over the past thirty years,literature on Cold War television has fo- ideas many of them were struggling to communicate rc a Iarger au' cused on consumprionand women-as-consumersof televisionpro- dience.How do we account for these gaps in scholarship?After all, duced for them by men. This focus has made sensein terms of our media and cultural studies include many articlesand full-length books own intellectual history-for those interestedin gender and women on 1950s television.Was the blacklist in broadcasting really such a in particular, women were at least visible in fronr of the cameraand, comparativelyuninteresting or unimportant event in television his- basedon the assumptionthar women were excludedfrom production, tory, with litde impact on rhe industry itself? Following from these the focus on consumption allowed media studiesscholars to consider questions,are there historical and political reasonsfor the ignorance women as active agents in relation to media, rarher than as passive of the broadcastblacklist in popular culture that are homologous to spectarorsof content produced and structured by a male gaze. But the silencein scholarlyliterature? Why do memories of the 1950s- as historian Michele Hilmes (1997) convincinglyargues, worr.en were whether popular or scholarly-so seldom include mention of the working in the broadcast industry prior to the 1950s. The focus on blacklisti women-as-consumershas had the unfortunate effecrof reinforcing rhe gendering of producers as male and consumersas female and re- THE MAKING OF THE MAKING OF THE FAMILY producing the belief that women were simply not presentat the birth Fifties television programming contained a specificallyandrocentric of either radioor television.While key scholarlyworks on 1950stele- fancasyof family life. In it, women uncomplainingly did the work of vision-Lynn Spigel'sMake RoomJor TV (1992), George Lipsitz's raisingchildren, managinghouseholds, and volunteeringin their com- Time Passages(2001), Nina Leibmais Living Room Lectures(1995), munities, grarcfully exchanging stressful work in the waged economy and Ella Taylors Prime Time Families(1991)-all importantly offered for the promise of serenity in the domestic sphere.Those who popu- ideologicalanalyses of 1950stelevision and its concent,none ofthese lated this landscapewere as white as the snow that often distorted consideredche material production of rheseimages: namely, che pro- television signals.Judged solely on the basis of television images,tt ducers and writers who createdtelevision content and the conditions seemedthat the ideologicalshift that occurred in the yearsfollowing in which they wereworking ar sucha formativemomenr in rhe hisrory the war was a bloodlesscouD in which thoseworking in the broadcast losE J -l[omentof Danger 6 tu "LDecan remem\er it fortou w6o[esa[e" 109 industry and consumersalike-all of them apparently white people invested in whiteness-were swepr off their feet by the seductive promisesof postwar consumerculture. The world that appearedin 1950s family sitcoms was a world in which father knew besri in which no one suspecredthat Margaret An- dersont obsessivecleaning might be a symptom of a problem that had no name,as Betty Friedan (1964) was ro pur it lessrhan a decadelater; or thatJune Cleaver'sbland happinessmay havecome from a pill bot- tle. As Joanne Meyerowitz points out in her reassessmentof posrwar mass cultu re,"the conservative promo rio n of domesticity" (199 4, 230) was neither blindly acceptednor unopposed.Women did not always joyously give up jobs that had af[orded them a measureof autonomy. Rather than decreasing,women's workforce participation steadily in- creasedthroughout the 1950s,albeit in low paying and often parr rime positions. Black women and men did not quietly and passivelyreturn to lives limited by segregationand racial discrimination, as the civil righrs movementwas demonstrating. The imagesthat dominated televisioncontenr in the 1950s ineluc- tably shaped beliefs and memories of family and gender in the U.S., their formulaic nature and cohesivenesserasing the strugglesthat were occurring off camera.Fearful of even referencingthe blacklist, writ- ers avoided hinting at its existence.Even fifteen yearslater, when the blacklist came up during publicity inrerviews wirh blacklisted actor Jean Muir, networks "bleeped" out referencesto rhe sponsors, net- Fig. 1:Jean Muir (Courtesy of Stephens College) works, and ad agencieswho had had a hand in her 6ring (Gould 1965, At the time, and for creativeand often politically progressivepeo- 29; 1966,55). This silenceis notable in an industry that has avidly ple working in media industries, television held out new hopes and mythologized its own history in a seriesof now iconic moments: the dreamsabout the creativeand cultural Potential of broadcasting.Al- Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the new medium of television though there was no debate over whether the new medium was go- played the role of heroic defender of civil liberties (overlooking, of ing to be commercial,a cohort of writers like Ruth Gordon, Garson course,CBS'6ring of Ed Murrow just a few years later, not ro men- Kanin, Gore Mdal, and Arthur Miller all believedthat televisioncould tion its assiduousenforcement of the loyalty oath among its rank and provide an important venue for political and creativeexpression. But file); the quiz show scandalof 1,956,enshrined as a triumph of self- progressivesunderestimated just how far the U'S. government,media regulation;coverage of the 1968 Democratic Convention; the infated e*ec,rtiv"r,advertisers, and politicians were willing to go to ensurethat role that televisionwas said to haveplayed in ending the Vietnam War. 'tontroversial" content (particularly material that could be construed That televisionhas proved reluctant to narratethis one story about its as politically progressiveon issuesof race,gender, class,
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