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. And even if the nuclear freeze movement itself was not powerful enough to undergo the Herculean task of removing the President in 1984, the movement was compassionate enough to appeal to a mass audience, especially when framed in narrative form on network television. In the early 1980s, debates over the possibility of nuclear war and other pertinent Cold War related issues became much more democratized in their visibility on the network airwaves. However, the message disseminated from the networks was not placed in an educational framework, nor did these television productions clarify complicated nuclear issues such as nuclear winter theory and proliferation. I argue this renewed network attention on nuclear issues was not placed in an historical framework and likely confused American viewers because it routinely exposed audiences to both fact and fiction, undifferentiated at the level of the mass media. INDEX WORDS: Ronald Reagan, Cold War, Network television, Made-for-television movies, World War III, Special Bulletin, The Day After, Threads, Amerika, Nuclear freeze movement, Nuclear winter theory, Nuclear weapons, Strategic Defensive Initiative, ―Star Wars,‖, Great Nuclear Arms Debate, Infotainment, ―Morning in America campaign‖ 1984 US Presidential Campaign, Walter Mondale. THE APOCALYPSE WILL BE TELEVISED: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE COLD WAR ON NETWORK TELEVISION, 1976-1987 by AUBREY N. UNDERWOOD A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2011 Copyright by Aubrey Nell Underwood 2011 THE APOCALYPSE WILL BE TELEVISED: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE COLD WAR ON NETWORK TELEVISION, 1976-1987 by AUBREY N. UNDERWOOD Committee Chair: Michelle Brattain Committee: Joe Perry Kathryn Fuller-Seeley Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2011 iv DEDICATION This work is dedicated to Dr. Donald Dixon and his amazing daughter, Elaine Lett. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A great many people, including faculty, family, friends and colleagues as well as numerous others I have meet through this project, have been generous in helping shape my understanding of this vast topic. When I first began this process of looking at the Cold War during the Reagan administration through the lens of the made-for-television movie, I was warmly received by my dissertation advisor, Dr. Michelle Brattain. Her insight into archival research, organization, writing, teaching, and overall insight into the profession of the historian has been incalculable throughout the years. Her continued support for this endeavor and ability to see the work‘s potential has also been a great source of motivation. In addition, I am indebted to another early mentor from the history department, Dr. Joe Perry, who continued to provide thoughtful, critical comments into writing and the process of undertaking a historical project of this magnitude. Kathy Fuller-Seeley has demonstrated how crucial it was to interweave the political with cultural history and as a scholar illustrated that looking at popular culture was indeed academic. Many archival sources were used in this project. I would like to thank the archivists at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library who I spent a considerable amount of time working with in Simi Valley, California. In addition, the archivists in the UCLA‘s Digital Library offered more visual texts to work with and really aided in the research process. Vanderbilt‘s archival collection of television news brought more historical context and visual content of which to position many of the arguments presented in this work. Finally, the Museum of Television and Radio, in Beverly Hills, California, has some of the most knowledgeable, helpful, delightful archivist that is unparalleled in their passion for historical television scholarship. vi As a graduate student at Georgia State University department of history, I entered into an existing community of talented, intelligent graduate students who have been invaluable throughout the years. Fellow graduate students in various fields of study have been most supportive, offering encouragement, ideas, and in many cases critical assessments of this work in different phases. Thanks, then, to Dana Wiggins, Robert Woodrum, Charmayne Patterson, John Farris, Mike Stevens, Fakhari Hagani, Jennifer Dickey, Edie Riehm, Steve Blankenship, Christy Garrison-Harrison, Heather Lucas, Julie Anderson, Larry Youngs, and of course, Laurel Koontz. Special thanks also to the staff of Georgia State University Department of History, and particularly to Caroline Whiters, Paul Sorrell, and Robin Jackson. In addition, a special acknowledge to the faculty and staff at Clark Atlanta University, who have also provided encouragement, but also with the benefit of insight and experience. Finally, my entire family including my sisters, April and Erin, who watched these made- for-television movies with me as children and remained frightened by the imagery, have been most supportive and generous of spirit during my work on this project. I wish to express particular appreciation to my husband, David Eidson, for his continued patience, encouragement, and support. And to whom this book is dedicated, my grandfather, Dr. Donald Dixon, who showed me the importance of academics and a commitment to knowledge and my mother, Elaine Lett, who instilled the importance of intellectual curiosity and literature, I am indebted and forever grateful for valuing education above all else throughout my life. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Television and the Cold War: A Brief History 12 1.2 The End of Détente and the Rise of Reaganism 18 1.3 Cold War Historiography 20 1.4 A Contradiction of Periodization: The Long 1970s 24 1.5 Methodology on Cultural History 27 1.6 Chapter Outlines 32 2 CHAPTER ONE: The Rejuvenation of Cold War Fears: Reagan, Nuclear Freeze, and the Made-for-Television film World War III 44 2.1 The Rising Tide of Nuclear Fears: How Network Television, the Mass Media, Activists, and the Reagan White House Created the Late Atomic Period 47 2.2 World War III: Presenting the Nuclear Nightmare 56 2.3 The Nuclear Freeze Movement 63 2.4 The Reagan Response to Nuclear Freeze 69 2.5 Nuclear Freeze and the Threat of Soviet Aggression 72 3 CHAPTER TWO: Special Bulletin and Blurring the Line Between Fact and Fiction 84 3.1 Catering to the Individual: The ‘80s Emphasis on Technology 87 3.2 The Development of News as ―Infotainment‖ 91 viii 3.3 Special Bulletin: The Made-for-Television Movie‘s Critique of Network News 94 3.4 The ―Star Wars Speech‖: A Cultural Milestone in Infotainment Television History 103 4 CHAPTER THREE: Preparing for the Fallout; The Day After and the Reagan Reaction 116 4.1 The Day After 119 4.2 ABC‘s Official Presentation and Response of The Day After 130 4.3 The Official White House Response to The Day After 140 5 CHAPTER FOUR: The Great Arms Debate, Threads, and Nuclear Winter Theory 156 5.1 The Great Nuclear Arms Debate 160 5.2 Threads: Nuclear Horror for a New Generation 164 5.3 Nuclear Winter Theory 178 6 CHAPTER FIVE: Cold War Representations in Reagan‘s Second Term 199 6.1 ―It‘s Morning in America‖: The 1984 Presidential Campaign 205 6.2 From ―Morning in America‖ to a Cold Warrior for Peace, 1984–1987 213 6.3 Preparing for Amerika: The Pre-airing Media Campaign 216 6.4 An Analysis of the Miniseries ―Amerika‖ 225 6.5 The Cable Revolution: Representing the ―Individual‖ on Cable 233 7 CONCLUSION 240 REFERENCES 265 ix 1 Introduction ―If a scholar a thousand years from now had no evidence about what had happened in the United States between 1945 and 1985 except the books produced by the cultural and intellectual historians he or she would hardly guess that such a thing as nuclear weapons had existed.‖1 In November of 1983, high above the panoptic eye of the international media, NATO engaged in a routine military exercise that was intended to assess the strength and speed of the U.S.