US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us

Subject: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 25 - 02:02 PM

I have no idea where this might travel conversationally, but there are a couple of items that have met in a literary sense, passing one text over another. I'll add "books" to the title if it can fit.

First the book: In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas by Larry McMurtry. For context, this book was published in 1968, and the essays were all written before that year, some much earlier.

This paragraph sparked this thread; it is from the essay "Cowboys, Movies, Myths, & Cadillacs: An Excursus on Ritual Forms in the Western Movie."

No doubt high mimetic Westerns will continue to be made as long as John Wayne is acting—he wouldn't fit in any other mode—but in number they are declining, and the figure of the Westerner is gradually being challenged by more modern figures. At the moment, the Secret Agent seems to be dominant. In time, of course, we can expect to see the conquest of space (if we really conquer it) take over the place in the American mythos now held by the winning of the West, but that day has not yet come. If one agrees with Warshow (and I do) that one of the reasons the Western has maintained its hold on our imagination is because it offers an acceptable orientation to violence, then it is easy to see why the Secret Agent is so popular just now. An Urban Age demands an urban figure: the Secret Agent is an updated Gunfighter. James Bond has appropriated the skills of the Gunfighter and added urbanity and cosmopolitanism. Napoleon Solo and Matt Dillon both work for the betterment of civilization, but the Man from U.N.C.L.E. makes the Marshal seem as old-fashioned and domestic as Fibber McGee and Molly. In the former the violence, besides being aestheticized, has been brought into line with the times. If only there are some bad Indians out there in space, on a planet we need, then eventually the Spaceman's hour will come. (55-56)

You have to think back through the pre-Internet world and remember where we were. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson was the president, the Vietnam War was still underway and the Tet Offensive was big that year, North Korea captured the USS Pueblo, the US Civil Rights movement was in high gear, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, as was Robert F. Kennedy, Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Nuclear weapons were still being tested in the desert in Nevada. The Beatles White Album was released and Daniel Craig was born. On Star Trek the first interracial kiss occurred on American television.

A local television channel plays vintage crime dramas, and over the years I've watched many of them, though some are so violent and perverse in their plotting that I now avoid them (think Criminal Minds). Not discussed here are the ones that were on cable I never watched (The Sopranos, Breaking Bad) and don't appear on these vintage programming channels now. There were whole years in graduate school and raising small children that I didn't sit down to watch much mainstream broadcast TV, so have been catching up. This is generally about network television programming and popular films since 1968.

A couple of programs that I have mixed feelings about began playing this year on one network of reruns. The Gilmore Girls is said to be great, but I find it trite. And one I was ignoring because it comes on kind of late, but have been sucked in to understanding how it was written, is Homicide: Life on the Street. The conversations between events are fascinating, and the fact that they don't always get the criminal, that there are a lot accommodations that happen, that at best sometimes all they can say is "we'll be watching you."

So much has happened that McMurtry described, to the point that the speculated upon space Indian territory dramas such as Star Wars franchises and Star Trek and other space operas may have about run their course. Police procedurals come and go, as do law and medical dramas. They fight with lasers, guns, scalpels, and torts.

The type of storytelling, the variety of heroic figures, whose stories get told, what dogma we are fed, it's all in the mix.

Thoughts?

Subject: RE: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: meself
Date: 27 Oct 25 - 03:50 PM

I once read a bit from an interview with some minor actor, in which he said: "I don't watch movies to get my political opinions; I watch them to see the good guys win and the bad guys lose." Me, too - even if I sometimes have reservations about who those "good guys" are.

That said, I think Hollywood has a lot to answer for in perpetuating and promoting, non-stop, the idea that gun violence is inevitably the solution.

Subject: RE: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Oct 25 - 06:49 PM

I can also live without the high-speed car chases
and the scenes of demolition ...
that's one reason I stopped watching films altogether.
Books are another story.

Subject: RE: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Oct 25 - 10:27 PM

I looked back at this after a day or two and while it packs in a lot of content to consider, I suspect simply examining the archetypes involved - how cowboys have evolved - is a basis for examining where our programs have evolved.

I've read further in the essays, and realized that volume the introduction (written in 2018) that discusses McMurtry's being "tone-deaf" in the discussion of fiddle contests was being polite, and has little to do with music.

Subject: RE: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Oct 25 - 08:31 AM

" If only there are some bad Indians out there in space, on a planet we need, then eventually the Spaceman's hour will come."

This is the movie Avatar!



fake Reality TV is the cheapest schlock to produce.
Its even how Trump came to power with 'youre fired!

Subject: RE: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Oct 25 - 10:38 AM

You may have noted I made no mention of "reality TV." I never watch it, just as I ignore most game shows. (I sometimes watch Jeopardy - it's much easier to give the correct question when watching from home.)

Avatar, yes, but also much of the Star Wars enterprise - the whole colonial experience and extracting resources.

Subject: RE: US TV, Books, & Films - what they say about us
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Oct 25 - 12:02 PM

*Agree*, Donuel. Even Herself now goes straight past The Alleged Housewives of Greater Bitchington when she's channel-surfing on Freeview, complaining all the while about there being 57 channels and nothin' on.

Meanwhile, methunk shopping channels and pr0n must be the cheapest space-fillers because there's so damn many of them. It's getting worse .... but then perhaps it always did, as istr complaints of the same form about the yoof of the day in ancient Rome. Mebbe what it all says about us is that there's too few of us who aren't content to put up with enshittification (or even notice it), and who try to fight the blingocracy.

Ach, Nick the Greek had it right: "All of life is six-to-five against."