Democratic Narrative, History, and Memory

Lost History/Lost Democracy

86 democratic narrative, history, and memory Lost History/Lost Democracy Media Culture and the 1960s Edward P. Morgan Thedemocraticideal...isthatthepeoplearecapableof andoughttobemaking their own history, that the making of history ought to be integrated with everyday life. . . . The reason that democracy persists as an ideal at all is that peopleattimeshavetranscendedtheireverydaylivesinordertomakehistory. —Richard Flacks [Advertising] makes all history mythical. . . . A people or class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history. —John Berger Speculation about the United States getting over the sixties is an almost reflexive media preoccupation that goes back to the end of the 1960s decade itself.1 In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency provided the mass media with yet anotherirresistibleopportunitytorevisitthe1960seraandaskonceagainwhether thenationwasreadytomovebeyondbattlesthemedianowwidelyattributedtothe baby boom generation. As a presidential candidate, Obama himself was driven to declare, as early as September 14, 2007, “I come from a new generation of Americans .Idon’twanttofightthebattlesof the1960s.”2 Fromthatdayuntilayearlater, however,asearchof Lexis-Nexis’smajorU.S.andworldpublicationsrevealed1,103 articles containing references to both Obama and the 1960s. Typically what the mass media have meant by the term “the sixties” is an era markedbyanunusuallyrebelliousgeneration.Thusitshouldnotbesurprisingthat since about 1999, the sixties have been associated with, as Andrew Sullivan put it, 86 Media Culture and the 1960s 87 the“debilitating,self-perpetuatingfamilyquarrelof theBabyBoomgenerationthat has so long engulfed us.”3 Public memory of the 1960s era in the United States is largely a product of media accounts like Sullivan’s. Overtheyears,themediaculture’spublicmemoryhasbeenshapedbytwoforces. One has been a conscious, lavishly funded campaign to scapegoat the era for many of America’s social ills in order to move the nation’s political agenda to the right. The other is driven by the more nonpartisan forces of commercial media, typically playing off dramatic images, events, and personalities to generate interest among market audiences. Like much of consumer culture, these sixties evocations play off feelings of nostalgia, often in bifurcated form—that is, nostalgia for one’s youth in the 1960s vs. nostalgia for the good old days before the sixties ruined everything.4 Inmorerecentyears,advertisersandproducersof popculturehaveplayedonreaction against such nostalgia among younger audiences tired of the incessant media preoccupation with baby boomers. Massmediadiscourseaboutthe1960shastherebydomesticatedapoliticallyvolatile eraintheserviceof apoliticalspectaclethattrivializesthekindof empoweringdemocraticawakeningthatoccurredsomefortytofifty -fiveyearsago.Theperiodbeginning with early civil rights activism around 1954 and continuing until the end of the war in Vietnamwasoneof awakeneddemocraticassertivenessthatgrewoutof contradictions of post–World War II America.5 This assertiveness posed profound challenges to the United States’ political economy and thus produced a backlash from both the political Right and the corporate Center that ushered in the long era of rightist-dominated neoliberalism. I suggest that the same two forces that have shaped public memory of the1960s—ideologicalbacklashandconsumer-drivenmedia—alsoplayedasignificant role during the 1960s, influencing that era’s trajectory in ways that helped to restore the hegemony of consumer-driven capitalism while eroding the democratic culture. Two structural characteristics of mass media, reflecting broader structures of power and ideology, have played a crucial role in this transformation of the American political culture. First, reflecting a variety of institutional and market forces, the mass media produce an ideologically boundaried discourse that reinforces the polity’sfoundationalinstitutions,ideology,andmythology.6 Withintheboundaries of this “legitimate” discourse, debate over the meaning of events typically occurs betweenDemocratsandRepublicans,liberalsandconservatives,dovesandhawks. As Daniel Hallin put it in his study of Vietnam War coverage, “Beyond the Sphere of Legitimate Controversy lies the Sphere of Deviance, the realm of those political actorsandviewswhichjournalistsandthepoliticalmainstreamof thesocietyreject asunworthyof beingheard[emphasisadded].”7 Intheexcluded“sphereof deviance,” onecanfindtheviewsandargumentsof thosewhochallengeorcritiquethenation’s prevailing myths, ideology, or institutions. Excluded from mainstream discourse, these views have found expression in the arenas of protest and alternative media. 88 democratic narrative, history, and memory Second,especiallywiththeriseof televisioninthe 1950sand1960s,commercial imperativeshaveincreasinglypushedmassmediatowardnews-as-entertainment— thehighlightingof dramaticnews,powerfulimagery,andcompellingpersonalities— and away from coverage of complex issues and in-depth analysis and explanation.8 The evocative power of television news drama could be seen in the NBC interview with congressman (and former SNCC activist) John Lewis at the moment Barack Obamawasdeclaredthenewlyelectedpresidentat11:00p.m.onNovember4,2008. Reflectingpoignantlyon“thestruggle,thesuffering,thepainandeverythingwetried to do to create a more perfect union,” Lewis evoked a panoply of 1960s memories: Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, the “unmovable lines” of civil rights marchers in Selma, and the three civil rights workers killed in Mississippi . He concluded, “I feel very blessed to live to see this day.”9 Indeed, television’s...