For as long as TV has existed, it has been used as a scapegoat for social and cultural issues. In a 1961 speech, FCC chairmen Newton Minow declared the format a "vast wasteland" of programming. In the 1970s, dozens of CBS affiliates chose not to show the historic episode of "Maude" that tackled abortion in reruns, caving to the pressure of critics who thought it would encourage viewers to do the same. The '80s saw the Satanic Panic, in which TV at large got swept up in a whirlwind of conspiracy, cited alongside metal music and board games as negative influences on the state of American children's souls.
Then there were the '90s. While the paranoid attitudes behind the Satanic Panic still raged on in some households, America became gripped by an unimaginable and seemingly new phenomenon: the school shooting. A few school shootings had happened before the 1990s,...
Then there were the '90s. While the paranoid attitudes behind the Satanic Panic still raged on in some households, America became gripped by an unimaginable and seemingly new phenomenon: the school shooting. A few school shootings had happened before the 1990s,...
- 9/2/2023
- by Valerie Ettenhofer
- Slash Film
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