Unless you’ve spent the past few months living in a cave on Mars with really crappy wi-fi, then you’re probably aware that these are very divisive times in America.
In the past three weeks alone, Joe Biden stumbled through a disastrous debate, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, and the nation learned that our next vice president might be a guy who first gained fame via a controversial memoir that was later adapted into Ron Howard’s worst movie.
Needless to say, these are eventful times. And many Americans aren’t quite sure what to make of all this upheaval.
It’s nice to imagine a world in which this degree of uncertainty would prompt people to focus on community and family, to treat every stranger they encounter with a modicum of compassion inspired by the knowledge that they’re probably just as confused as you are.
But as you’re probably aware, that’s not the world we live in.
A House Divided
In fact, no matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum, there’s a good chance that, in recent years, you’ve been subjected to some sort of hostility due to your political beliefs.
Maybe it was something as innocuous as an unpleasant encounter with a disagreeable stranger on social media.
Or maybe it was something more severe, like a face-to-face argument that escalated well beyond the limits of polite discourse.
Whatever the case, we probably don’t need to tell you that these are tense times.
In fact, by many metrics, this great nation is more divided than at any other time in modern history.
And while extremists on both sides might fantasize about a sequel to the Civil War (the bloody conflict, not the recent Alex Garland movie) or a “national divorce,” the fact is, we’re stuck with one another.
Millions of gallons of ink have been spilled on the subject of how this mess started and what we can do about it.
And sadly, all the finger-pointing and historical analysis haven’t gotten us any closer to a solution.
Now, we’re not gonna claim to have all the answers, but we would like to examine the issue from a lens that few pundits have considered thus far — namely, our television screens.
The Great Communicator
Yes, TV has impacted our culture and daily lives in ways that we seldom contemplate anymore, so ubiquitous is the medium.
If you wanted to name the last presidential election that could accurately be described as “civil” or even “gentlemanly,” you could do a lot worse than the 1952 contest between Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower.
Perhaps not coincidentally, this has also been dubbed the first “TV election.”
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So different were the times that both teams struggled with whether to shell out for televised campaign ads.
The reluctance stemmed not from whether it would be a smart way to spend their cash but instead from the idea that such commercials might be unfair to the other side.
After all, Stevenson reasoned that if he had made an allegation against his opponent in a 30-second “spot,” Ike could only have responded if he had also purchased ad time.
And that’s just not the way that elections were conducted in America.
In the end, Eisenhower became the first presidential candidate to buy air time on television.
Of course, his running mate, Richard Nixon, would become more closely associated with the medium due to his famous Checkers Speech and his 1960 televised debate against John F. Kennedy.
Still reeling from a lesson learned the hard way, Nixon recruited future Fox News CEO Roger Ailes to craft his televised image ahead of his successful 1968 bid for the White House.
The Dawn of a New Era
In the decades since, TV and American politics have gone hand-in-hand in subtle and obvious ways.
Advertising and debates have become standard components of our election season, and the few news anchors who earnestly looked into the camera and gave it to us straight have entered the pantheon of the medium’s most revered figures.
But what about the less obvious ways television has influenced how we see ourselves, our nation, and our neighbors?
The Power to Unite
When I Love Lucy debuted in 1952, it quickly amassed an audience of more than 11 million households.
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That’s a larger audience than any sitcom receives nowadays — and here’s the kicker:
There were only 15 million operating TV sets in the country at that time, meaning that Lucy was pulling in a Super Bowl-sized share of the audience. Every. Single. Week.
The show was so popular that department stores rescheduled their weekly clearance sales to avoid competing with Lucy and Ricky’s antics.
The audience expanded along with the rise of this new technology, peaking in 1953 when 44 million tuned in to watch Lucy give birth to little Ricky.
For perspective, the very next day, when Eisenhower delivered the first televised inaugural address in American history, only about 30 million watched.
This is for a show that CBS initially refused to air because it didn’t think audiences would be interested in a sitcom featuring an interracial couple.
Clearly, the American people turned out to be more tolerant than Bill Paley and company anticipated.
Of course, we have no way of knowing how many bigots were initially put off by Lucy’s onscreen relationship with her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, but the couple’s easy charm eventually won over tens of millions.
Few other shows better encapsulate television’s ability to unite.
There were many, many more examples in the decades to follow, as Roots, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and countless other series prompted difficult conversations and educated us about our past.
In many cases, the controversial shows and scenes inspired nationally syndicated think pieces and lectures in classrooms across America.
Whether the issue under discussion was abortion, gun violence, or racism, Americans were no less likely to universally agree than they are today.
But these shows gave us a baseline, a common jumping-off point for a national discourse.
These days, such conversations are prompted only by significant news events, which are quickly politicized by social media and the 24-hour news cycle.
When was the last time that a scripted TV series created any more than a ripple in our national discourse?
Would it even be possible for a TV show to prompt a nationwide debate in the age of streaming, when every member of a single household might spend primetime watching their own curated content feed?
Of course, the lack of well-intentioned, open-minded discussions about contentious issues is not the only issue here.
The end of TV Small Talk
Back in the old 1900s, it wasn’t just the socially conscious shows that created conversation around the water cooler.
In fact, most popular series of yesteryear steered clear of politics and controversy altogether.
But they still served to unify by providing us with a genre of small talk that has now disappeared almost entirely.
Now that scripted TV events are few and far between, we’re forced to limit our conversations with strangers to more mundane topics like local sports and the weather.
By modern standards, Game of Thrones was a full-blown cultural phenomenon, with about 14 million tuning in to watch the series finale.
Compare that to the 106 million who watched the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 or even the 76 million who witnessed the unexpected incarceration of Jerry and friends on the last episode of Seinfeld in 1998.
Will anything other than a live sporting event or a presidential debate pull in numbers like that ever again?
It seems unlikely. And that’s a shame for a number of reasons.
Look, we’re not saying that all of America’s problems would be solved if everyone started watching the same shows again.
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But as we’ve discussed in the past, the lack of shared cultural touchstones does seem to be impacting our ability to communicate with one another.
Steve Urkel might not have been the height of comedic excellence, but in 1994, you could save face and build an instant rapport with a restaurant full of strangers by whining, “Did I do that?” after accidentally knocking over your water glass.
Maybe a TikTok influencer will eventually gain that level of popularity, but we have our doubts.
Oh, well. Maybe the upcoming Paris Olympics will bring us back together as a country.
Otherwise, we might have a very contentious fall ahead of us, and the returning fall shows won’t be much help in healing our divide.
What do you think, TV fanatics? Could a handful of beloved TV shows restore our union?
Or are we putting too much faith in our favorite medium? Hit the comments section below to share your thoughts!
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