The Waltons: Nostalgia and Myth in Seventies America

'The Waltons' drama series about John and Olivia Walton, their ageing parents Zeb and Esther and their seven children in 1930s and '40s America was a successful show for CBS TV throughout the 1970s. In 2008 - perhaps significantly - the first six series of the show have for the first time been released on dvd. This is classic television with contemporary relevance, still running on Hallmark channel and remembered with reverence by a generation.

'The Waltons' was on tv screens through a socially and politically volatile period, when Nixon-era America was confronting the impending withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. The show, Mike Chopra-Gant demonstrates in this fascinating book, expressed a wider nostalgic desire in its audience to return to traditional conservatism and paternalistic family values at this time of political crisis. He examines its deployment of key myths, and its vision of family as against current tv depictions, featuring the likes of the Addams, the Simpsons, and the Sopranos. He also explores its powerful representation of three generations of men and of the Walton family's strong women, who are nevertheless domestic heroines.
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