Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: What, then, is the American?
- 2 The American century
- 3 The regions and regionalism
- 4 Immigration to the United States in the twentieth century
- 5 Religion in the United States in the twentieth century: 1900-1960
- 6 Shifting boundaries: religion and the United States: 1960 to the present
- 7 The Hispanic background of the United States
- 8 African Americans since 1900
- 9 Asian Americans
- 10 Women in the twentieth century
- 11 Queer America
- 12 The United States, war, and the twentieth century
- 13 The culture of the Cold War
- 14 Secret America: the CIA and American culture
- 15 Vietnam and the 1960s
- 16 New York City and the struggle of the modern
- 17 Music: sound: technology
- 18 African American music of the twentieth century
- 19 Hollywood cinema
- 20 Popular culture
- 21 Theatre
- 22 Society and the novel in twentieth-century America
- 23 “Preferring the wrong way”: mapping the ethical diversity of US twentieth-century poetry
- Index
- Series List
15 - Vietnam and the 1960s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2007
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: What, then, is the American?
- 2 The American century
- 3 The regions and regionalism
- 4 Immigration to the United States in the twentieth century
- 5 Religion in the United States in the twentieth century: 1900-1960
- 6 Shifting boundaries: religion and the United States: 1960 to the present
- 7 The Hispanic background of the United States
- 8 African Americans since 1900
- 9 Asian Americans
- 10 Women in the twentieth century
- 11 Queer America
- 12 The United States, war, and the twentieth century
- 13 The culture of the Cold War
- 14 Secret America: the CIA and American culture
- 15 Vietnam and the 1960s
- 16 New York City and the struggle of the modern
- 17 Music: sound: technology
- 18 African American music of the twentieth century
- 19 Hollywood cinema
- 20 Popular culture
- 21 Theatre
- 22 Society and the novel in twentieth-century America
- 23 “Preferring the wrong way”: mapping the ethical diversity of US twentieth-century poetry
- Index
- Series List
Summary
Kennedy’s New Frontier
When he assumed the presidency in January 1961, the forty-three-year-old John F. Kennedy and his glamorous wife Jacqueline transformed the White House into an exciting and inspiring set of images. Television, still a young medium, was for the first time in virtually every household in America. Three broadcast networks controlled what was seen on the national screen. The news appeared at dinnertime for a fifteen-minute period, and would soon expand to a half-hour. This was followed by “prime-time” entertainment consisting mainly of Westerns and family situation comedies such as Father Knows Best. Heavily censored, these shows provided Americans with an idealized reflection of themselves. Kennedy and his family brought to the news the same telegenic good looks, knowledge of Hollywood and the media, and innate sense of drama and high style found in the nation's entertainment. Novelist Norman Mailer had predicted before the election that with Kennedy in the White House the American frontier myth would “emerge once more, because America's politics would now be also America's favorite movie, America's first soap opera, America's best-seller.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture , pp. 295 - 313Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
- 1
- Cited by