Growing Up with Popular Culture
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range Matter is presented by the Materials Research Society. This exhibition and its tour are made possible by the generous support of the National Science Foundation, Alcan Inc., Dow, Ford Motor Company Fund, Intel Innovation In Education, and the 3M Foundation.
To volunteer for activities with the exhibition, contact Amy Moll Community Resources Coordinator [email protected]
POSTERMINARIES
Growing Up with Popular Culture When I was just old enough to be able to turn on a television, I was among a vanguard—the first generation for whom TV was “always there.” Turning the thing on was a little more challenging than it is for today’s toddlers. There was no remote control, and the combined on/off switch and volume control was very stiff for little fingers, but any time I turned it on (if it was not during the daytime hours when the two channels available in the United Kingdom only broadcast a test pattern), then I could rely on seeing a “Western.” Cowboys and Indians: the great staple of British popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Every night of the week, a different six-gun hero took to the screen, and my dreams were filled with black-and-white Western landscapes, a clear delineation between good and evil, and a ride along with Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Wyatt Earp, or even Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. The best gift ever was a pair of cap guns with a two-holster gun belt, a cowboy hat (not quite 10 gallons, I imagine) and a Western-style waistcoat with a sheriff’s badge pinned to it. With all that on, riding my bike through the streets, I was truly home on the range, out there in the southwestern suburbs of London. When I grew up, I was going to be a cowboy. As the years went by, the horse operas became ever so slightly more sophisticated as we progressed from shows like Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and Laramie to Bonanza and The Virginian. The smoke signals were clear, though: The days of the Western were numbered. Down from seven nights a week, eventually only to one, in the late 1960s and 1970s, they were replaced (along with that first TV set) by another classic venue for the battle between good and evil: Cops and Robbers. At some point, the television schedule sustained as many as four different cop 568
shows produced in the United Kingdom, and several more from the U.S. networks. As with the Westerns, these shows grew in sophistication (also violence level) and migrated from the early-evening “family viewing” time slots into what we now call “prime time.”
“After decades of being just some kind of geek, my line of work now makes me cool.” My own life was changing, of course, with more homework to do and less time available for TV, despite a later bedtime, but once in a while my parents would have some time to sit and watch the thing at the same time that I did. My father was a detective in the London police force, and he watched those cop and robber shows with a professional eye. Most of the time he refrained from comment, but every now and then he would give a little lecture on how clever it w
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