TVZombie archive

working on archiving old TVZombie posts from the blog i ran in college. these will be slightly edited + expanded but mostly kept the same.

“Bringing beloved classics back from the dead to shame them.”

I grew up in front of the TV and have a soft spot for 60s/70s design. While I love the aesthetic of this time, the media from it is rife with casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. Looking at these shows critically and unpackaging all of their problems is a way of unlearning these harmful behaviors. I also have a lot of opinions and my fiance is tired of listening to me rant about dead TV shows.

Here I am providing in-depth summaries and analyses of 20th-century television for those of us interested in the why of television. TV in the 1960s and 1970s managed to challenge many long-held societal ideas while simultaneously upholding some seriously problematic views; rather than enjoying these episodes at face value and dismissing racism and sexism as products of the time, I want to take a magnifying glass and look at the actors, writers, and breaking news at the airing of each episode. This blog explores the hypocrisy, the activism, the overlooked sexism and the racism played for laughs, and other aspects of classic television that demands revisiting and critical viewing.