Camp TV of the 1960s: Reassessing the Vast Wasteland

Camp TV of the 1960s offers a comprehensive understanding of all of the many forms camp TV took during that critical decade. In reevaluating the history of camp on television, the authors reconsider the infantilized conceptualization of sixties television, which has generally been characterized as the creative and cultural ebb between the 1950s Golden Age of television and the networks' shift to "relevance" in the early 1970s. Encompassing contributions from a broad range of media and television scholars that (re)consider programs like Batman, The Monkees, The Addams Family, Bewitched, F Troop, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, chapters closely examine beloved 1960s American prime-time programs that drew significantly on aspects of camp, many of which were widely syndicated and left continuing imprints on popular culture. Other chapters consider key TV precursors from the early sixties; British camp television programs such as The Avengers; the use of musical codes to convey camp humor (even on black-and-white sets); the role that the viewing strategies of queer communities played - and continued to play even decades later; and how camp's multivalence allowed for more conservative readings, especially among older audiences, which were critical for the move to "mass camp" throughout American culture by the early seventies. Camp TV of the 1960s is essential reading for students and scholars in television studies and others interested in the history and theory of camp, the 1960s, or popular culture, as well as fans of these well-known but generally understudied television programs.