Seventies Now

Most would agree that American culture in the 1980s differed dramatically from that of the 1960s. Yet the 1970s, the decade "in between", is still somehow thought of as a cultural wasteland. In "The Seventies Now" Stephen Paul Miller debunks this notion by examining a wide range of political and cultural phenomena - from the long shadow cast by Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal to Andy Warhol and the disco scene - identifying these phenomena as pivotal yet previously unidentified social trends, the movement from institutionalized external surveillance to the widespread internalization of such practices. In describing how during the 1970s Americans learned to "survey" themselves, Miller shines surprising new light on such subjects as the women's movement, voting rights enforcement, the Ford presidency, and environmental legislation. He analyzes relevant themes in many of the decade's major films - such as "The Deer Hunter", "Jaws", "Star Wars" and "Apolcalypse Now" - and in the literature of writers including John Ashbery, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich and Sam Shepard. In discussing the reverberations of the 1969 Stonewall riots, technological innovations, the philosophy of Michel Foucault and a host of documents and incidents, Miller shows how the 1970s marked an important period of transition, indeed a time of many transitions, to the world we confront at the end of the millennium. "The Seventies Now" should interest students and scholars of cultural studies, American history, theories of technology, film and literature, visual arts, and gay and lesbian studies.