Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics

by Ronald Brownstein

Lucas, in his story of four friends on the cusp between youth and adulthood, captured on film the America that was poised to reelect Nixon, the America that saw change as something that happened somewhere else.

American Graffiti

Even decades later, early All in the Family episodes are stunning and, at times, shocking in both subject matter and language.

The show’s most consistent political message was that Archie (and all those who thought like him) could not stop the social and cultural changes happening around them.

The problem, she thought, wasn’t that the men running television were determined to exclude women; it was more that they never really noticed that they were excluding women or, for that matter, nonwhite writers.

For all these women, the price of admission into the rooms where decisions were made was accepting the rules set by the men who were already there. Unequal pay was a given.