Beyond the Tailfin: Education and the Politics of Knowledge on Big Money Quiz Shows

Abstract

This article analyzes the cultural formations from which 1950s big money quiz shows emerge. Using Bourdieu's notion of the field, the analysis focuses on three key sites that articulate issues of knowledge and education related to 1950s television: (1) the public debates about education in the cold war United States, (2) broadcast network policies geared toward the production of knowledge and education, and (3) big money quiz shows and their public reception. The author argues that the specific social and cultural conditions in 1950s America, especially the debates surrounding education and the need for the television industry to produce enlightenment programming, created television programs that reaffirmed traditional versions of authority and selectively endorsed elite culture and a narrow definition of national identity under white, upper-class leadership.