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The late, multi-award-winning author of The Glass Teat continues his critical assault on television in this second collection of classic criticism. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were only three major television networks broadcasting original programs and news. And there was only one Harlan Ellison taking them all to task in a series of weekly essays he wrote for the countercultural, underground newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press, a.k.a. "The Freep." For nearly four years, he show more channel surfed through the mire of ABC, CBS, and NBC, finding little of value but much to critique. No one offered a more astute analysis of the idiot box's influence on American culture, or its effects on the intelligence and psyche of viewers. The Other Glass Teat: Further Essays of Opinion on the Subject of Television collects Ellison's final fifty columns, presenting his thoughts on everything from dramas and sitcoms to game shows and roundtable discussions, unleashing his fury against sponsors, the nightly news, and the broadcasts of President Nixon--warning readers about the commander-in-chief's war against the media long before the Watergate scandal broke. As television has evolved into wireless streaming services and digital interactions on portable devices, Ellison's timeless rage against the machine has become prophecy. His plea to unplug is an even more necessary call to action in the face of the twenty-first century's media onslaught. Also available: The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on the Subject of Television show lessTags
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I tend to prefer Ellison's essays to his fiction, and some of his better ones are on display here; at this remove TOGT is chiefly of historical interest, but it's remarkable (and depressing...) how many of his complaints with the "vast wasteland" ring as true today as they did in the early '70s. (Truer, even: he didn't have to contend with the excrescence known as "reality television.") There are some moments of high comedy perpetrated by that merriest of pranksters, Father Time, as when Ellison lavishes praise upon a then up-and-coming actor named -- Zalman King, better known these days as a writer and producer of several feckless soft-core titillation extravaganzas (chiefly the Red Shoe Diaries and Chromium Blue.com series). One of show more Ellison's scripts -- this one for The Young Lawyers, an episode titled "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" -- is reproduced in its entirety; and, as anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with Ellison's oeuvre might expect, his script was not shot as he'd written it, and boy, was he ever pissed off about it. Pity that Ellison didn't reveal why his "Glass Teat" column only lasted two issues at Rolling Stone (whose motto is -- or was, at any rate -- "All the news that fits") in his introduction; maybe he had one of his famous blow-outs with Jann Wenner. show less
More "take no prisoners" columns on TV and the general culture by Harlan Ellison.This book contains a complete Ellison script for "The Young Lawyers", and his take on how it turned out afterward. Pretty it ain't.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It is as if no time has passed at all. It reminds me how little people learn from history...so sad.
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583+ Works 30,531 Members
Harlan Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 27, 1934. He was the author of numerous short story collections including Strange Wine; The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World; Harlan Ellison's Watching; Deathbird Stories; Repent Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman; I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream; and Stalking the Nightmare: Stories show more and Essays. He received numerous awards including the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writer's Association, the Edgar Allen Poe Award, and the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2011. He published two collections of his columns on television for the Los Angeles Free Press entitled The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. He edited several anthologies including Dangerous Visions: 33 Original Stories and Medea: Harlan's World. He received the Milford Award for Lifetime Achievement in Editing. He also wrote scripts for TV series including Burke's Law, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He served as creative consultant on the new version of The Twilight Zone in the 1980s and as conceptual consultant on Babylon 5. He won the Writer's Guild of America's Award for Most Outstanding Teleplay four times. He died on June 27, 2018 at the age of 84. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1975
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 791.45 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Movies, TV, Video Motion pictures, radio, television, podcasting Television
- LCC
- PN1992.3 .U5 .E42 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Drama Broadcasting Television broadcasts
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 347
- Popularity
- 90,658
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.94)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 6
