Thread by @ThePublicSquare

“How Did Politics and Pop Culture Become One?” Join us live to discuss with journalist and #RockMeOnTheWater author @RonBrownstein and L.A. Times columnist @SandyBanksLA: twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Before we get started, get to know tonight’s speakers in our virtual green room:

Brownstein spoke with us back in October about the book that changed his life in college, the song that changed his life in high school, and what’s inspired him in the last year: zps.la/3d6FxF6

Banks stopped by our green room in 2019 to chat about appearing on TV news shows, how Los Angeles has changed, and her childhood hero: zps.la/2S8YoEK

We’re live! Join us to discuss “How Did Politics and Pop Culture Become One?” with @RonBrownstein and @SandyBanksLA. Bring your questions for the speakers to our live chat:

Brownstein’s new book, “Rock Me On the Water” (@HarperCollins), tells the story of 1974 Los Angeles. “How did you settle on 1974?” Banks asks Brownstein. zps.la/2QKD8sq

"I ultimately decided that 1974 was the year to focus on for two reasons," Brownstein responds.

1: It had the most of the emblematic art, movies, music, and television that exemplified the way the culture was changing in the early 1970s

2: 1974 was "the last year before the tide starts to recede. In 1975 and 1976, in a lot of different ways, you see the culture going in different directions, and this moment of concentrated influence and excellence in L.A. begins to dissipate."

In the early 1970s, Brownstein contextualizes, what was happening was a "simultaneous revitalization" of the movie, television, and music industries in L.A., as they were all moved by "the same tide: the growing economic clout of the baby boom."

Movies and TV especially—which had steadfastly ignored the changes of the '60s—were forced to "reimagine themselves in order to make themselves relevant to this rising generation that was becoming an increasing share of their audience," Brownstein continues.

"All of the great popular culture of the 1970s, most of it produced in L.A., was grappling with one overriding question above all," Brownstein argues. "What, from the ideals of the '60s, could be sustained in what was clearly stonier political soil of the 1970s?"

"All in the Family," he points out, "was basically week-by-week chronicling the terms of surrender of the older generation to the new social morays being put forward by the younger generation."

But by the mid-1970s, audiences began to be "somewhat exhausted by re-litigating the arguments of the 1960s."

"The perfect symbol is by 1976, 'Happy Days,' which takes us back to the 1950s, replaces 'All in the Family' as the number one show on TV," Brownstein points out.

At that point, we start to see the rise of entertainment that Brownstein describes as "less challenging (though it can be brilliant)"—like Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, and Indiana Jones—"but is less about putting an X-ray on America."

The social movements of the 1960s had their successes & failures. But “they did not, by any means, usher in an era of liberal political dominance in America.” Nixon won in '68 and '72, primarily by mobilizing the voters who were the most unhappy with how the culture was changing.

“There’s a big lesson there, and a parallel to today,” @RonBrownstein says. “The electorate is older & whiter than the country overall. At any given moment, you can get a lot of political bang out of telling the voters who least like change that you’re going to stop the change."

It's audience Q&A time! Join in and ask questions here:

"I don’t think it’s unreasonable to compare the level of talent that was assembled in L.A. in the early 1970s with what we saw in the modern art & theater world in New York in the early 1950s, or what we saw in the literary world in Paris in the 1920s," Brownstein says.

Audience Q: How much can we trace our contemporary political attitudes to this moment in the 1970s?

Brownstein: "The biggest change in our politics over my lifetime is we have gone from a political alignment in which most of the parties were separated by class ...

... to one in which they are separated mostly by cultural attitudes ... The period that I write about is the dawn of that shift in the axis," Brownstein responds.

That's a wrap! Thanks to tonight's speakers and all who tuned in. Join Zócalo and @CaltechLive on Monday, May 10 at 12 PM PDT to chat "What Is the Meaning of Life?" with Sir Paul Nurse and @ZernickaGoetz. Register: zps.la/39Y1HJk