The Aging Male 2003;6:175 –182
History and Philosophy
The promised planet: alliances and
struggles of the gerontocracy in American
television science fiction of the 1960s
F. M. Hodges
Key words: GERONTOCRACY, TELEVISION, SCIENCE FICTION,
1960s
| ABSTRACT
American science fiction television series of the 1960s dramatized the complex conflicts raging throughout societyin simple, allegorical terms. The power struggle between the older and younger generations that pervaded many of the conflicts and social reform movements of this era was explored in the four most imaginative and acclaimed science fiction television series of the 1960s: The Twilight Zone (1959 –1965), The Outer Limits (1963 –1965), Star Trek (1966 –1969) and |
Lost in Space (1965 –1968). Each show presented
the mature male as the bearer of culture, the holder of power and the keeper of the scientific mysteries, but instead of a standardized response to the problem of the ‘generation gap’ and the ever-increasing polarization of American society along generational lines, these dramas offered both pessimistic and optimistic views of the outcome of contemporary intergenerational social strife. |
| INTRODUCTION
From the perspective of the average middle-class American who lived through it, the decade of the 1960s was marred by immense social up- heaval, political turmoil and global conflict. The prospects for a prosperous and peaceful future seemed bleak. Racial and class tensions exploded on to the streets of the country in inner city riots. Cold War political tensions generated in the aftermath of the Second World War were simultaneously erupting on to the battlefields of Vietnam. Additionally, institutionalized practices such as regular air raid and atomic and thermo- nuclear bomb drills in public schools exacerbated and legitimized fears about an imminent nuclear holocaust. A future of perpetual war, social dis- integration and famine seemed distressingly likely to many Americans, a scenario made all the
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more real by the intensely graphic nature of
the television news coverage of the war during the 1960s. Another source of anxiety for Americans in
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