Elana Levine,
Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television.
Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 2007.
ISBN: 978 082 233919 9
US$22.95 (pb)
320pp
(Review copy supplied by Duke University Press)

In 1977 an ‘anonymous TV executive’ described American television as ‘wallowing in sex’ (4), an evocative description of seventies network programming that inspired the title of Elana Levine’s lively discussion of this period of television broadcasting: Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television. While Levine acknowledges that ‘sex-themed humour’ on American television might well be traced back to a cross-dressing Milton Berle at the beginning of the fifties (284), she argues that the years between the 1968 launch of the groovily suggestive Laugh-In and the 1971 cancellation of Charlie’s Angels were marked by a particular ‘engagement’ with sexuality (11). In highlighting the role of network television in packaging and shaping the changes wrought in the sixties and seventies by the ‘sexual revolution’, Levine suggests that TV provided viewers with ‘a new way of understanding and accepting the sexually altered society that would not likely have come to pass without its involvement’ (6).

This is a bold claim, affirming the influence of television and its role in ‘normalising’ social and political change. Yet, while Levine tracks the networks’ self-interested commodification of the new sexual culture, she balances her examination of their commercially motivated rivalry with the continual reminder that this is just one part of a larger system of negotiation in which:

the broadcast networks; television producers, writers, and performers; government and intra-industrial regulators; advertisers; organized audience groups and individual viewers; along with the television programming itself – determined how the sexual revolution would pervade the American mainstream. (15)

In the process of detailing television’s contribution to a ‘new, post-sexual revolution common sense’, Levine constructs a fascinating narrative in which the three broadcast networks use sex as a key weapon in a ratings war that sees the network underdog, ABC, emerge victorious over the previously all-powerful CBS and perennial runner-up NBC. Levine illustrates the pre-existing histories of the three networks, and the identities that they had accrued, by drawing on the industry lore of the time: ‘While CBS was often deemed the “Tiffany Network” (especially by its self-serving executives) ABC was said to stand for the “Almost Broadcasting Company” (20).’ The heady days of the seventies turned this long-standing hierarchy on its head: The industry gravitas that had been the privileged possession of CBS became an encumbrance when it was a matter of tapping into the alluring tackiness of seventies popular culture. In contrast, ABC, condemned thus far to be a distant third in the fight for viewers, seemed ideally placed to identify and meet the fascination with the loosening of established mores that was brewing amongst ordinary viewers.

Levine’s portrayal of the varying successes of the individual networks during the seventies is underpinned by a detailed description of the experiments in programming that were characteristic of this period. She uses both documentary evidence and intelligent surmise to think about the logic underpinning the program choices made by the networks. While Levine suggests that ABC’s reversal of its fortunes stemmed from an astute reading of the market (particularly on the part of super-programmer Fred Silverman), she also emphasises that the market was but one aspect of a complex process of give and take. In testing boundaries, the networks were not seeking to propel viewers willy nilly into the new sexual culture but, rather, to go with them on a journey that had already begun. Inevitably, as part of this practice of measuring, meeting and guiding public taste, certain taboos, like X-rated movies, bras with breasts in them and condoms, were reinforced and reiterated. The industry ‘necessarily addressed the sexual revolution in ways that could be considered acceptable to advertisers fearful of controversy, to politicians fearful of public backlash, and to viewers fearful of radical challenges to their way of life’ (5).

One of the strengths of this book is the balance between the broader sweeps of this industry narrative and the quite intricate readings of the television programs that are integral to this discussion. Levine provides a lovingly detailed description and analysis of the ‘hotspots’ of television’s exploration of changing and contested sexual values. For instance, in locating the decade-long trend for made-for-TV movies, Levine focuses on the substantial body of sex-themed movies in order to tease out the way that they contributed to a normative ‘discourse of sexual endangerment’ (76-122), while being criticised for jeopardizing youthful innocence with sexually explicit subject matter. Levine offers a similarly multifaceted and perceptive reading of the way that seventies comedy employed ‘suggestiveness’ as a way of appealing to a family audience but also as a register of the social changes afoot. In looking at the role of the female ‘sex symbol’ in seventies TV, Levine acknowledges this figure’s function as an antidote to concerns about the destabilising effects of the women’s movement. At the same time, consistent with her contention that the television of this period was pivotal to making the changes in contemporary sexual culture palatable to a mainstream audience, she argues that the objectification of these female characters was matched by their active presence at the centre of the narrative.

Levine finishes with a chapter on the treatment of rape in daytime soap opera, arguing that the low status of daytime television in general, and soaps in particular, licensed a more questioning approach to the cultural shifts taking place. In the course of monitoring the ubiquitous rape narratives of daytime soap opera, Levine suggests that their popularity was a testament to the capacity of the soaps to articulate the uncertainty accompanying the contemporary refiguring of sexual violence and ‘offered a degree of complexity and ambiguity difficult to come by in the more high-profile world of prime time’ (251). In dramatising the highly charged and once unspoken subject of sexual violence, the soaps provided their viewers with a forum, a space where they could grapple with the issues involved. By the same token, Levine reminds us that such experimentation was firmly rooted in the commercial bottom-line and was motivated by increasingly intense competition for daytime ratings.

Levine’s commentary represents the multifarious voices and influences that gave the broadcast television of the period its ‘character’. In tracing the networks’ efforts to tap into the new sexual culture, Levine also emphasises the part played by regulators, pressure groups and individual viewers in deciding the limits of this experiment. At the same time, she makes it clear that, in the noisy, market-driven context of commercial television, these limits were always open to negotiation.

Susan Bye,
La Trobe University, Australia.

Created on: Sunday, 9 December 2007