How Do Movies And Television Have Impacted American Culture

How Movies and Television Have Impacted American Culture Since the 1970s

Movies and television are huge media sources worldwide that largely impact American Culture and for that reason, it is difficult to imagine life without them. Since the 1970s we have seen an evolution in movies and television such as controversial topics never used in scripts before, special effects, and new trends being set by America’s favorite actors and even filmmakers. This evolution has impacted our creative processes, as well as how Americans think and make decisions in daily life, which we will explore further.

The Impact of Movies

Several movies from the 1970s have impacted American Culture, but some more so than others. The film Jaws, released in 1975

George Lucas, the filmmaker, and creator of Star Wars, said in an interview done in 2015 (Lucas, G. (2015). George Lucas on how Star Wars Changed the Film Industry Charlie Rose Interview. YouTube Video.) that after the movie’s release, there was a downside to Star Wars that caused changes to the industry and how movies were made moving forward. He explained that after Star Wars, everyone focused more on the spaceships and space battles instead of the story behind them. He went on to say that the use of spaceships in movies became abused and lacked creativity. Lucas noticed that everyone was making spaceship movies that were doing poorly at the box office because they lacked a story that viewers could follow. (Lucas, 2015). Another issue Lucas pointed out was the abuse of technology. Everyone started mimicking the new technology he had used with color and sound, again without focusing on the storyline. Lucas stated, “You’re telling a story using tools; You’re not using tools to tell a story.”

Star Wars was so successful that the film industry now wanted to model all movies around it to capitalize on what worked. According to Lucas (2015), because he wrote Star Wars as a trilogy, now if the industry is presented with anything that doesn’t look like a sequel, they won't do it. Today, we now see that many of our films are released as part of a series;

Sports are also popular on television networks dating back to the late 1930s when they were first televised. However, one of the largest impacts sports had through television was the birth of Monday Night Football in 1970 shown by the ABC network (Johnson, T. C. (n.d.). TELEVISION, PRO FOOTBALL AND MOBILE PRIVATIZATION, 1939-1970. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2021, 41(2), 338-353). The impact was so large in fact, that several theaters considered shutting down early on Monday nights and a hospital in Seattle joked that no babies should be born between the hours of 7 and 10 pm (Johnson, n.d.). Football had been televised for decades, but what made Monday night broadcasts so popular were the additional things that were not as special as other game days that were introduced by Roone Arledge of ABC. Monday Night Football showed the only pro game played on that day, and it was only the greatest teams that got to play, so the audience would see the best of the best exclusively on Monday nights. Pre-game activities were also shown, as well as the addition of three commentators in the broadcast booth of every Monday night game. Monday Night Football wasn’t just a game, it became a highly anticipated show that changed the way Americans watched a televised football