Suzie Monozlai

“There are also generational knowledges in play, accessed and skilled within a history of televisual experiments in educational entertainment. For US academics schooled in the fifties, sixties, and seventies some old TV shows haunt this vignette as well. Two are Walter Cronkite’s You Are There (CBS, 1953–57) and Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds (PBS, 1977–81). During the mid-century decades either or both could be found on the TV screen and in US secondary school classrooms. Even now the thoughtfully presentist You are There reenactments can be viewed on DVDs from Netflix; you can be personally addressed and included as Cronkite interviews Socrates about his choice to poison himself with hemlock rather than submit to exile after ostracism in ancient Athens. Cronkite’s interviews, scripted by blacklisted Hollywood writers, were specifically charged with messages against McCarthy-style witch hunts that were “felt” rather than spoken out.”
― Katie King, Networked Reenactments: Stories Transdisciplinary Knowledges Tell