The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 27 October 2010
by Pagan Kennedy
We love to make fun of the 1970s. It certainly was an era of weird fashion, lots of earthtones, avocado-colored refrigerators, shag carpeting, and on and on and on. But we took it pretty seriously back then, and who is to say what we'll think of the present decade after thirty years have passed? Somehow, though, with today's instant nostalgia (like I Love the 80's on VH1), it seems like we look back in different ways. Anyway, all that considered, who has really analyzed the 70s? The history has been closely scrutinized, but who has put the pop-cultural references into their proper context? Surely some students of culture have written dissertations to this effect. Here, Pagan Kennedy, a survivor of that maligned decade, puts together her own observations and analyses of various popular culture icons of that era. Everything from The Partridge Family to the Stonewall riot, from The Mod Squad to bra burners is covered here. In many cases, Kennedy brings an incisive wit to her connections between what was happening in popular culture and what was happening behind the scenes. It is still happening, today, of course. The corporations co-opt underground and "indie" lifestyle to sell products and wash it all down for consumption via television. By the time the revolution appears in a sitcom, it is long over. Now, we can watch reruns of That 70's Show (which aired after this book was published, in 1994). But Kennedy tries to convince us of the relevance of much of what happened in 70s culture. Most of the time, she pulls it off, relating, for example, 70s "jiggle" shows like Charlie's Angels to the women's movement and the porn industry. Most of her references are to music or television, the largest streams of pop culture we had at the time. Not all of her analysis is on the mark, but this is an interesting book nonetheless. At times, Kennedy comes off as a little abrupt and even seems to drop the ball. She tells us of the meltdown at Three Mile Island and its relation to the movies Silkwood and The China Syndrome and wryly observes that the nuclear power plant was put back online as if that reflected America's short attention span, though she doesn't note that no new nuclear power plants have been built in the USA since that time at all. Much has even happened in the decade and a half since the book was published, and the observant reader will find him or herself mentally correcting or updating Kennedy's essays. The book is pretty good, though. It is thoughtful and entertaining. It suffers a little from its almost-coffee-table format, and appears to be a lighter thing than its actual content. There are also the cumbersome appendices (particularly one about the 70s bands Parliament and Funkadelic) which pad out the page count without lending too much to the flow of Kennedy's otherwise satisfying essays.
Also by Pagan Kennedy: [Confessions of a Memory Eater]