1973 Nervous Breakdown

January 30, 2006
According to CCNY assistant history professor Killen, 1973 was "a cultural watershed, a moment of major realignments and shifts in American politics, culture, and society," and he examines these transformations in a series of essays. Andy Warhol's Interview
magazine chronicled America's obsession with celebrity culture, from its homage to screen icons like Marilyn Monroe to its sympathetic portrayal of gender-bending trash-rock band the New York Dolls. The year 1973 also saw the rise of Ted Patrick, who claimed to have deprogrammed over 100 young people who had fallen into the clutches of religious cults, and the transformation of Vietnam War POWs into heroes as a Watergate-embroiled Nixon sought to bask in their reflected glory. The best pieces focus on PBS's trailblazing reality TV show An American Family
, and the media's progressive invasion of American lives. Disasters and hijackings made air travel a flash point for extreme fear. Although his prose is frequently opaque and stilted, and his selection of 1973 seems arbitrary (why not 1974, the year of Patty Hearst's kidnapping and Nixon's resignation?), the perceptive Killen sheds welcome light on our collective experience.