Popular Culture Review Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 2010 | Page 9

The Monkees: A Happily but Safely Diverse Portrait for a New America The television series The Monkees ran in originals and reruns during a time of profound changes in American culture and society, from 1966 to 1973, when the series was picked up for syndication. On the surface, the four guys were no more or less than the “American Beatles,” targeted, perhaps, to a younger audience, but a closer look reveals that the series both heralds the promise and sketches limitations of the newest ideas about American diversity. One message was that four guys who looked so different could get along and prosper together. Even better, these were four guys whose individual musical tastes, explored in later seasons, represented different cultural influences—yet succeeded in playing Monkee music together. The greater and sadder message, however, was that there were limits to diversity. Middle-class white Americans watching The Monkees were reassured that, while African, Asian, and Latino music could influence mainstream American music in a positive way, African, Asian, and Latino citizens need not be honored as part of the broader American landscape. Ultimately, the show represented a diversity that was non-threatening to the millions of Americans who watched it every Monday night. The decade leading up to 1966 saw vast changes in the American cultural landscape. Among them, the most important was the beginning of the modem civil rights movement. In the deep South, African-Americans fought for an end to segregation. Bull Connor’s dogs attacked civil rights marchers, and state troopers attacked those who were marching from Selma to Montgomery. But in other parts of the country, there was just as much resistance to change. In the west, for example, Asians and African-Americans worked to secure Seattle’s open housing law, enacted in 1963, yet it was rescinded a year later by voters’ referendum; however, tides were turning. All over the country, politicians and private citizens who wanted to keep the status quo were pushing against a rising tide of protest and a collective insistence that all American citizens be allowed to pursue the American dream. By 1966, the Voting Rights Act had passed; the National Farm Workers Union (United Farm Workers) had organized in California; the National Organization for Women had been created in Washington DC; in some areas of the country, African-Americans, Asians, and whites were working together; some schools, public and private, had quietly integrated without incident; and interaction among people of different races was becoming more common. However, the television world of 1966 in which The Monkees debuted was nearly monochromatic, literally and figuratively. There was one major AfricanAmerican star who wasn’t a singer or dancer: Bill Cosby, whose turn on I Spy (1965) represented the first time a black actor had been chosen for a dramatic lead. Diahann Carroll’s groundbreaking role in Julia would follow in 1968, the