Let us pause in sombre tribute to the 30th anniversary of a momentous — and shockingly unremembered — turning point in the long twilight struggle between communism and capitalism. An event every bit as important as the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate, Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech and Yakov Smirnoff’s defection to the West. We write, of course, about the debut of Dallas, the 13-year soap opera that shook the world.
Yes, April 1978 was the first time the US turned its eyes to Southfork Ranch, the diabolical genius of J.R. Ewing (as played by Larry Hagman) and Victoria Principal’s high-waisted pantsuits. It was the booze-and-sex-soaked caricature of free enterprise and executive lifestyles that proved irresistible not just to stagflation-weary Americans but viewers from France to the Soviet Union to Ceausescu’s Romania.
Dallas wasn’t simply a television show. It was an atmosphere-altering cultural force. It helped define the 1980s as a glorious “decade of greed”, ushering in an era in which capitalism became cool, even though weighted with manifold moral quandaries. Dallas was either the highest or second-highest rated show in the United States for a half-decade.
Dallas created a new archetype of the anti-hero we loved to hate and hated to love: an establishment tycoon who’s always controlling politicians, cheating on his boozy wife and scheming against his own family. But no matter how evil various translators tried to make J.R. and his milieu, viewers in the nearly 100 countries that gobbled up the show, including in the Warsaw Pact nations, came to believe that they, too, deserved cars as big as boats and a swimming pool the size of a small mansion.
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