GOLLY GEE WILIKERS TV

In a decade that burned on the streets and in rice fields half a world away, Batman was the magnum opus of TV escapism in a decade that included a beautiful witch married to a mortal, a beautiful genie serving a mortal, and suddenly-rich Appalachian hicks who move to Beverly Hills.

And the Batman-and-Robin-scale-a-building scenes (clearly walking horizontally with the camera turned sideways) often included cameos from the вЂњwindowsвЂќ that included Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., and Ted Cassidy as Lurch from the Addams Family. You canвЂ™t buy friends with money,вЂќ holds up even today on retro TV cable channels. WestвЂ™s deadpan delivery of lines like, вЂњRemember, Riddler. And it hit crazily, airing twice a week on ABC with an audience share of more than 50% - meaning more than half of everybody watching anything was watching Batman.ДЄnd it was damned funny. Producer William Dozier may never have read Sontag, but he read the comics, which had reached a point of absurdity in the mid-вЂ60s, and he understood that this over-the-top approach could amuse adults and stimulate children at the same time. Camp, she said, thrived on a love of exaggeration and disengaged itself from politics. It served as the embodiment of Susan SontagвЂ™s вЂњNotes on Camp,вЂќ which sought to erase the boundaries between вЂњhighвЂќ and вЂњlowвЂќ (pop) culture. I will now defend TVвЂ™s Batman as the perfect TV show in the perfect moment.

Golly gee wilikers