| Summary: | According to Todd Gitlin, 1981 would be the starting point of a new American television era, one free of traditional, frivolous comedies and dramas with no real narrative basis. This article aims to test this assumption by studying the treatment of nudity and sex by four emblematic series of the 1980s: Magnum, P.I. (CBS, 1980-1988), The Fall Guy (ABC, 1981-1986), Miami Vice (NBC, 1984-1990) and Hunter (NBC, 1984-1991). Another one of Gitlin’s hypotheses will also be discussed: the claim that the early 1980s would mark the beginning of an erasure of the female body to the (more or less explicit) benefit of a “triumphant” masculinity, with male semi-nudity being considered de facto less reprehensible. Should we see in this some kind of collective awareness that materialized through a refusal to keep eroticizing (or even reifying) the female body on American television?
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