ABSTRACT
Work and labor are essential themes in American film, television, and music. Workers from a range of backgrounds and occupations have been on cinema and television screens, and their stories have played over radios and other devices. Representations of working life were more complete in some artistic works than in others but the experience of engaging in work in its different forms was clearly important to people making movies, TV programs, and music in the 1970s and 1980s. The work they produced collectively tells an important story about working life during two important decades in modern American history.
