ice dramas such as "Dragnet" and "Hill Street Blues." This paper will discuss how "Miami Vice" was both received and perceived by the public and critics, as well as the impact the show had on 1980s culture. As Sargent points out, the show's formal characteristics highlighting an emphasis on visual surfaces made it a "popular text among postmodern academic theorists and cultural critics who found in its pastel sheen oth an ironic critique of the 1980s worship of glamour and money and a wholehearted participation in that fetishization" (Sargent. Miami Vice. Gale Encyclopedia of Popular Culture).
The show's focus on sound, form, and color created a large number of imitators as well as fads in the fashion, music and tourism industries (Sargent). This focus also helped transform the traditional audience of broadcast television by appealing to a younger, urban viewership, the now highly coveted 18 to 35, mostly male viewers more interested in images and music than in words and plot.
No show captured the energy, look and audience of rock music videos aired on MTV more than "Miami Vice." The rock songs were not just music for its own sake, but acted as a commentary on the plots. The show also attracted top names from the fields of music, film, sports, business and politics. Top rock musicians such as Ted Nugent, Glenn Frey, Aerosmith, Sheena Easton (who played Sonny's wife), celebrities and up and coming performers such as Willie Nelson and Miles Davis, Frank Zappa and Isaac Hayes, and James Brown, Don King, Chris Rock, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes, Laurence Fishburne, Annette Bening, convicted Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy and even top business executive Lee Iacocca who played a bartender! The participation of these celebrities is a testament of sorts to the great ap
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