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Museums often linked to foundational myths about a particular game or pastime.
Baseball’s hall of fame is in Cooperstown, New York, where the game was not in fact invented; basketball’s hall is in Springfield, Massachusetts, where that game was indeed created. Other halls of fame have been established at a particular location as a result of one city offering the most enticing deal. Cleveland, OH outbid Philadelphia, PA, for example, to become the site for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in spite of the latter’s claim to its own “sound” and to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. The museums include artifacts and memorabilia from individuals who have achieved greatness in a particular sport or music genre (gospel, jazz, rockabilly polka), inductees being voted on a yearly basis. An International Association of Sports Museums and Halls of Fame was created in 1971 and now assists 130 member organizations worldwide.
Industry:Culture
Muslims came to America as slaves in the early days of the Republic; later immigrants from the Middle East established permanent communities by the late nineteenth century Yet claims to an Islamic citizenship have been controverted by the continual dominance of a Judaeo-Christian civil tradition and the orientalist identification of Islam with distant and savage others, especially in the global political climate of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Moreover, the separatist claims of the Nation of Islam, promoting African American nationalism on the basis of a non-orthodox racial reinterpretation of Islam, have made the religion seem anti-American to many in the cauldron of the Civil Rights movement. Nonetheless, flourishing Muslim communities have sprung up throughout the US, bringing together established African and Arab Americans with diverse immigrants from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Albania. Like other immigrants, these Muslims confront the dilemmas of maintaining the rituals and practices of their religion in a diverse society as well as the intersection of very different interpretations and cultures of Islam. Still, 4–5 million Muslims live in the United States, but mosques remain unfamiliar and suspect landmarks. Islam is read more often as a symbol of fanaticism than as part of a religious dialogue within a polyglot discussion.
Moreover, Islam lacks the Hollywood conversion cachet of Buddhism: mass media have tended to separate rather than integrate Islamic practice and “Americanism.” Arab Americans established the first US mosques, especially in Midwestern cities, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Communities generally remained small, incorporating Sunni, Shia, Alawis and Druze; the Federation of Islamic Associations acted as an umbrella group. An influx of Arab, Iranian and South Asian students and professionals after the Second World War expanded this community as a transnational faith.
Meanwhile, the Nation of Islam had claimed titles and symbols of Muslim orthodoxy (mosques, naming, etc.) since its foundation in the 1930s, although its messages and practices diverged from global traditions, as Malcolm X observed in his Autobiography (1965). This division shifted radically in 1975 when Warith Dean Muhammed, son of black Muslim leader Elijah Mohammed, pushed his group towards Sunni Islam and doubled the Muslim community in the US. The intersection of “Orthodox” Islam and Muslims coming out of African American traditions remains extremely complex, even if these groups are conflated in American imagery.
New immigration laws also facilitated even more diversity with the arrival of Muslims from Africa, Southeast Asia, China, the West Indies and other areas. These shifts have separated “Arab” (which also includes Christians) and “Muslim” as communities, although many Americans again confuse the two. In the early twenty-first century American Muslims, with over 1,000 mosques, are united by Islam, but divided by interpretations of Islam, language, origins, class, race, ethnicity and gender.
These diverse Muslims have confronted rejection as outsiders, as well as pressures towards assimilation and adaptation in the formation of American Islam. Limitations in observing Islamic law have been imposed by the small communities (absence of halal meat). Work and school settings and rules have failed to recognize ritual needs, although these have been changed through court action as well as increasing social recognition that, for example, limits academic exigencies during Ramadan. Even here, these questions are decided within American institutions (courts, agencies dealing with discrimination, universities, etc.) rather than Islamic forums.
Women have been seen as a particular crucible for Muslim identity in terms of both observance of rules and transmission of the faith to children, especially in the frequent absence of schools. Diversity complicates gender roles—some Muslim women may come from cultures or classes that have not experienced veiling (pre-revolutionary Iranians and contemporary North Africans), yet these same Muslims may be shocked by the lack of Koranic knowledge, behavior (smoking) or assimilation of other Muslims, including taking Christmas as a national holiday. Identification of Muslim women abroad as oppressed also makes it difficult for American Muslims to defend their freedom of life choices, much less present Islamic feminism as an alternative. In other cases, women have also taken on leadership roles in mosques and Muslim organizations beyond those they would occupy in other Islamic societies worldwide.
American Islam, despite its strengthened foundations and participation in American life, is profoundly affected by the transnational connections of geo-politics, immigrant ties and mass-media imagery Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Iranian Revolution, which cut off large communities of immigrants in areas like Los Angeles, the Gulf War, fundamentalist revivals and the specter of terrorism have identified Muslims to many Americans as enemies rather than potential or actual fellow citizens. Whether in theological dialogues, orientalist visions from Hollywood (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981; The Siege, 1999; The Mummy, 1999) or in everyday interactions among neighbors and colleagues, this distance imposes special burdens on those for whom Muslim and American are central identities.
Industry:Culture
Named after its chairperson, Earl Warren, chief justice of the US Supreme Court, the Warren Commission probed the assassination of John F. Kennedy from December 1963 until its report in September 1964. The Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald, angered by Kennedy’s anti-Castro policies, acted alone. While the report was extensive, debates linger as to its exhaustiveness, fueling conspiracy theories (see Oliver Stone’s JFK, 1991). Left unexplained were several sightings of a second gunman on the “grassy knoll” and Jack Ruby’s rationale for killing Oswald in the Dallas police headquarters.
Assistant Counsel Arlen Specter, later senator from Pennsylvania, explained the amazing trajectory of a single bullet, later called derisively the “magic-bullet” theory.
Industry:Culture
Names vary regionally (“pop” in New England. “soft drinks” or “cola” in the South), as do local favorites. Yet, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and related non-alcoholic carbonated beverages have built global empires, as emblematic of contemporary America as tea in Japan or wine in France. Over a century strong cultural associations have been forged between these drinks and child and teenage sociability (1950s soda jerks and soda fountains or 1990s fast-food packages). Meanwhile, darker associations have been drawn between aggressively marketed sodas and poor nutrition or tooth decay while teen folklore has identified coke and aspirin as a contraceptive (or whispered about drugs hidden in innocent beverages).
Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton created “Coke” in 1886, a “temperance” version of his previous Bordeaux-coca combination. Mixing fruit flavors, spices, coca and kola, Pemberton added carbonated water in 1887 before selling out to pharmacist Asa Candler.
Candler expanded sales through regionalized syrup production and local bottling franchises. In the 1920s, the Woodruff dynasty took Coke worldwide, including to the frontlines of the Second World War. Advertising and placement in fast food, foreign policy and children’s sight made Coke an American staple, reinforced with catchy jingles like “I’d like to teach the world to sing.” The company diversified into diet drinks and other markets, but faced a major misstep in 1985, with a change in its highly secretive formula. The Atlanta-based company recovered with 1992 Olympic sponsorship, Coke memorabilia, stressing American nostalgia, and insistent placement through advertising and monopolistic sales arrangements.
Pepsi, created by a North Carolina pharmacist in the 1890s, grew slowly until after the Second World War, when markets expanded through advertising pitched towards a younger “Pepsi Generation.” By the 1970s, it pulled even in-store sales and skirmished over both fast-food placements and international diplomacy (Nixon took Pepsi to China).
Like Coke, Pepsi seeks monopolistic placements, whether in schools or on airlines.
Pepsi and Coke diversification encompasses lemon-lime sodas, fruit drinks and related products. Competitors have included Dr Pepper (with snappy youth-oriented ad campaigns) and Royal Crown Colas, fruit flavors (orange, grape and peach Nehi), creme soda and root/birch beer and chocolate sodas. Asian and Latino stores supply coconut, vegetable and sugarcane beverages, while 1990s competition for non-alcoholic markets has been heightened by bottled, flavored iced teas and sparkling waters, often with European cachet (albeit conglomerate ownership).
Industry:Culture
NASA was created by the US Congress in 1958 to provide a coordinated governmental effort into flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Answering President Kennedy’s call to put a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, NASA achieved that goal when Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon on July 20, 1969. NASA continues manned and unmanned space exploration, operates the Hubble Space Telescope and coordinates the construction of the International Space Station. Good Hollywood films on NASA include The Right Stuff (1983) and Apollo 13 (1996).
Industry:Culture
Nashville, the state capital, and Memphis, on the Mississippi River, show deep roots in the South in transition to a Sunbelt future. Metropolitan Nashville, home of Vanderbilt University and the Hollywood of country music (Grand Ol’ Opry Opryland), grew nearly 18 percent in the 1990s to 1,156,225. Memphis, identified with Elvis Presley and blues, reached 1,093,427. Memphis remains perhaps more deeply divided by issues of race and class. In addition to Graceland, it also houses the motel/memorial where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Both cities have sought major-league teams and other indicators of national recognition while trying not to sacrifice local cultures.
Industry:Culture
National fraternal organizations deeply associated with American college life and imagery. The first, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded in 1776 at William and Mary College in Virginia; it is now a national academic honor society. Social fraternities began in the 1820s; sororities followed in the 1850s, expanding with women’s educational opportunities. African American fraternities and sororities began in 1906, while Latino organizations took shape in the 1970s. Over fifty national fraternities and sororities have 4 million members at US colleges and universities.
Fraternities and sororities function as units of socialization and community on the local college (chapter) level. During “rush” week, incoming students are selected and pledged; initiation rites range from humorous events to brutal hazings involving physical pain that have drawn negative publicity and university intervention. The selection process has also led to charges of elitism and discrimination.
Some fraternities and sororities offer university housing; others exist as social and service organizations charging only operating/membership fees. While the organizations argue that they are a stabilizing influence for academics and service, critics have viewed their parties as centers of alcohol and sexual excess. Hence, some colleges have banned these organizations; nevertheless, in Ivy League schools and state university systems, “Greek life” (from the traditional three Greek letter names of these groups) and the Pan-Hellenic Council are central to student life and organization.
Similar organizations are associated with professional career choices and academic honors within these fields, like Tau Beta Pi for engineering (founded 1885). “Greek” associations have been especially strong in the formation of the African American middle class; black fraternities and sororities include roughly 1 million members.
Colorful albeit exaggerated images of fraternity and sorority life—parties, camaraderie, competition—abound in teen-oriented media, including National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). The realities of fraternity and sorority life, however, are both more ordinary and more complex.
Industry:Culture
Nature has been a fundamental feature of American culture since the European “discovery” of a new-world Eden. This embrace of wilderness or the “great outdoors” permeates the elevation of the pastoral ideal over the city, the celebration of the frontier and the centrality of this concept in art, architecture, literature and mass media. Yet, like other constructs of contemporary American culture, nature as a place, a set of dynamic forces and a congerie of salient features—green space, animals, even disease— has also been shaped by issues of control and independence, consumption and representation.
Nature, as a symbol of American independence, for example, has been owned and shaped for decades: American historical narratives continually stress this conquest of the wilderness in the inevitable advance of manifest destiny (at the expense of American Indians, often identified with nature in popular representation). State and national parks, forests and reserves preserve some space, especially in the West, as public domains. Yet others have appropriated nature through giant ranches and estates as well as smaller suburban landscapes. Within both public and private domains, questions of use also confront independence: whether logging or mineral extraction, for example, supersedes public appreciation or whether private owners have unlimited use of water, beachfront, land or other resources. These debates also have raised issues of access—not only via automobiles, highways, tourism and hotels in national parks—but also over rights to drive sports utility vehicles, motorcycles, snowmobiles or mountain bikes into pristine areas in order to be one with nature, albeit en masse. Similar issues have erupted concerning ownership, display and scientific use of animals, whether in the wild, on ranches, in zoos or as pets, confronting those who espouse animal rights.
Nature has also become a theme in consumption, both directly—in these issues of access and ownership—and indirectly. Sales of vehicles, clothing and gear make nature a major industry; chains like Eddie Bauer, L.L. Bean and Timber-land specialize in rugged clothing that may never see the wilderness. Nature may imply simplicity and antitechnology in food, fashion, or housing, yet it has also become associated with high-tech items and designs for climbing, hiking, cooking, sleeping and computing in the outdoors.
Such consumption also varies with the life cycle and with class access to resources as well as ethnic differences. Hence, summer camps and family vacations give way to more rugged sports and eco-tourism for many. Home sites and retirement communities in the Sunbelt that sell sun, water and landscape to older citizens as passive consumers differentiate citizens in rights to wilderness as do consumption issues.
Nature is also fundamental to American self-representation. Genres like the western (in literature, film and television), the Southern, road movies, horror, science fiction and disaster movies draw on various features of land, climate and animal life within their plots. American art and architecture, from the American Light of the Hudson River School or the parks of Frederick Law Olmsted in the nineteenth century to the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, the California homes of Richard Neutra or fashions like Southwestern style, have all incorporated domination and reconstruction of nature into American character. Emblematic figures like the cowboy permeate advertising as well.
Yet the paradox of nature outside of and more powerful than mankind, but also tamed and owned by America and Americans, continues to trouble environmental policy and planning for the future.
Industry:Culture
NBC science-fiction television series (1966–9), created by Gene Roddenberry Originally pitched as a space-faring western, Star Trek was notable for its cerebral engagement with questions of identity in addition to more traditional action, and for the humanitarian, even utopian, project behind its multicultural crew of pioneers. Its appeal lay more in the dynamic between its regular characters—the impetuous Kirk frequently clashing with the cool, logical Mr Spock—than in the crew’s interaction with alien cultures. While white males still dominated the Enterprise, the series broke new ground with the first “interracial kiss” broadcast on American television. Technically a ratings failure, the series was cancelled after three years but retained immense fan loyalty through protest campaigns, conventions and fanzines. It has been kept alive through syndication, a series of feature films, bestselling novels and further television spin-offs from the original premise, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine.
The degree of affection and involvement displayed by Star Trek fans has led them to be stereotyped as social rejects and obsessives; indeed, the very term “Trekkies” has become pejorative (“Trekkers” is often preferred). Jenkins (1992) has suggested the complexity at work in these fangroups, whose interpretations frequently highlight the series’ egalitarian portrayal of gender and ethnicity. Some, like the “Gaylaxian” organization, are still lobbying for their own queer readings to be incorporated in the current program.
Industry:Culture
NBC situation comedy (1989–98). Dubbed the “show about nothing” for its obsessive focus on everyday minutiae of New York life, it won consistent top ratings and multiple awards, becoming the most successful 1990s TV comedy. Star Jerry Seinfeld (1954–) combined his actual stand-up comic activities with his urban character, working alongside a talented ensemble cast to show four friends somewhat adrift in the city. Many critics have remarked that despite the show’s undeniable humor, its main characters (all thirty-somethings and white) are essentially selfish and immature—themes the show itself brought home in its final episode.
Industry:Culture
