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American athletes in track-and-field sports have been able to maintain their dominance as a result of the emphasis colleges and universities place on the sport. Backed by the NCAA and an elaborate system of sports scholarships, colleges and universities have been able to offer opportunities to athletes to compensate for the sport’s amateur status (a status that no longer remains). The significance of the college-based system on the lives of athletes has been explored in numerous movies from Personal Best (1982) to Without Limits (1998). The pressure to succeed created by this system has given rise to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs.
The widespread attention given to track and field derived in large part from its association with the Olympic movement, which provided a forum for the expression of nationalist sentiments. As such, the efforts of athletes competing against countries with which the United States is in competition (economically and ideologically) have often taken on considerable significance. During the Cold War, therefore, considerable attention would be paid to Americans competing against athletes from the Soviet Union and East Germany. Owing to the prominence of African American athletes in many track-and-field events, the possibilities of harnessing patriotic fervor to racial advancement were commonly acknowledged. Jesse Owens’ success at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, winning four gold medals in front of a furious Hitler (who would have been more furious still had the Americans included their Jewish sprinters on their relay team), was just one example of this. Owens (1913–80) became a nationally recognized and celebrated athlete and, along with Joe Louis, helped pave the way for Jackie Robinson’s desegregation of baseball.
Wilma Rudolph (1940–84), the first American to win three gold medals in the 1960 Rome Olympics (100m, 200m and 400m relay), continued this tradition. Her achievement, a triumph also over childhood polio, made her one of the most celebrated female athletes of all time. Her celebrity also helped to begin the process of breaking down gender barriers in previously all-male track-and-field events prior to the passage of Title IX.
The identification between athletes and their country opening up opportunities to black athletes that might otherwise have been closed, remained in place at least until the end of the Cold War. President Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was considered by many a major blow to African American athletes, not merely on the grounds of their pursuit of gold medals. But African American track-and-field athletes also used this spotlight to make comments about racial conditions in the United States. Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympics raised their fists in the Black Power salute during the medal ceremony to make the point that while they were representing their country, that country discriminated against them (both were suspended from the US team).
The 1968 Olympics also witnessed major trackand-field landmarks: Bob Beamon won the gold medal in the long jump with a world record (29ft, 2½ in), shattering the old mark by nearly 2 feet (unlike most records, this one remained unbroken until 1991 when Mike Powell jumped 2 inches further); and Dick Fosbury fundamentally altered the high jump with his “Fosbury Flop.” Two other track-and-field stars deserve mention. Florence Griffith Joyner (1959–98), known as “FloJo,” was a triple gold medalist at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. She was recognized around the world for both her colorful and asymmetrical running outfits and her long, painted fingernails. Smashing the world records for the 100- and 200-meter runs in Seoul and also winning a gold medal in the 4×100 relay, she later served as cochairperson of President Clinton’s Council on Physical Fitness, before suffering a heart attack and dying in 1998. As with Rudolph before her, Griffith Joyner’s performances challenged assumptions about the relationship between sport and gender.
Carl Lewis (1961–) dominated track-and-field events throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Unable to run in Moscow because of the boycott, Lewis amassed a record in sprints and long jump equaled by no other athlete. Widely regarded as the greatest track-and-field athlete of all time, he matched Jesse Owen’s record in 1984, won three medals in 1988 (two gold and one silver) and another two gold medals in 1992. At the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo he also set the world record for the 100m (9.86 seconds).
Industry:Culture
American automotive culture created intense demands for car-oriented services. Drive-in movies mushroomed from 300 after the Second World War to thousands in the 1950s.
Along with drive-in restaurants, these provided convenient outlets for baby boomer families as well as teenagers exploring independence in their social and sexual lives.
Movies faded in the 1970s as suburban expansion swallowed their valuable properties.
Fast-food chains and banks, however, have incorporated “drive-through” windows, without the parking and in-car services shown in American Graffiti (1973). Other experiments like drive-in churches have had limited novelty value, but all emphasize Americans’ continual synthesis of automobiles and lifestyle.
Industry:Culture
American children and toys, in many ways, scarcely differ from their consociates worldwide except in affluence—more toys and more expensive ones. Dolls, wagons, costumes, bicycles and war toys have been gendered dreams for generations, even as historically American toys—cowboy outfits and guns or the postwar Barbie—have spread around the globe. Class and race have changed perceptions of these “standard toys,” as Toni Morrison sadly underscored in her novel The Bluest Eye, yet children have scarcely been more equal in other nations. Nonetheless, several important characteristics may set American toys and play apart from other nations.
Affluence and ownership are still important characteristics. For postwar children, as cinema and television reinforce imagery, Christmas and birthdays became intensive and competitive celebrations of goods including multiple and expensive toys. Electronic games, elaborate outdoor toys and innumerable small toys create a bounty that children are taught to own. Even if they share with friends, lines of property (and position) are drawn early on by who owns what, or by who fails to get coveted toys (a parental competition satirized in media). Obviously, this leaves out some children from the experience of a general cultural ideal—while cities, schools and institutions push drives to collect “toys for tots,” the return to school or neighborhood gatherings after Christmas remain difficult.
American toys also differ in quality, price and even style. Yuppie parents may favor educational toys or classic (sometimes expensive) basics in wood and cloth. Some ask for dolls that reflect their own features and lifestyles—African American toys represent a special subgenre even within Barbie lines. Toys are also highly gendered in advertising and consumption, and graded for age divisions that encompass an adult market as well as metaphoric extensions (sports cars or electronics, for example, may be referred to as toys for adults).
The sheer numbers of toys and the created desire that drives sales also underscores a longstanding synergy of media and commodities. Captain Midnight Decoder Rings, Howdy Doody puppets, Brady Bunch lunch-boxes, Carebears and generations of Star Trek toys all speak to the power of television and film to sell to younger audiences (and their beleaguered parents). While children’s television codes have attacked direct manipulative marketing, media giants like Disney have had generations of spin-off toys that sell movies, television, fantasy vacations and “happiness.” Indeed, Disney’s Toy Story and its sequel represent both reflections on toys and a continuing bonus in sales— old and new toys are agents in the narrative, markers of memory and commodities in stores. In another synergy McDonald’s represents one of the world’s largest toy manufacturers, in independent productions and linked to media.
While these are now global phenomena, many have been honed on generations of postwar children who, as baby boomers, bring both nostalgia and criticism to new generations of sales. This also creates secondary markets for toys as collectibles that influence not only family relics but new purchases, as exemplified in the Beanie Baby craze, where value is besmirched by any signs of actual play.
Hence, intense marketing and production also shape American toys. While handcrafted toys or designer lines appeal to wealthier consumers, Toys ‘r’ Us—now global— has a strong monopoly on general sales in concert with major manufacturers like Mattel.
In the 1980s and 1990s, toy marketing has been driven by “the toy” of the year, from Cabbage Patch Kids to Furby, where constructed scarcities drive prices to extremes as demonstrations of Christmas love. This consumerism also made toys a vanguard for development of e-commerce.
Industry:Culture
American Christian denomination founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). The Church of Christ, Scientist combines biblical devotion with faith in the healing powers of God through prayer. Expanding as the nation negotiated modernity at the turn of the twentieth century its numbers peaked after the Second World War, with between 100,000 and 150,000 adherents worldwide. Known for imposing churches as well as many urban reading rooms, the church has also published the influential national newspaper Christian Science Monitor and made other forays into mass media.
Industry:Culture
American foreign and domestic policy are often tied to two primary issues of this turbulent region: religion and oil. Religious ties have focused on the status of Israel (and Palestine) as a Holy Land for Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with special questions about Jerusalem. Since the birth of Israel as a state, the US has often acted as a guarantor of its sovereignty through military aid and diplomatic support. While this affiliation has rested on various ideological foundations, it also incorporates strong linkages between Jews in the United States and the Zionist commitment to Israel. This does not imply a monolithic Jewish lobby: there have been both tremendous economic, spiritual and political support for Israel among American Jews and severe criticism. Yet it means that issues of Israel must be addressed in local politics, especially in areas like New York City, NY.
Christian attitudes range from those who regard Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other centers as holy monuments divorced from their local/political history to those who would hasten the Apocalypse there. Some Arab Americans also see this area as both religious center and homeland, especially in the case of Americans of Palestinian descent, Christians and Muslims.
These linkages have led to intense American involvement in fostering regional peace with guarantees for Israel’s security American involvement in Lebanon grew out of these ongoing conflicts, while Presidents Carter and Clinton have hosted lengthy summits at Camp David in search of peace.
At the same time, the Middle East holds oil, often in Arab states towards which the US once adopted neo-colonial relationships. Here, alliance with Israel has been read as opposition to Arab claims. Ongoing difficulties with Iran, Iraq and Libya, as well as complex alliances with the conservative Islamic regimes of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have complicated American foreign policy while ensuring—even by war—the supply of relatively cheap fuel. The Gulf War underscored the complexity of power and dependency that binds the US to the past and future of this region.
Industry:Culture
American graduations, from preschool through Ivy League doctorates, represent highly ceremonial public rites of passage. Typical features include academic robes (modeled on European ones), processions of faculty and students, music, prayers based in civic Christianity and speeches; graduations are also accompanied by rounds of parties and gifts. Friends and family attend these events even in early years, although young children may treat them as costumed play-acting. By high school, speakers, usually drawn from distinguished graduates or local celebrities, take on more importance, while the presence of religion has become a debate for many public institutions. High-school graduations also form part of a constellation of events, from the prom (a formal dance based on a romantic theme from movies or popular culture) to “socially accepted” disobedience (e.g.
wearing inappropriate clothing to school). Graduation gifts and opportunities thereafter reveal stratification these communal rituals deny.
Colleges and universities expand graduation events, competing for well-known speakers via honorary degrees and/or fees up to thousands of dollars. More than 2,500 speakers are needed annually to please parents, contributors and media. Politicians may use such opportunities as campaign appearances; presidential candidates and their spouses receive particular media attention (with military academies especially visible sites for incumbents). Other coveted speakers include intellectuals, artists, journalists, social and ethnic leaders, and philanthropists/donors. Celebrities including Muppet Kermit the Frog, also prove entertaining alternatives.
Commencement talks range from autobiography to national and world affairs.
Generally however, these inspirational observations demand special responsibility from the group whose new maturity and citizenship the ceremony recognizes. Hence, the theme of beginnings (commencement) mingles with the ambivalent emotions of ending and leaving.
Large and highly established institutions foster distinctive programs, regalia and surrounding events. Some, for example, hold speeches on a separate day or break into component units to provide intimacy and individual recognition in conferring degrees (in English or, rarely in Latin for the doctorate). Doctoral robes may have distinctive colors—crimson for Harvard, blue for Yale, etc.—although without the elaboration of many European institutions. Religious rituals may accompany these events too, whatever the affiliation of the institution.
The image of this rite of passage is prominent in literature and movies, whether The Graduate (1967), the prom chaos of Carrie (1976), or many television series (e.g.
Beverly Hills 90210). It represents less a dedication to education within American life than a culture of recognition that democratizes many honors (even as institutions and individuals set themselves apart). Hence the prestigious model of university graduation has spread to younger age groups and to more limited programs (such as job-training programs or self-improvement courses). Even non-human settings like canine obedience schools may imitate this form, stressing the notions of individual achievement and group recognition as much as divisive special merit. The latter, nonetheless, comes out in the distinctions among programs and rewards thereafter.
Industry:Culture
American Hasidim (literally “pious ones”) represent highly orthodox, socially conservative followers of mystical leaders who revolutionized Central European Judaism in the late eighteenth century. Hasidim arrived in the US in the 1940s, fleeing Nazi destruction and shattered communities after the war. Many chose the US over Israel because of the latter’s secularism: the US seemed to offer a better context for their highly structured religious community.
Hasidim have settled by the thousands in the Williamsburg area of New York City and a few other urban centers. Hasidic men, highly visible with their black hats, beards, hair, dark coats and hats, have created specialized economic niches in photography and diamonds. They are set apart by their commitment to community and religious practice under the guidance of a rebbe, a charismatic spiritual leader. Differences in beliefs nonetheless divide Hasidim into sometimes conflicting courts. New York may have 25 to 30 such courts, with between 100 and 500 families; the Lubavitcher court includes 12,000–15,000 people. Nonetheless, many Hasidim share a commitment to traditional patriarchy religious education (and avoidance of secular colleges) and communal support.
As exclusive Hasidim enclaves have grown, conflicts have emerged with neighbors.
Tensions between Hasidim and African Americans in Crown Heights flared in 1981 after a traffic accident in which a young Hasid killed a Guyanese boy. The suburban Kiryas Joel district also sued its school district to prevent women bus drivers from transporting male students, pitting religious belief against gender equality (and losing).
Hasidim have also posed dilemmas for other Jews, whom they sometimes approach as missionaries. Others, however, have sought to incorporate American marital and psychological counseling into their traditional frameworks. In all these ways, Hasidim grapple with the tensions of religious community and American identities.
Industry:Culture
American Indian reservations comprise territories within the United States’ borders that serve as the homelands for American Indian tribes. According to the 1990 United States census, approximately one-quarter of the 1,959,000 American Indians currently live on the 314 federally recognized reservations. American Indian reservations are concentrated in the western part of the United States, although there are reservations, containing nearly 44 million acres, in all parts of the country. They incorporate not only vast cultural differences, but distinctive experiences of history and context, ranging from the elaborate casinos of Connecticut to the problems of unemployment (up to 70 percent), substandard housing, alcohol and poverty plaguing reservations like Pine Ridge, South Dakota, which President Clinton highlighted in his 1999 visit.
The relationship between American Indian reservations and the United States federal government was shaped by an 1831 United States Supreme Court decision, which agreed with the Cherokee Indian nation that the state of Georgia had no jurisdiction over it since American Indian tribes were “domestic dependent nations.” This definition has formed the basis for the current legal relationship between American Indian tribes and the federal government, and, in essence, a definition of American Indian tribes.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia led to the creation of the legal concept of limited sovereignty. According to this concept, tribes are nations with rights to internal selfgovernment on federally recognized reservations. Yet sovereignty has also been limited.
For example, the United States adopted a policy of Indian Removal in the 1830s, moving American Indian tribes to distant areas until they could be assimilated into mainstream society. Eventually this policy placed all federally recognized Indian tribes on reservations.
While theoretically American Indian tribes are totally independent from any other government within the reservation boundaries, federal Indian policy also has emphasized assimilation and trusteeship over Indian interests and rights of later immigrants who have encroached on Indian lands by lease or illegal appropriation. The government has even intervened to divert growing wealth from cattle or oil to reservations (South Dakota, Oklahoma). An emphasis on the privatization of Indian lands and the disposal of “surplus,” for example, reduced tribal lands from 119,373,930 acres in 1887 to 40,236,442 acres in 1911. Current acreage has grown since a 1933 low of 29,431,685 acres.
Reservation locations were determined in a number of ways. Some tribes, like the Cherokees of Georgia, were forcibly moved to Indian Territory, which eventually became the state of Oklahoma. A few tribes, like the Menominee of Wisconsin, were able to escape removal, gaining a reservation on marginal land in their original territory. Indians like the Florida Seminoles or Southwestern Navaho and Pueblo tribes also fought long to hold and regain their lands. Settlement over land claims has been a major political issue in the 1980s and 1990s in Maine, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West.
Tribal self-government first gained national attention during the war of 1812 when many United States citizens feared American Indian tribes might conspire with foreign enemies to threaten national security. Hence, under the doctrine of limited sovereignty, no tribe may establish independent relationships with foreign governments. Eventually the doctrine of limited sovereignty was refined to mean that although state and local laws do not apply on reservations, federal laws can be enforced.
Foreign-policy issues also led to a debate about the citizenship status of individual American Indians. An American Indian could become a US citizen only by renouncing his tribal citizenship. During the First World War, many volunteered even though, as non-citizens, they were not subject to the draft. After the war, a political movement arose to grant US citizenship to American Indians who served in the war. Some tribes opposed the idea of US citizenship for individuals, viewing this as an attempt to destroy the right of tribal self-governance. The American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, a compromise bill, granted dual citizenship to American Indians, who became full citizens of the United States and the states where they resided while remaining citizens of their respective tribes.
The last component of the Supreme Court’s definition of American Indian tribes was domestic. This means that the reservations are the direct responsibility of the United States federal government and are held in trust for tribes. This ensures that neither an individual tribal member nor tribal governments can endanger the tribe’s land base by disposing of it. Even through their elected legislatures, tribes may not sell or lease reservation land without the federal government’s permission. This regulatory authority is invested in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a division of the Department of the Interior. However, the BIA has also been accused of mishandling Indian funds, while development has often led to disputes about ownership and rights in recreational lands and even subdivision projects which had been granted to tribes in early treaties. This has kindled animosity between reservations and their neighbors.
Gambling has also become an arena of competition and conflict. In the 1970s, gambling was regulated only at the state level. Because state laws do not apply on reservations, some tribes opened high-stakes bingo parlors and casinos on reservation land. Some states objected, arguing that the right to operate gambling establishments had become a privilege that some, but not all, of their citizens enjoyed. The states were also concerned that gambling affected the entire state without access to accrued revenues. In response, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 in an attempt to re-establish the balance between the needs of the state and those of the tribe. This law grants individual states some control over gambling on reservations, but prohibits state control over low-stakes traditional gambling between tribal members. This has also created divisions between those reservations able to make use of their metropolitan settings and those for whom underdevelopment has made reservations prisons, as depicted in Thunderheart (1992) and the documentary Incident at Oglala (1992).
Industry:Culture
American individualism stresses individual responsibility for actions and advancement, whether getting a job and getting off welfare, learning math or surviving illness.
Government programs and cultural changes have sought to even the playing field through compensatory support, regulation of opportunities and specific interventions associated with civil rights or later rights movements. Yet, for many the responsibility for success rests with the person as autonomous agent who must learn to correct him or herself and develop survival skills. This has created a massive market for those who offer self-help, from religious institutions to physical fitness movements to Martha Stewart.
Many self-help strategies aim at concrete “improvement,” whether in vocabulary appearance (weight, hair, etc.) or social skills. Dale Carnegie’s early How to Win Friends and Influence People (15 million copies sold since 1936) grew out of public speaking classes. Self-improvements also pervade Reader’s Digest and women and men’s magazines (which may concentrate on appearance or relationships), as well as popular financial journals. Other strategies focus on making individuals feel better about themselves and problem situations (self-esteem). Self-help programs may be packaged through organizations, like Alcoholics Anonymous, through books and videos and through self-help “gurus” who market their programs via mass media.
One cannot help relating these forms to the longer spiritual traditions of revival and conversion that have shaped American evangelical religion since colonial days. By the twentieth century these great awakenings had become Pentecostal meetings and tent revivals and then radio and television programs promising salvation in return for commitment and belief. Indeed, Christian media met self-help in Rev. Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking (1952). In the 1960s, psychologically based groups like Esalen Institute were accused of neo-religious dimensions as well. Cultish overtones are not distant from the fervent witness of self-help infomercials and rallies. Advice columnists, magazines and etiquette books also have offered continuing guidance on selfimprovement and manipulation of images, whether to early immigrants or to upwardly mobile suburbanites after the Second World War. These betray American status anxiety when about the hidden issues of class—self-improvement can be extremely otherdirected in terms of standards or competition for resources.
Since the 1980s, self-help/self-esteem has represented a major industry, starting in the classroom and continuing through adulthood, while identifying widespread areas of change and uncertainty Many books are directed towards women and women’s assertions—cf. John Gray’s bestseller Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus (1993)—as well as love and romance; others deal also with image and health. Writing tends to mix vaguely Christian platitudes with pep talks and psychologistic data. Wit and nostalgia are also selling points in series like Canfield and Hansen’s Chicken Soup for the Soul/Child, etc., which became a television feature, or Robert Fulghum’s works. Still other works, like Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), deal with organizational and workplace issues. Some prove much more blunt in their promises, like Gray’s How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have (1992).
Series and authors as celebrities are linked, in turn, to counseling, rallies and conventions.
Catchy titles, while effective in marketing, also make these works easy targets for satire; Saturday Night Live has continually taunted “feel-good” stylemakers, while the sitcom Frasier has raised many questions about “pop” psychology. Yet mass media also promise better lives, thus creating anxiety and appealing to self-help solutions. In fact, stars also become caught up in crossover promotions of couples therapy (John Tesh), psychic friends (Dionne Warwick) and other self-help strategies. Hence, the outlines of the American dream and nightmares of failure become blurred and disquieting.
Industry:Culture
American involvement in Panama has been long and checkered since Theodore Roosevelt, unwilling to pay the Columbian government’s price for access across the isthmus, fomented a nationalist uprising among Panamanians. Roosevelt backed Panama’s independence and then forced the new government to cede the canal zone to the US for a price well below what Panamanians thought reasonable. Finished in 1914, the canal became a source of tension throughout the century as Panamanians protested the US’ despotic control of the region and other infringements on their sovereignty including military intervention. By the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter, hoping to stabilize the canal zone, felt it prudent, even against significant Republican opposition, to sign a treaty returning the canal to Panamanians in 2000.
Strains have not only been related to the canal, but also to Panamanian policies and leadership. In the 1980s, President Manuel Noriega acquired dictatorial powers, partly because of his work with the CIA and his close alliance with the United States. He also amassed a fortune through involvement in the US drug trade. Yet, his continued rule in Panama became unacceptable for American authorities when he refused to help them fight against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Invoking the drug trade, in 1989, President Bush sent an invasion force of 27,000 into Panama to capture and replace Noriega.
Brought to Florida and not allowed to reveal all his connections with the American intelligence community during his trial, Noriega was jailed, although the drug trade was largely unhampered.
Industry:Culture
