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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
The “loneliness of the long-distance runner” is a phenomenon of the past. A sport earlier in the century associated in many people’s minds with alienation and escape has become in the new century a pastime marked by conformity and fashion. By 1998 an estimated 32 million Americans engaged in running, and, instead of finding deserted paths to run down, they did so down busy thoroughfares and on health-club treadmills dressed in the trendiest sports outfits. In George Sheehan’s Running and Being (1978) the sport found its answer to existentialism; in Jimmy Carter it found its own president.
The running craze took off in the 1970s, following the publication of works like Kenneth Cooper’s Aerobics (1968), which highlighted the relationship between exercise and the prevention of heart disease. During the 1970s several runners brought attention to the sport. Frank Shorter won the gold medal at the 1972 Olympics, while Bill Rodgers was a four-time Boston and New York marathon winner between 1975 and 1980. In 1977 Jim Fixx published his bestselling Complete Book of Running, though his death from a heart attack seven years later led many to question the sport’s curative qualities.
The sport also attracted women in great numbers, whether for purposes of competition, training, overall physical fitness, or losing weight. The Olympics originally had no track and field for women. In 1928 women were allowed to compete only in races shorter than 800 meters. By the late 1960s many women wanted to begin competing in road races. A showdown occurred in 1967 at the Boston Marathon, where Katherine Switzer, using just her first initial and last name to register, received a number and finished the race. Within two years women could officially enter into both the Boston and New York marathons, and, in 1970, fifty-five women finished in the New York Marathon. Longer races were gradually added to the Olympic Games after 1972. Currently 32 percent of finishers in road races are women, about 50 percent in 5K races, and about 28 percent in marathons.
Joan Benoit was the winner of the first women’s marathon at the 1984 Olympics bringing the same attention to women’s running that Shorter had brought to the sport in the 1970s.
Industry:Culture
The prominent role of this position in contemporary American society was fashioned by A. Mitchell Palmer, a progressive Democratic Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson, who attempted to circumvent Bill of Rights freedoms to prosecute those who opposed American involvement in the First World War and later to purge the United States of communists and anarchists. These expanding powers, however, were constrained during the 1920s and early 1930s by the Republican Party’s ascendancy and the growing visibility of J. Edgar Hoover at the nascent FBI. Many Republicans had opposed the war or Palmer’s actions; they also made few demands on the Justice Department to bust trusts or other illegal economic combinations. Meanwhile, Hoover’s very public campaign against crime elevated his own public image and deflected attention away from the Attorney-General.
President Roosevelt’s New Deal changed the role of federal officials dramatically. By transferring power from the states to the federal government, New Deal programs led to larger roles for federal officials. If states accepted aid from the federal government, then they would also have to accept some oversight in the allocation of funds and abide by federal laws outlawing discrimination (especially on the basis of race). Moreover, as government expenditure on defense increased, federal influence grew in both the South and the West.
The federal government was slow to use the new powers at its disposal, especially in the South, which remained a strong force within the Democratic Party. No Attorney-General intervened on behalf of victims of lynch mobs, but civil rights activists were quick to see the possibilities that came from the growing significance of the Justice Department. In the 1960s, James Foreman of CORE recognized that if Supreme Court decisions desegregating schools and interstate buses were ever to be enforced, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy would have to be prodded into action. Activists’ success in this endeavor, leading an Attorney-General who was skeptical about any political advantages for his brother in being outspoken in favor of civil rights to oppose the governors of several states, helped establish the position of the Attorney-General both positively and negatively in the consciousness of many Americans.
The Attorney-General is a presidential appointee, often closely identified with the sitting president—as were Robert Kennedy with his brother and Ed Meese with Ronald Reagan. Richard Nixon’s appointee, John Mitchell, previously a member of Nixon’s law firm, became the head of the president’s re-election committee, where he was responsible for organizing a break-in at Democratic headquarters. Resigning at the beginning of the Watergate scandal in 1972, he was subsequently convicted of conspiracy obstruction of justice, and perjury, and served nineteen months in prison.
This tension concerning the Attorney-General has only intensified in recent years. The backlash against civil rights was motivated not only by a white racist reaction to African American and other minority advances in the last third of the twentieth century, but also by a sense of the growing intrusiveness of the federal government. The exaggeration of the role of the Justice Department in bringing about change in the South (recalling Reconstruction) has helped to cement some tightly knit, secretive hate groups and neoFascist organizations—the Ku Klux Klan, survivalists and militias. These focus their ire on the Justice Department and its agents in the FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (Agency).
Janet Reno, Bill Clinton’s Attorney-General and the first woman appointed to this position, found herself at the center of a continuing conflict between the Justice Department and organizations that believe the Founding Fathers would have opposed the kind of power wielded by federal authorities. Reno’s first crisis came when the FBI confronted the Branch Davidians, a religious cult in Waco, Texas, whose siege turned into a blood-bath, although she was cleared by a congressional investigation.
On occasions, the position of Attorney-General in seeking American justice has placed the incumbent in the difficult position of overseeing the presidency itself. Meese needed to investigate the involvement of Reagan in the Iran-Contra scandal. Reno had to investigate allegations of misconduct in the Clinton administration, withstanding initial calls from the Republican Party but later succumbing to pressure to investigate Whitewater allegations. She also expanded the purview of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to include many other issues, including those covered in the Linda Tripp tapes of Monica Lewinsky that led to the final impeachment process, an outcome that would have been less likely had Reno not initially given Starr his broad mandate.
Industry:Culture
The idea that certain foods—organic, unprocessed, raw and often vegetarian—are more “fit” to eat than others and the promise of overall good health through diet are interwoven in the fabric of three cultural meaning systems: holistic medicine, hippie counterculture and environmentalism. Together, these discourses critically address the dominant institutional social structure and encourage an alternative natural way of life.
With its rejection of the classic medical model and its focus on multiple aspects of physical condition, “alternative” medicine has moved the body from physicians’ control of physicians into the realm of personal responsibility Food becomes an important component of healthy lifestyle choices, alongside exercise and emotional well-being.
Environmentalism’s decoding of social problems likewise speaks to individual accountability in the salvaging of an endangered natural equilibrium. It encourages all but abandonment of agricultural pesticides and large-scale, inhumane animal rearing in favor of organic farming and a meatless diet. Foods like tofu, meatless burgers and nuts are the dietetic signifiers of nutritional and political coherence. Finally the hippie and, more recently New Age movements equate the natural with spirituality and peace, privileging the cruelty free choice of a vegetarian diet.
The disparaging adjective “junk” associated with food that is salty starchy or, like McDonald’s, fatty fast and cheap, coupled with a growing multimillion nutritional supplement and animal protein substitutes industry suggests health food is here to stay.
Industry:Culture
The mere title “Christian media” raises an awkward question—are there non-Christian or atheist media in the US? Certainly statements about God and Christian values in the news, sports, contests, and talk shows, as well as assumptions about church as weekly activity in many series underscore a pervasive civic Christianity. Jews have had an ethnic presence in radio and television since the Goldbergs crossed over from radio to the golden age of television and have also had a lively press and literary output. Other religions make only exotic appearances in mass media, for example those of Santería and Voudou in Miami Vice, the Hinduism of the storeowner Apu in The Simpsons, or the mysterious “Chinese-flavored” religion of Kung Fu, despite their roles in ethnic media.
Christian media, therefore, represent a self-identification within publishing, music, radio and television that often questions the morals or purity of other media. In this sense, Christian media start from widely shared knowledge and beliefs within the US and push them further, attacking enemies on the basis of issues and actions more than doctrines.
On these foundations, a series of generally white male evangelical preachers have built empires that move beyond religion into politics, education and world affairs (see Christian Right). Yet, Christian media also incorporate science-fiction apocalypse, children’s games and toys, music videos and slogan-bearing T-shirts.
In some cases, these media have extended revivalist careers like that of Billy Graham, who relied on television specials rather than shows. The next step, however, was taken by televangelists like Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jack Van Impe, Jim Swaggart, Robert Schuyler, Jerry Falwell and others, who found their melodious preaching and fundamentalist answers attracted widespread audiences’ support. The Bakers built their PTL (Praise the Lord) network into an empire, including a Christian Heritage theme park before it crashed on charges of embezzlement and improprieties.
Robertson, with his 777 Club, used televangelism as a springboard for presidential politics, while Falwell has used Liberty College and his network to assert influence over issues from abortion to homosexuality. The media presence of such figures, however, does not equate to readership or support, as mass movements based in Christian media have discovered.
By contrast, African Americans have tended to become better known in local broadcasting, although Reverend “Ike” made a long career out of miracles, prayer-cloths and fundraising over national radio. Catholics, too, have generally had a quieter role in Christian media. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen showed a shrewd knowledge of television in the 1950s, but Catholic broadcasting has tended to be pious, local and focused on issues from the Eucharist to shut-ins. The Evangelical World Network, however, made a star out of the maternal nun Mother Angelica and raised the presence of conservative and evangelical Catholicism on cable nationwide.
In 1998 Lowell Paxson’s PAX network launched a national network of Christian content—generally tame asexual series like reruns of Touched by an Angel or family game and variety shows rather than evangelists. In 1999 NBC acquired a substantial interest in PAX. Beyond radio and television, Christian media tend to synthesize old and new forms, which is apparent from venerable publishers like Zondervan or the Paulist Press. Christian bookstores, Christian music stations, concerts and church events all insist on Christian media and their message as alternatives to American corporate control even as these corporations themselves have invested in Christian media.
Industry:Culture
Traditionally seen as originating in the Carolinas, and considered a cultural tradition throughout the South, a barbeque is an open-air feast of meat roasted in a red sauce over open coals, served with coleslaw, baked beans, potato salad and white bread. Factions argue the merits of beef, pork, chicken, mutton, goat and even sausages for the entrée, while devotees swear by certain types of wood (oak, hickory citrus, etc.) for the right coals. The sauce has innumerable variations, but most consist of a tomato base with additives such as Worcestershire sauce, butter, lemon juice, molasses/honey sugar, etc.— national cook-offs are generally judged according to the best secret sauce recipes.
Regional variations are also highly contested. Although adapted to home grilling and commercial fast food, the mystique of the ultimate barbeque experience remains. Because the original chefs were mostly southern blacks, many believe the best barbeque is found in African American owned commercial establishments in out-of-the-way locations.
Industry:Culture
The International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1932 is often cited as the beginning of modernism in America. Curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the exhibition attempted to codify European trends alongside examples of the modern style in America. This International Style—characterized by white walls, flexible plans and a glass-and-steel industrial aesthetic—became the prevailing architectural style in the United States following the Second World War.
Meanwhile, in prominent schools of architecture, European architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius transformed American architectural education into atelier-based institu-tions that embraced the tenets of the European modernist tradition.
In the 1950s, glass box modernism became the preferred style for American corporations, institutions and universities; examples include works by Eero Saarinen and I.M. Pei. At the same time, American architects embraced brutalism, based on the later Le Corbusier and the philosophical discourses of authenticity. This style is exemplified by Louis I. Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery (1951) and Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture building at Yale (1964).
The bombastic nature of Rudolph’s building served as a point of rebellion for the student followers of architects such as Robert Venturi, who favored a more pluralistic approach, or what he called a “messy vitality,” over the bland formalism of high modernist practice. With the publication of Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, these sentiments were championed by colleagues like Robert A.M. Stern and Charles Moore.
Venturi’s ideas were further elaborated in Learning from Las Vegas (1972), which celebrated the stylistic collision of the Las Vegas strip, and described the specific kitsch of the area as a form of American vernacular. This eclecticism became known as postmodernism in architecture, and rapidly took hold in both the academy and the corporate realm. The pervasive nature of post-modernism is evidenced by the erstwhile modernists who embraced this style, for instance Philip Johnson’s AT&T building in Manhattan (1983) or Michael Graves’ Portland Public Services building (1982).
At the same time as Venturi’s historicist critique, New York intellectuals and academics reacted against what they derisively called modern “style” during the 1960s.
Following global events of May 1968, a split emerged in the architectural profession between the academy and the corporate milieu in the United States. Under the teachings of British architectural historian Colin Rowe—whose reconceptualization of architectural history advocated a typological understanding of historical form—influential figures such as the New York Five (Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, John Hejduk, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meier) transformed the intellectual climate of American schools of architecture. Because of their belief in autonomous architecture with its own series of generative rules, the teachings of the New York Five exacerbated the division between universities and the profession, creating a perceived split between architectural theory and practice. While corporate firms such as Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill were designing the John Hancock Tower of 1970, for example, Peter Eisenman was questioning notions of domesticity with a divided bedroom in his House VI in Connecticut.
Eisenman’s efforts to question architectural norms through formal manipulation gradually became deconstructivism, which attempted to link architectural discourse and post-Derridean literary theory The pinnacle of this movement—characterized by tipping walls and non-orthogonal geometric organizations—was exemplified by Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center (1994) in Columbus, Ohio. The hermeticism of this academic architecture suffered a crisis of legitimacy during the 1990s with increasing globalization and the pressure of market forces.
Another trend in American architecture that characterized the immediate postwar cultural context was the persistently American vernacular style that took hold, particularly in the Midwest and West Coast, as a form of regionalist architecture using traditional materials and methods of construction. The largely residential works of architects such as William Wurster and Bruce Goff, were dismissed in academic circles for their embracement of prefabricated materials and organicism. Frank Lloyd Wright, often regarded as the greatest American architect of the twentieth century had by this time departed from his familiar prairie houses. He was designing more formally inspired buildings, as evidenced by his designs for the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1960) and his 1955 skyscraper at Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Wright’s planning models, however, such as Broadacre City, influenced the development of the American suburbs in the postwar period and their dependence on the automobile. Emerging from this trend are figures such as Charles and Ray Eames, who pioneered an era of structural and visual experimentation through their furniture design and film. American regionalism has remained influential through the teachings of Taliesin—founded by Frank Lloyd Wright—and through the work of late twentieth-century architects such as Paolo Soleri and Will Bruder.
While the often unbuilt architecture of the academy has continued on its autonomous trajectory the architecture of the suburbs has followed a more conservative path.
Following the Second World War, the domestic climate was characterized by projects such as Levittown in which entire neighborhoods were designed within strict guidelines that provided specific domestic amenities—attached garage, eat-in kitchen, lawn. The idealization of the nuclear family at home also produced competitive markets to embellish these prescribed desires; thus, the boom of the suburbs supported the car industry, lawn-care suppliers and appliance industries.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the reclamation of Main Street and small-town atmosphere has produced towns such as Celebration and Seaside, Florida, with similar aesthetic guidelines and master planning to control the perceived malaise of suburban sprawl and, ultimately, prescribe a suburban lifestyle. Led by architects such as Andres Duany and Elisabeth Plater-Zyberg, New Urbanism—through typological and stylistic guidelines— is slowly equalizing the suburban ideal through large-scale, planned communities. Other recent trends in American architecture have ranged from the expressionistic work of Los Angeles, CA architects such as Frank Gehry, Eric Owen Moss and Morphosis to the more reticent work of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and Steven Holl.
Industry:Culture
Young upwardly-mobile professionals became both models and targets as baby boomers met the affluence of the Reagan years. The epithet makes ironic reference to preppies (a middle-class buttondown style associated with but not exclusive to prep schools), whom yuppies assimilated, and hippies, whom yuppies, in some cases, had been in earlier incarnations. This ambiguous class term has been defined by patterns of consumption rather than wealth, power, or ethnicity; often, its connotations seem too negative for selfattribution.
Other related terms—buppies (black), guppies (gay), chuppies (Chinese)— reveal questions of diversity and spreading wealth.
Industry:Culture
Southern tenant farmers who rented land and supplies from landlords in return for substantial portions of their crops. This could be half in the case of a farmer who had no mules or tools; in addition, exorbitantly priced living expenses added to annual debts creating a cycle of poverty for families. At their peak in the 1930s, such arrangements encompassed 65 percent of cotton-belt farmers, identifying the South as an economically blighted zone. Increased mechanization after the Second World War slowly eliminated this neofeudal agricultural relationship while forcing many rural Southerners to migrate to cities and even to move outside the South.
Industry:Culture
Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the American frontier—the mobile line of settlement—moved from the Eastern Seaboard to the West Coast. In 1890 the US Census Department declared the frontier closed, but, in 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that it continued to shape American identity. Current scholarship in Western history and American studies complicates Turner’s thesis, arguing that in addition to being a site of white conquest, the frontier was a space of intercultural contact between diverse Native American groups and Europeans, Africans and Asians. The frontier has functioned powerfully as a contemporary metaphor for social and technological innovation, recalled in John F. Kennedy’s claims for a “new frontier,” and as a mediascape in genres like the western and science fiction.
Industry:Culture
The story of two men, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who founded Apple in a garage in the 1970s, and went on to challenge corporate behemoth IBM in the burgeoning personal computer market is in one sense a retelling of the singularly American story of the selfmade person. Apple can also be seen as the next chapter of the 1960s counterculture, when a generation that once disdained corporate culture came to embrace and transform it into their own image. This aspect is emblematized by the informal, creative work environment which Jobs fostered, and by the philanthropic efforts to which Wozniak funneled his profits. The company’s most famous product, the Macintosh, became popular in part as a symbol of the values that Apple embodied.
Industry:Culture
