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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
In common usage, the terms Chicano (male) and Chicana (female) refer to people of Mexican ancestry born and/or raised in the United States. They are roughly synonymous with the term Mexican American. Like the terms Hispanic or Latino/Latina, these are terms of political identity and personal choice. With a few exceptions, Chicanos and Chicanas are citizens of the United States and Chicano/Chicana cultures are American cultures.
Chicanos and Chicanas were legally created in the United States through the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican American War in 1848. However, Chicanos and Chicanas’ roots in the southwestern United States predate the arrival of the Spaniards in the late sixteenth century In 1990 they remain geographically centered in the Southwest, although concentrations appear in every state.
Until the mid-1960s, the terms Chicano and Chicana were frequently used in derogatory non-self-referential manners. In the 1960s, Mexican Americans, particularly on college campuses, began adopting and positively redefining the terms. By the late 1960s, clearly identifiable Chicano and Chicana movements existed, celebrating unique Mexican American experiences and demanding social equality The most often quoted definition of the term was penned in 1977 by Santos Martinez, Jr: “Chicano—a Mexican American involved in a socio-political struggle to create a relevant, contemporary and revolutionary consciousness as a means of accelerating social change and actualizing an autonomous cultural reality among other Americans of Mexican descent. To call oneself Chicano is an overt political act.” This association with direct action has made “Chicano” and “Chicana” controversial terms of identity for some Mexican Americans.
Several theories about the origin of these terms exist. One of the most popular resonates with the indigenous interests and emphases of the Chicano and Chicana movements. It postulates that the terms originated from the ancient Aztec “Mexica” or “Mexicanos.” Over time, the prefix disappeared and the soft “sh” sound of the letter “x” hardened into the “ch” sound used since the early 1900s.
Demographic figures vary widely but, in 1990, the American population of Mexican descent, including Chicanos and Chicanas, was estimated at between 13 and 14 million.
Throughout the last half of the twentieth century the Chicano community has remained one of the fastest growing and most dynamic segments of American culture.
Industry:Culture
In his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush vowed to “tear down the tollbooths to the middle class” and “let everyone get a piece of the American dream.” The middle class represents the unmarked, “unbounded” class in postwar American society as earlier success stories have expanded with new mobility, migration away from markers of class history like urban neighborhoods and ethnicities and an economy of consumption in which workers, bourgeoisie and elites may share commodities and institutions. Nonetheless, this class remains ambiguous, divided in gender, race and interests and uncertain of its status and future—“fear” and “anxiety” prove surprisingly common words in contemporary reports on the middle class.
Boundaries and definitions underscore ambiguous concepts and uses of class as well.
Forbes magazine, for example, labels $15,000–30,000 per annum lower middle class, puts middle class into the $35,000–75,000 income bracket and starts upper-middle class between $75,000 and $150,000 (D’Souza 1999), with concomitant differences in accumulated assets. Yet the same article notes that even the new millionaires assume “middle-class” behaviors, and the article omits a working class entirely (below $15,000 is considered poor).
Other divisions in American society also complicate the discussion. While the white middle class lies vaguely between the very wealthy and the working class, the African American middle class historically has incorporated workers with steady employment, not always skilled, because of the many blacks either under-employed or living below the poverty line. Similarly women of the “middle class” have questioned their definition by domesticity in entering the job market and defining the two-career family as a norm.
Katherine Newman (1999), however, has found that middle-class women face more anxiety and loss in divorce than do working-class women.
As noted in the overview article on class, these categories are defined by social and cultural characteristics as well. The middle class is strongly associated with business ownership and executive status, professional and some intellectual work and higher ranks of government service—“white-collar jobs.” Income is complicated by the role of dualincome families, accumulated investments in homes, stocks and retirement funds and indebtedness. Class is also demarcated by education, social capital, culture and consumption. Middle-class choices in art, fashion, tourism, home and connections distinguish the middle class from stereotypes of the working class, on the one hand, while, on the other hand, resembling and confusing consumption patterns of the upper class. Here, differences often appear in class reproduction: going to Harvard, the opera, or museums are highbrow behaviors open to middle and working classes; having a part of the institution named after your family represents a different status. Ambiguities of mobility and class permeate the image of 1990s high-tech millionaires from middle-class backgrounds.
The middle class is paradoxically characterized as a shared goal (even upper-class scions identify with the middle class in public rhetoric, as George Bush and Steve Forbes have shown), and uncomfortable situations. After the immense prosperity of the 1950s, sections of the middle class often have seen themselves threatened in economic and personal security (recessions, crime, health, downsizing). They have wondered how to keep their status and transmit it to future generations who, in the 1960s at least, sometimes claimed not to want this inheritance. This leads to political divisions between middle-class liberals, who support at least limited social reform, environmental protection and multicultural recognition, and conservatives, concerned with shoring up their position by tax cuts, family support, mortgage deductions, etc. Hence, politicians as different as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have appealed to the middle-class vote.
Mass-media imagery of the middle class takes many of the perquisites of social class for granted, unless the plot calls them into question as an individual or relationship crisis (e.g. Falling Down, 1993; American Beauty, 1999). At the same time, Hollywood glamour and stereotypes of gender, race and beauty may reaffirm middle-class anxiety— is the wedding in Father of the Bride (1950 and 1991) really what our daughter needs? Are out houses as neat and ordered as those of many sitcoms or Martha Stewart? Can our clothes compare with the fashions of You’ve Got Mail (1999) or our lives with the leisure and New York City apartments of television’s Friends (NBC, 1994–)? The development of the African American middle class during and after the 1950s provides an important counterpoint. Mobility became possible in part through changes in the United States job market in a number of employment areas: government civil service, the armed forces, industrial labor and universities. Local and federal administrations were forced, either through political pressure from minority communities or civilrights legislation, to begin combating discrimination in hiring and recruitment. Between 1960 and 1965 alone, 380,000 African Americans acquired white-collar employment, enlarging the black middle class to about 4 million, or one-fifth of the total African American population. Later retrenchment in affirmative action as well as downsizing and deregulation have affected this growth. The size of the black middle class continued to increase during the 1980s—as many as a third of all black families now earn between $25,000 and $50,000. Yet, the manner in which this increase occurred has not been very promising. In many instances, it has reflected both adults in a family moving into the lower-income levels of the middle class.
Members of the black middle class also face the problem of a polarizing American economy. In this, they have not been alone: the overall proportion of the workforce earning poverty-level wages rose from 25.7 percent to 31.5 percent during the 1980s, while the proportion earning three or more times poverty level actually fell, from 14.2 percent to 12.7 percent. The emergence of other immigrant middle classes—Asian American and Latino—has introduced new elements of competition for blacks and whites.
Ironically, media attention to the black middle class has grown as its position becomes more tenuous. Like other groups facing external pressures, threats have made members of this class more vocal and self-conscious about their politics, accentuating a trend, already detectable, towards black nationalism. The establishment of a more clearly defined class also increased the visibility of institutions representing it, from the black churches, colleges and clubs to the NAACP, as well as segregated suburbs and other spaces.
Meanwhile, black middle-class conservatives have questioned both long-time connections of African Americans to the Democratic Party and policies associated with the welfare state. Nonetheless, continuing discrimination and harassment based on “guilt by association” fuel continuing rage.
Industry:Culture
In industrial America, the “stogie” became an emblem of masculine success, an appendage of political bosses and driving businessmen, or an invitation to adulthood in the private rooms of elites. Although some cigars are produced in the US and Central America, the post-Castro Cuba embargo devastated sales and yet taunted America for decades. In the 1990s, however, new generations revived the cigar as a marker of success and exclusivity in smoking clubs chronicled in celebrity magazines like Cigar Aficionado. Sales rose 50 percent between 1993 and 1997. In 1999 the Federal Trade Commission, concerned by smokers who considered cigars a safer alternative to cigarettes, requested mandatory health warnings.
Industry:Culture
In January of 1969, Richard Nixon inherited a war that had humiliated his predecessor, and he immediately acted to restore American honor and win the war in Southeast Asia.
By attacking North Vietnamese bases in neighboring Cambodia, Nixon hoped to convince the enemy to withdraw from Cambodia and sign a ceasefire agreement.
Beginning on March 17, 1969, and continuing for fourteen months, Nixon sent American B-52s on 3,630 raids to Cambodia, dropping more than 100,000 tons of bombs.
The previous October, antiwar protests had involved more than 2 million Americans; therefore Nixon kept the bombings secret, and the White House informed the public that the B-52s were dropping their loads on South Vietnam. In November of 1969, Nixon announced that the nation would gradually withdraw its troops. But this decision created a problem for the flagging strength of the South Vietnamese forces, and so Nixon decided to authorize an invasion into Cambodia the following April. This failed to weaken the North Vietnamese, and only widened the war throughout Southeast Asia.
Responding to the incursion, as well as the recent discovery of the secret bombings, antiwar protests erupted across the country Then, on May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen shot four student demonstrators at Kent State University. Hundreds of American universities reacted with protest, hundreds more closed to avoid further violence and, soon thereafter, 100,000 Americans marched on Washington, DC to oppose the war.
By June of 1970, the Senate terminated the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and began to limit Nixon’s ability to prosecute a ground war in Southeast Asia. Nixon then intensified the bombing of Laos, renewed air strikes against North Vietnam and, later, aided an ARVN invasion into Laos. But the disastrous outcome of the invasion only eroded American confidence in the war further.
At the same time, William Calley was found guilty of murder for his actions at My Lai, and 1,000 Vietnam veterans testified to their own war crimes, discarding their war medals on the steps of the Capitol building. Meanwhile, the New York Times began to publish secret Defense Department documents, which had been stolen by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon employee. The summer of 1971 thus symbolized a high point of disillusionment with the war, yet Nixon’s plan to “Vietnamize” the war and gradually withdraw American troops eventually pacified domestic opposition.
In January of 1973, diplomatic talks in Paris produced a peace agreement. The United States accepted the demilitarized zone, and agreed to extricate its forces from the war.
American troops were withdrawn by the end of March, but the North Vietnamese troops remained in South Vietnam, and the fighting continued. Then, after North Vietnam announced continuing support for the communist rebels in Cambodia, the American bombings of Cambodia resumed. For six months, 250,000 tons of bombs were dropped, targeting some of the country’s most densely populated areas. Congress responded by banning the bombing of Cambodia and producing the War Powers Act, which directly limited the ability of future presidents to prosecute a war without a declaration from Congress.
Industry:Culture
In late 1967, General William Westmoreland, Gommander of the American forces in Vietnam, claimed that the war effort was nearing its successful end. Yet, on January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese unleashed a massive surprise assault on major urban centers in Southern Vietnam, while American military attention had been focused further north at Khe Sanh. Striking thirty-six of forty-four provincial capitals in South Vietnam, including the American embassy, the Tet Offensive was intended to create a general uprising across the south. Though the offensive failed, the effect on American morale was devastating. Television brought the chaos of the war into American homes, and the offensive galvanized national antiwar sentiment.
Industry:Culture
In late twentieth-century America this referred primarily to a postwar religious movement, also known as Wicca, or The Craft. Wicca is said to derive from Anglo-Saxon wicce meaning “wise” or alternatively “to bend,” although its actual provenance is unknown. Modern witches worship both male and female deities, often represented by the Horned God and the Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone). Major holidays occur at regular points in the year: February 2 (Imbolc); Spring Equinox; May 1 (Beltane); Summer Solstice; August 2 (Lammas or Lughnasa); October 31 (Samhain); and Winter Solstice. In addition, many witches also celebrate the new and full moons.
Modern witchcraft is a nature religion in the sense that all nature is considered to be sacred.
Wicca developed in Great Britain in the 1950s, and its earliest practitioners claimed its beliefs and rituals were the survivals of pre-Christian agricultural religions of Northern and Western Europe. While in Britain, Wicca has developed as a predominantly nativist movement maintaining an emphasis on its British cultural roots, in the US its growth since the 1970s has been strongly influenced by left-wing social movements, environmentalism and feminism. In the 1970s the traditional image of the witch as a marginalized yet wise and powerful figure was “reclaimed” by feminists. Furthermore, a religion which emphasized a female deity and had women in positions of power was naturally attractive to feminists. This combination of religion and politics gave rise to a feminist witchcraft, which by the 1980s and 1990s was becoming incorporated into the wider “Goddess Movement.” As modern witchcraft becomes more high profile in the United States, more witches are working to ensure that their practices and beliefs are accepted as valid religious expression. Organizations such as the Witches Anti Discrimination League have been founded to ensure that witches receive full freedom of religious expression under United States Law. Salem, Massachusetts, where the infamous witch trials of 1692 took place during which twenty people were executed, is now home to a thriving community of modern witches.
Industry:Culture
In mass media and everyday life, coffee has been part of the background of American life. Generally prepared in a weaker form than European expresso, this drink (with or without sugar and cream) can be consumed by the cupful during the work day at social gatherings (as in the earnest conversations of television soap operas) and with dinner— during the meal as well as after. Many diners or roadside restaurants even place large pots of coffee on each table prior to customers ordering. Down from its height of popularity in the 1930s, coffee remains a very visible cultural landmark with the ongoing Starbucking of America and the development of designer coffees as well as new spaces for consumption.
Through the early twentieth century leading coffee companies like Folger’s, Hills Brothers, Maxwell House and A&P roasted coffee beans and supplied coffee in cans.
Later, with the popularity of “instant” coffee, Folger’s crystals were marketed as indistinguishable from the coffee “served in the finest restaurants,” while Maxwell House “remained good to the last drop.” Meanwhile, growing concerns at the beginning of the physical fitness fad that strong coffee might represent a health problem led to the popularity of (Sanka) decaffeinated instant coffee, followed by other brands.
During the 1950s, dissatisfied with coffee that didn’t fit the advertised billing, William Black founded his own brand, Chock Ful ’o Nuts, in New York. Black was followed in Berkeley California, by Alfred Peet, who dark-roasted quality beans at Peet’s Coffee and Tea in Berkeley As these better quality beans hit the market, new delivery systems—Mr Coffee and those of the German producers, Krups and Braun—became available, making the freshly brewed coffee more convenient than previous methods of percolation, and bringing lattes, expressos and cappuccinos out of the “finest” restaurants and into the yuppie home. Coffee-houses in New York, meanwhile, also offered more European expressos with beat poetry and smoky conversations.
These set the stage for three students in Seattle in the 1970s to establish Starbucks.
When Starbucks’ specialty brand went national it benefited from the increased demand for freshly brewed coffee made from quality beans at a time when the overall demand for coffee was declining. New chain stores began to push the smaller, local-owned cafés out of the market, while bookstores opened their own cafés for their customers.
FBI Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) seemed to represent the shift in American culture from quantity to quality in Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–1), revealing his partiality for the Pacific Northwest town’s “damn fine coffee.” However, scandal revealed that some of the Starbucks’ coffee had not been so fine—Robusta beans had surreptitiously been substituted for Arabica beans. Concerns over labor and environmental conditions have also shaped consumer preferences, perhaps giving some smaller cafés a new lease of life.
Some believe their coffee purchases can help Haitians recover from economic turmoil, or express solidarity with Cuba; others see coffee growing as a way to save the rainforest.
Industry:Culture
In November 1967 the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. This Act established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as an independent, non-governmental body formed to serve as the umbrella organization for public broadcasting in the United States. Over thirty years, PBS has produced hits and changed broadcasting, while being charged with both elitism and middlebrow, safe tastes.
After the Second World War, the FCC had ensured that a certain number of stations would be reserved for educational broadcasting, but securing the money to run these was difficult. Initially, stations were usually affiliated to universities and other large institutions. In the 1960s, 125 educational television stations reached 6 million viewers.
Notable stations included WQED in San Francisco, CA, which had begun in 1950; in 1955 it came up with an innovative form of fundraising—the on-air auction. This became a mainstay of both its programming and fundraising schedules and is used by other local public stations that remain reliant upon donations, especially after recent government cutbacks.
With the 1967 Act, a place on the broadcast spectrum for educational non-commercial television was secured. Within the decade, the number of public stations doubled and 30 million homes would enjoy access to public broadcasting. Today 99 percent of Americans have access to public broadcasting. The CPB was authorized to develop educational broadcasting and finance facilities to link the independent public television stations, but was restricted from owning stations, systems, or networks. The CPB established the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1969 to manage the interconnection of independent public and educational broadcasting facilities. PBS is owned by its member stations; each member station is accountable to its local community Programming originates from a local station and is shared by member stations. For example, Electric Company, the award-winning children’s show, was produced by the Boston station WGBH, but shown nationwide. The related production company Children Television Workshop, produced Sesame Street for New York. Each station within the umbrella is free to produce and buy its own programming, but increasingly stations’ programming mimics that of other stations, so that PBS resembles a commercial network.
Commercial networks never registered any protest to PBS; they quickly realized that PBS was appealing to a different segment of the market. PBS showed dynamic fare such as Eyes on the Prize, a groundbreaking documentary on the Civil Rights movement, and An American Family, an innovative show that followed the life of a California middleclass white family. It also became the venue for many Ken Burns documentaries—from baseball to radio. Shows like Nature and Nova made it popular with educators just as Sesame Street and Mr Roger’s Neighborhood made it a must-see with kids. English shows were imported via the programs Mystery and Masterpiece Theatre, while opera and ballets were telecast live as ways to appeal to the high-brow population. At the same time, some more daring programming was also produced, such as Alive from Off-Center, which showed work from avant-garde artists and performers. Both, however, redefined public as elite rather than popular (or even local). Although commercial advertisements are not broadcast on PBS, stations and programs are allowed to announce the corporations and foundations who have underwritten particular shows. This has increased as government cutbacks (spurred on by the right wing) have eroded the financial structure. Corporations are able to portray themselves through PBS as interested in the arts, concerned about the environment and involved in the technological future without having to resort to anything as gauche as a traditional advertisement. Some fear that this corporate patronage has hindered the stations’ ability to develop programming free from censorship and to produce innovative shows as the system did in its first few years.
Industry:Culture
In spring 1999, the daytime serial All My Children ended thirty years of family and community intrigue and relationships, presented every Monday through Friday. It was soon replaced by the younger and steamier Passion. Demographics and settings may change, but the idea scarcely varies. Soaps provide dramas of emotion and conversation over coffee and cocktails rather than politics or work. Women are central, as peacemakers and bitches, although men have a variety of roles from paterfamilias to villain to stud. The sheer endurance of soap operas means that they have invited generations of fans to enter webs of romance, affairs, cat-fights, consumption, weddings, births (not in that order) and murders among the men and women of Pine Valley Glen Cove and other “typical” American places.
Soaps easily made the transition to television from long-running radio serials (taking their name from detergent sponsors). These family-centered dramas related to the viewers of new media, especially the housewife whom writers and advertisers have taken as the long-term viewer. Feminist scholars have examined how the form of soap operas fits into a woman’s daily routine. Soap operas do not always demand continuous concentration; hence, the ideal woman viewer can come in and out, watching the show while doing other chores. Multiple plot lines take away the clear beginning and end in a strict narrative, allowing the viewers to start watching the show at any point.
Soaps are also cheap to produce—writers create up to 5 hours of programs every week, taped by three studio cameras, with the actions rolling along without cuts (different scenes are put together in post-production). These are grueling scripts for actors, although soaps have provided both security and a sure proving ground for many stars.
Over decades, soap operas have added serial divorce and infidelity company battles, crime, sex and nudity which may have shocked their fans. Dark Shadows (ABC, 1966– 71) cast the soap into Gothic shadows. African American characters arrived in the 1980s (although black viewers have learned to watch the scandals of whites in many media).
Teens and young hunks were increasingly promising in the 1990s.
Audiences have also varied. Educated professionals and college students videotape their soaps daily although daytime soaps do not have the same public appeal to straight males. Celebrities, however, have turned fanship into participation; Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett have made cameo appearances in their favorite shows. Soaps, as prominent television artifacts, have been skewered in other series (the ironic evening comedies Soap (ABC, 1977–81) and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976–77, syndicated) even as networks vied to create glamorous prime-time soaps. Tootsie (1982) and Soapdish (1991) also imputed other layers of human complication to dramas on screen.
Cable television has brought telenovelas and other long-running dramas from around the world to American screens (and PBS has come close with some more sophisticated British imports). Yet these scarcely rival decades in which Days of Our Lives, All My Children, The Bold and the Beautiful and others have become everyday worlds as well as stories.
Industry:Culture
In the 1950s, Walt Disney, founder and head of the immensely successful Disney Studios, came up with the idea for a new kind of amusement park, unlike existing boardwalks and midways. Disney’s concept of a “theme park,” in which all attractions were linked by unifying ideas such as the future, adventure, or fantasy became reality in 1955 when Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California.
From its opening date, known internally as “Black Monday” because an unexpected crush of visitors filled the park to beyond its capacity Disneyland proved enormously popular with families. Many children became familiar with “The Happiest Place On Earth” through Disney-produced children’s television shows. In Disneyland visitors came face to face with characters they knew from Disney movies, such as Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Goofy. Many attractions at Disneyland also took their cue from Disney films. This unification of storytelling across media was both a creative breakthrough and a brilliant stroke of cross-marketing, spawning numerous imitators.
The concept also changed over time. The integration of Disney shows like “It’s a Small World” reveals its sensitivity to changing cultural norms (although employees have been strictly controlled in look, attire and conduct). Disney also was frustrated by his inability to control the plethora of cheap motels and competing attractions that enjoyed a parasitic relationship with Disneyland. Hence, he bought up thousands of acres of undeveloped property in central Florida, just west of Orlando, for a second theme park, although he died before Disneyworld opened in 1971. While initially consisting of a replica of the west-coast park, Disneyworld grew to include EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) Center, which Disney had envisioned as the ultimate product of his utopian ideal of a functioning city. In practice, EPCOT is merely another theme park, albeit one which uses technology community and globalism as conceptual frameworks. In subsequent years, other attractions have been added and Disneyworld has supplanted Disneyland as the number-one tourist destination in the United States. Most recently Disney’s planned community concept became a reality when the new urbanistic town of Celebration, Florida began inviting residents to its locale within the Disney property The corporation has also constructed Disneyland parks in Japan and France.
Disneyland and Disneyworld’s most lasting achievement is their unprecedented preeminence as tourist attractions. One or the other has been the top US tourist destination for four decades. Overall, Disneyland and Disneyworld occupy a particular place in American culture as the ultimate embodiment of the American urge to escape reality and indulge in fantasy and as a titan of an industry in which Americans have had particular success and are conspicuous consumers: dream-making.
Industry:Culture
