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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
Ratings provide a form of self-censorship that the media industries apply after pressure from the public and the government. The Hollywood Production Code of the 1930s was negotiated to handle issues from sex and violence to religion for mainstream cinema.
With the break up of studio control and cultural changes of the 1960s, the Motion Picture Association of America switched from self-control to consumer advising, instituting a four-part system that tended to exclude children on the basis of language, sexual content and occasionally onscreen brutality but also left open the negotiation of parental control and responsibility. While the G rating (associated with Disney or family films) was suitable for all, other categories sought parental guidance and parental responsibility to attend with a child (R, and, after 1984, PG-13 as well). The X rating (eagerly extended in pornographic film advertising to double and triple X) proved most troubling, leading eventually to an NC-17 rating that sought to distinguish big-budget films with sexual content from pornography. Still, the NC-17 rating greatly diminishes the number of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), digitally inserted figures screens available for a movie. Hence, in Kubrick’s blocked key actions from American audiences to obtain an R.
This rating was flagged of course as an immediate temptation for adolescents, especially as video rentals imposed controls on parents rather than theaters. Nonetheless, it remains a model for similar systems to rate television, records and computer products, where sex and language still dominate issues of violence, although the latter has become more critical in music and computer games. Other rating systems have been devised that look at overall morality (Catholic Legion of Decency), as well as critical evaluations (by stars, thumbs, age appropriateness and even grades) that classify films for a continually competitive marketplace.
Industry:Culture
Refers, on one level, to a specific series of federal acts and programs enabling radical replanning of the physical fabric of American cities. In a broader cultural sense, urban renewal stands for a political movement and cultural attitude towards the redevelopment of old, dense cities and their new, predominantly African American inhabitants after the Second World War. It was one of the more cataclysmic eruptions of a longstanding American fear and hatred of the big city. Urban renewal was the planning end of modern architecture that despised the nineteenth-century city—its crowds and historic buildings, its dirt and disease—and sought to replace it with a new, logical and planned system of urban living.
The “origin” of urban renewal is often tied to the passing of the 1949 Housing Act, which authorized the radical demolition of whole areas of central cities to make way for highways and new housing. In fact, fifty years previously, the City Beautiful movement, Progressive Era slum clearance and urban park reforms had created precedents. Federal and state powers were harnessed to demolish aging and crowded housing stock, creating a cleaner and more efficient place for business (which widely endorsed the remaking of downtowns), and making the city more amenable to the increasingly dominant automobile. Urban renewal was also put to a distinct social purpose: establishing de facto walls, in the form of highways and public buildings, between growing African American districts and white neighborhoods and downtowns. Despite its messianic overtones, urban renewal was also a code word for “Negro removal.” Urban renewal’s destructive impact on cities quickly led to a counter-movement, most articulately presented in two seminal works. Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) celebrated the very old, complex neighborhoods which urbanrenewal planners sought to eradicate. Against the aerial view of cities, which urban renewal presupposed, Jacobs looked at the view from the street and found something remarkable: the “blighted” (the favorite term of urban renewal) neighborhoods were in fact good places in which to live. Robert Caro, in his massive The Powerbroker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), portrayed urban renewal, as embodied in Robert Moses, the primary builder of every public work in postwar New York City and region, as anti-democratic, destructive of good communities and racist. The demolition of the massive Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis, MO in 1973, only eighteen years after it was built along orthodox urbanrenewal models, has become a convenient date to mark the end of the movement.
Industry:Culture
Reflective of the diversity of values and beliefs about education, the wide range of formal and informal educational opportunities in the United States includes: mainstream educational models, such as most public schools and some private schools; religious colleges; ethnic school programs; schools set up by different special interest groups; and continuing post-secondary education.
Systems of public education are government-controlled and therefore must reflect and teach government-sanctioned materials and interests. As the mainstream educational institutions, public schools are premised on and dedicated to the transmission of the values and beliefs of the dominant culture—generally white, upper-middle class, Protestant males—and traditional school subjects, such as English, history, mathematics and science, are most often taught through the perspectives of that group. National, state, and local curricular standards to which public schools must adhere tend to reinforce these choices, unless a local governing body such as a school board or teachers on their own initiative within the walls of their individual classrooms, elects to supplement the prescribed curriculum. There are some exceptions to the dominant model of public schools—including Afro-centric schools, gay/lesbian/ bisexual schools (such as the Harvey Milk School) and charter schools with different foci, such as students with special learning needs—which make explicit their support of and focuses on these underrepresented groups.
Premised on the claim that public education offers equal opportunity to all, there is a rhetoric of public education for democracy which says that all children have the right to free education and, in turn, have the responsibility to contribute to the welfare of the country—the majority from support, not leadership, positions. Efforts such as the 1960s War on Poverty, supported by passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and programs such as Head Start, Upward Bound and The Job Corps were attempts to ensure the education of low-income children and teenagers, but, critics argue, preparing them primarily for vocational positions.
Unrestricted by national and state standards, and created by and for the elite or particular interest groups, some private schools embrace and pursue the same values and goals as public schools. However, they bring to the endeavor from the institutional side greater resources, smaller class sizes and a greater variety of teachers (since teachers need not be state-certified to teach in a private school), and they draw on and cater to a population of students which more often than not belongs or aspires to the cultural elite.
Some private schools strive against the main-stream, however. Dissatisfied with some of the ways that mainstream schools address (or avoid) issues, such as evolution, sex education and nontraditional interpretations of historical events, some groups have established alternative forums within which to preserve and transmit their culture and values. One such educational option, religious colleges, emerged for a variety of reasons: Roman Catholic schools formed in reaction to Protestant evangelism and Protestant ethics and values, which insisted on a narrowly defined Americanism; white Christian academies were created as a reaction against racial integration and teachings they believe are not Christian, such as evolution; Quaker schools were created to pursue an ideal of education based on principles of non-violence, equity and social justice; and Jewish day schools proliferated as a result of a swelling of religious sentiment after the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
Other private schools based on a pedagogical approach also offer alternatives: Montessori schools, generally for preschool and kindergartenaged children, emphasize providing a stimulating environment for children in which they can learn, at their own pace, the elementary aspects of what will later be emphasized in school; Waldorf schools, based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, are built on the principle that the child as a whole must be nurtured and developed—emotionally physically spiritually academically—to produce a wellrounded and happy human being. Finally military schools, particularly after the Second World War and the increased mechanization resulting from war, focus on discipline, obedience, literacy comprehension of the need for a particular war and special technical skills as they embody the values of patriotism and national service.
Alternative models of education have also coexisted with public- and previously mentioned private-school options, created to serve constituencies outside the social and educational mainstream, such as religious, socio-economic and ethnic minority groups.
After-school—afternoon, evening and weekend—programs supplement regular public or private school education and strive to maintain and pass on particular values and traditions; community centers, camps, Sunday schools and health organizations (such as the YMCA and YWCA) all see high enrollment and participation. Ethnic educational opportunities generally run more on the after-school, supplementary model and, like the various forms of part-time religious education, ethnic schools saw a proliferation with the influx of immigrants in the wake of the Second World War. Corporate education also blossomed after the Second World War and has continued to grow, as have proprietary schools.
A desire for self-improvement—ongoing or continuing education after or in addition to compulsory schooling and higher education—is also valued by some. Of those who wish to ascend the socio-economic hierarchy (see education and society), there are, in addition to public schools, adult-literacy classes for both native and non-native speakers.
These classes are generally run by nonprofit organizations, community organizations (such as churches), or through nationally and locally sponsored programs such as the Adult Literacy Project in Philadelphia, PA. Some members of the upper socio-economic classes see self-improvement as a virtue and either return to traditional school contexts to further their education or pursue alternative forms of education.
All of the educational options addressed here reflect the possibilities for education to preserve, transmit and/or challenge the values and beliefs both of groups—including religious, cultural, or social values—and of the United States as an entity—including democracy freedom and meritocracy.
Industry:Culture
Religious community formed by the 1961 merger of the Universalists (founded 1793) and Unitarians (founded 1825). Eschewing creeds and keeping a remarkably open mind on any religious questions (sometimes to the confusion of outsiders), UU churches and their 215,000 members have also been deeply associated with liberal social and cultural movements.
Industry:Culture
Representations of Latinos in media vary significantly depending on whether they are self-generated or created by non-Latinos. Latinos began representing themselves positively and complexly in Spanish language newspapers in the mid-nineteenth century to be joined in the early twentieth century by Spanish-language radio and literature. By the mid-1960s, self-generated Latino images appeared in film, television and Broadway.
More frequently during this time frame, non-Latinos represented these same experiences through commonly recognized stereotypes. Male and female images of the dark-skinned bandit, revolutionary, peasant, Latin lover and the seemingly less offensive Spanish aristocrat carried over from written to visual media at the beginning of the twentieth century In the mid-twentieth century to these enduring stereotypes were added the buffoon, the boxer, the gang member and the illegal alien.
Scholarly debates about the accuracy and impact of such images has continued since the 1970s. A 1994 study by the National Council of La Raza indicated mass media continually underrepresented and misrepresented Latinos despite modest gains made by other ethnic American groups after the Civil Rights movement. According to the same study as Latinos and other Americans receive most of their information through mass media, the control and generation of Latino images remains of paramount importance.
Industry:Culture
Repulsed and fascinated by death, Americans struggle to grasp its physical, psychological and social impact through both a medical understanding of bodily degenerative processes and philosophical and cathartic explorations of its meaning.
Americans avoid the signs of death, age and disease through their love of youth culture, “fitness” and plastic surgery. Biotechnical innovations, cryogenics, genome mapping and cloning have become a new religion that allows Americans to entertain fantasies of immortality Old age and death are profoundly medicalized; age is a medical “problem,” death is a biotechnological failure to preserve life. The other sign of death, disease, is exemplified by the AIDS epidemic. Without cure, AIDS is death; the ultimate eros/thanatos combination where physical pleasures evoke necrophilia. But death is sometimes better than debilitation, a key debate when considering the euthanasia practices of “Dr Death,” Jack Kevorkian.
Most Americans will die in hospitals or nursing homes; dying, grieving and disposing of the dead are hidden and institutionalized events, sanitized processes managed by specialized workers. Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death (1963) pinpointed the exploitative practices of funeral professionals as they dispose of the dead at high costs to the bereaved. Mitford’s work was revelatory but American funerals are still cherished, expensive and necessary rituals.
Death anxiety is expressed in American media culture where mass deaths, at home or afar, are a spectacle. National news coverage and photos of the fiery death of David Koresh and Branch Davidian followers in Waco, Texas, are rivaled only by details and images of murders shown nightly on local television news. The extermination of populations in Cambodia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia, international airplane crashes and earthquake and flood disaster sites are common foci of American media interest, as the fascination with these images competes with discourses of prevention and aid.
Films like Death Becomes Her (1992) explore and parody dreams of youth and immortality alongside tabloid celebrations of serial murders and blockbusters advertising mass death and destruction. Death is evil and asocial, an offense to American sensibilities in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), which display death for voyeurism, moralizing and catharsis within the “exotic” realm of war.
The Faces of Death (1978–91) series and “real” underground images of death in “snuff films” emphasize the precarious pleasures of exploring death anxiety in a society often so intent on containing and obfuscating it.
Death images of Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy Elvis Presley and Princess Diana regularly circulate through tabloid news and Internet sites, the bizarre circumstances of their unexpected deaths meticulously reviewed. As public domain, celebrity deaths exacerbate American death anxiety.
In the end, despite its grotesque finery death in contemporary America remains what it always has been—a primitive finality inseparable from rituals and representations designed to draw meaning from its summons. As each national holiday is marked by a ritualistic recitation of highway and alcohol-related death statistics, death is implicit to American life, an anxiety embedded deeply within the American psyche and cultural practices.
Industry:Culture
Richard Joseph Daley (1902–76) served as mayor of Chicago, IL from 1955 until his death. He was one of a generation of Democratic mayors of large cities known as “machine” politicians because of the large patronage networks they controlled. Daley’s machine was widely credited with delivering a critical bloc of votes for John F. Kennedy in 1960.
The Daley family lived in the heavily Irish working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, where fears of racial integration ran high. Because of his loyalty to similar communities, Daley resisted Martin Luther King’s efforts for neighborhood integration.
Following a period of organizing and marches in Chicago, King remarked that northern racism was even more intransigent than that of the south. Daley’s connections to Washington, DC attracted significant federal funding to Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, much of which he used to construct large, high-rise public housing developments that concentrated Chicago’s growing African American population. He was also credited with reviving Chicago’s aging downtown infrastructure. Daley gained national publicity again in 1968, using heavy-handed tactics to subdue anti-war protesters at the Democratic National Convention.
In 1989 Daley’s oldest son, Richard M. Daley was elected mayor. In an effort to separate himself from his father’s image, soon after beginning his first term, he moved out of Bridgeport into an integrated, gentrified new neighborhood just west of downtown.
Industry:Culture
Rock ’em, sock’ em, he-man, brawling, sprawling, blood and guts masculine cinematic confections that have been a mainstay of Hollywood production and appeal to audiences for decades. Using scenarios drawn from Westerns, adventure, war, superheroes or even terrorism, these movies showcase a masculinity of bravado, blood and violence. Key stars over decades have ranged from the suave Douglas Fairbanks, Jr or Errol Flynn to grittier portrayals by Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some women, including Sigourney Weaver (Alien) and Linda Hamilton (Terminator) have expanded the genre, while Hong Kong stars like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat have also shown box-office appeal and even gained cult status. Box office, rather than art, after all, is the appeal that these epics offer to young men with or without dates on a summer evening, negotiating masculinity by fantasy and imitation.
Industry:Culture
Rock and art festival in 1969 in Bethel, New York, that became a symbol of baby-boom dreams. For three days in August, an unexpected crush of 500,000 plus participants adapted to freedom, music, drugs and a lack of sanitation. In addition to performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Santana, the Band, Jefferson Airplane and others, the celebration itself became myth, aided by the film and soundtrack Woodstock (1969). Nonetheless, this was a commercially organized concert, charging $18 for three-day admissions, paying performers and controlling film rights. Nonetheless, the experience of being there created an alternative vision of Woodstock Nation (1969).
This myth also opposed the Rolling Stone’s Altamount concert that year, at which Hells’ Angels, hired as bodyguards, beat a fan to death (recorded in David and Albert Maysle’s Gimme Shelter, 1970).
Attempts to recreate this event/ambiance have proven less successful. Woodstock 1994, the twenty-fifth anniversary, became highly commercialized, with sponsorship from Polygram and Pepsi and pay-per-view retransmission; musician Neil Young dubbed it “Greedstock.” Although Woodstock 1999 gathered strong contemporary bands and 1969 veterans, it, too, was marred by costs and commercialism ($150 entrance tickets).
Fires and destruction at closing and a disturbing misogyny marked by reports of multiple rapes, made it seem even further from the original or its myth. Whether the result of the high expectations set by the first or increasingly exploitative concerts and festivals in the interim, it seems one cannot go back to Yasgur’s farm.
Industry:Culture
Rock promoter Bill Graham turned the concert hall, the Fillmore, into a legendary site for San Francisco, CA rock and one of the key meeting places for the counterculture that proliferated in the late 1960s in the Bay area. Graham started out as manager for the avant-gardist San Francisco Mime Troupe; when the troupe got into legal trouble for performing its risqué art publicly he organized a fundraiser at the Fillmore with the Jefferson Airplane and The Fugs. Graham took over the hall and became renowned for promoting eclectic combinations of artists in a night’s bill and introducing audiences to performers outside the mainstream. Graham died in a helicopter accident in 1991; the Fillmore continues today under separate management.
Industry:Culture
