Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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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.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Rauschenberg, Robert

b. 1925

A native of

Texas,

Rauschenberg taught at Black Mountain College and later

collaborated with John

Cage

and the Merce

Cunningham

Dance Company. One o

several influential artists who reacted against the particular seriousness and introspection

abstract expressionism

of the 1940s and 1950s, Rauschenberg experimentedwith

opular imagery and found objects, incorporating them into more whimsical pieces.

Rather than ignoring the city environment, he incorporated the junk and technology o

industrial society into large collages and constructions out of corrugated cardboard that

utilized their labels and binding tapes. His work influenced

pop art,

minimalism

and

collage work, and continues to influence experimentalists today

EDWARD MILLER

Rayburn, Sam

b. 1882; d. 1961

Democratic

congressional leader and

Speaker of the House

from 1940 to 1961. Elected

to the House from rural

Texas

in 1913, Rayburn built up formidable connections with

Roosevelt

and the New Deal. As Speaker in a Congress where long-term

Southern

representatives held key posts, Rayburn continued to promote Democratic programs in

labor, defense, agriculture and even

civil rights

. Lyndon

Johnson

was his protégé. A

House Office Building memorializes his decades as broker and leader.

GARY McDONOGH

Reader’s Digest

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Magazine founded in 1922 by George and Lila Acheson Wallace, offering a steady diet

of condensed reprints, life stories, news features, selfimprovement advice and jokes.

eader’s Digest

now reaches over 16 million households and appears in multiple

languages in the US and abroad. Nonetheless, it is often satirized for its “good,”

conservative values, which let it become associated with doctors’ offices, the elderly and

“middle America.”

Reader’s Digest’s

condensed books, in particular, seemed to some to

devalue reading and literature in favor of ease.

GARY McDONOGH

Reagan, Ronald

b. 1911

president

from 1981 to 1989. A second-tier

Hollywood

leading man, Ronald

Reagan shifted from New Deal Democrat to anti-communist conservative while serving

as president of the Screen Actors Guild during the

McCarthy

era. His first taste o

olitical success came in 1964 when he made the most financially successful campaign

commercial for Barry

Goldwater

. After the electoral debacle, Reagan replaced

Goldwater as the voice of the

Republican Party

right wing.

In 1966 he was elected governor of

California,

running against Berkeley student

radicals,

civilrights

militants and anti-Vietnam protesters. Over the next decade, Reagan

used his base in California to build what became known as the New

Right,

a coalition o

free-market libertarians, traditionalists and ideological anti-communists, augmented by

evangelical Christians, neoconservative

intellectuals

and those voters, called Reagan

Democrats,

increasingly estranged from liberalism, which seemed less patriotic, more

culturally deviant and more inclusive.

In the late 1970s, with stagflation and hostages dominating the news, Reagan defeated

Jimmy

Carter

for the presidency. Reagan’s victory seemed to mark a conservative

ascendancy—the Reagan Revolution—with international parallels, for example Margaret

Thatcher in Britain. Reagan, supported by conservative Democrats, pushed through a 25

percent

tax

cut, significant cuts in social welfare spending, a host of de-regulatory

measures and enormous increases in the military budget. He also introduced a new anti-

union use of “replacement” workers, or scabs, in breaking the

air-traffic controllers’

strike

of 1981.

In foreign policy he countered calls for a nuclear freeze with his

Strategic Defense

Initiative,

or Star Wars, which sought a costly hi-tech missile defense system. Reagan

also funded a variety of efforts to combat left-wing governments in Nicaragua,

Grenada

and Afghanistan, and radical movements in El Salvador and Angola. Yet, he would later

astonish his hawkish advisors by exploring radical reductions in nuclear missiles with

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986.

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In 1984, with the economy reviving, Reagan romped over Walter

Mondale,

carrying

forty-nine states. But, soon after, the

Iran-Contra

scandal broke, revealing that his

administration had exchanged missiles for the promise of help with hostages from Iran

and, in addition, had used profits from the sales to illegally fund the anti-Sandinista

Contras in Nicaragua. But with no “smoking gun,” Reagan himself escaped indictment.

Reagan’s legacy is part of the ongoing ideological war—s supporters claim that he

restored US economic prosperity and won the

Cold War

. Critics note that Reaganomics:

fueled massive federal deficits and a burdensome national debt; violated conservative

fiscal commitments to balanced budgets in support of dubious “supply-side” notions;

ravaged the social welfare safety net; turned the clock back to the nineteenth century with

his

Supreme Court

appointments; and encouraged religious dogmatism, racial

intolerance and an “era of greed.”

Further reading

Wills, G. (1987)

Reagan’s America,

Garden City: Doubleday

Cannon, L. (1991)

President Reagan,

New York: Simon & Schuster.

LaFeber, W. (1993)

Inevitable Revolutions,

New York: W.W.Norton.

Stockman, D. (1986)

The Triumph of Politics,

New York: Harper & Row.

PAUL LYONS

real estate

FIRE—finance, insurance, real estate named were the watchwords of urban development

in late twentieth century America as the spaces of the city themselves became central

commodities and motors of growth. Real estate as a focus of speculation for both

individuals and corporations underpins both prosperity and debt.

For most individuals, housing is their primary investment and often, via the mortgage,

their primary debt. Federal programs for buyers and developers as well as deductions on

mortgage interest for income

taxes

have made this a central financial operation of the

middle class

(see

public housing

). At the same time, given American mobility the home

is an investment middle-class homes should accrue value, whether pioneers o

gentrification

suburban

enclaves. Threats of loss of value, in turn, have spurred

white flight

Yet real estate also represents a major national and international market in which large

developers negotiate with cities, states and federal governments for breaks that will

resumably be offset by jobs or other revenue increases, and newspapers cover trends and

rojects in detail. As an investment, in fact, real estate has also attracted money from

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pension funds, healthcare corporations and other economic sectors. Red-hot markets, in

turn, have posed problems for other land uses, whether environmental controls,

preservation, planning or even basic questions of the location of schools and services.

Perhaps it is indicative of the centrality of real estate to urban and exurban planning—

and American discourses of profit and success—that Donald Trump, known primarily for

real-estate development in New York (and Atlantic City casinos) has been discussed as a

potential presidential candidate for the Reform Party.

ee also:

banks and banking

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

reality-based television

Genre concerned with signaling the authority of “realism” and “authenticity” where

programs usually shoot on location using shaky video-camera filming and actual

articipants. This relatively new but popular genre originated in the 1980s with shows

such as

America’s Most Wanted

(FOX, 1988–), Cops (FOX, 1989–),

Unsolved Mysteries

(NBC, 1988–95) and

America’s Funniest Home Videos

(ABC, 1990–). Many other

imitators followed, especially on FOX. MTV’s

Real World

(1992–) and the latest

Survivors

(2000) on CBS are new games where real people are placed in different

situations in order to be simply on TV or to win million-dollar prizes.

A prototypical plot of

Cops,

for example, features actual

police

driving through inner

cities and apprehending suspects. Frenetically paced edited video footage captures

officers on high-speed chases. Celebrating the collective agency of the fraternal order, the

stories reveal the officers’ extraordinary power to establish law and order.

America’

ost Wanted

is hosted by a civilian advocate for missing children. The program profiles

missing children as well as fugitives using recent photographs and re-enactments o

alleged crimes. Home viewers respond to the program’s toll-free telephone number with

relevant information that has led to hundreds of successful resolutions.

These narratives first establish a vision of normalcy and calm that is swiftly

overthrown by chaos. Disorder displaces order and the world turns upside-down. While

each show relies on different tropes (funny disturbing or shocking), the dissolve of order

propels the narrative.

While the programs have relatively similar production styles, techniques and

economies, they have basic ideological distinctions. Programs such as

Cops

and

mergency Cal

portray official agents of the state or other powerful public institutions as

social protectors. Each of these programs focuses on the cold-nerved and often violent

heroics of professionals, and the means by which they restore order: firefighters pull

children from burning houses; medical technicians revive accident victims; etc. In

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contrast, programs such as

AMW

and

America’s Funniest Home Videos

focus on the

authority of average people, the absence of paternalistic social control and on the private

side of individual lives. Frequently, these programs demand audience participation and

include a casually dressed civilian host who reinforces the legitimacy of civilian morality

and agency.

Reality-

ased programs have proliferated in part because of relatively inexpensive

roduction costs. Consumer appetites for the format have also been substantial. Focus

and survey research have found that viewers value the format as entertaining and

informative “reality.” The public also tolerates the

violence

presented on these “reality”

rograms more than violence in fictional accounts. However, these programs have been

criticized for insidious blending of exciting vérité and carefully constructed narratives.

The law-and-order variety have been further critiqued for their stereotypical portrayals o

criminality that associate deviance with the dark-skinned figures populating urban terrain,

ignoring larger social and economic problems and white-collar crime.

JESSICA FISHMAN

reapportionment and redistricting

The US census was established largely for the purpose of determining the

reapportionment of legislative districts. As population shifts around the country

congressional seats are taken from

cities

of declining population and added to those

where population has grown.

The gathering of data has become cause for significant political debate with regard to

the 2000 census.

Democrats

feel that previous censuses have grossly undercounted urban

opulations and so have unfairly taken seats away from areas where the electorate has

tended to vote for them. As a result, they wish to institute sampling techniques to

compensate for any potential undercount.

Republicans,

whether or not they agree that an

undercount has occurred, are happy with traditional census-gathering techniques.

Further debates have occurred over the establishment of districts to allow for or limit

minority representation. A state in the

South

with a large

African American

population

may nevertheless elect few black

Congress

members due to the way districts are drawn.

In 1982 efforts were made to change this when the

Voting Rights Act

was amended to

require certain jurisdictions to take steps to give minority voters an opportunity to elect

candidates of their choice. However, first attempts to accomplish this by making

constituencies out of dispersed populations have been declared unconstitutional “racial

gerrymanders” by the

Supreme Court

ROBERT GREGG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 950

recording industry

Since Thomas Edison first spoke the words “Mary had a little lamb” into his phonograph

in 1877, the recording industry has been driven by a mixture of technological innovations

and the pursuit of profit—each feeding off the other.

While Edison failed originally to see the popular entertainment uses of his phonograph

(preferring the device as an office dictation machine), by the 1920s he was locked into

attle with Columbia and Victor Records for talent and audience. In the 1920s, also,

radio

broadcasting of live and recorded music spread across the nation. Publishing rights

to songs began to be licensed through ASCAP in 1914 and BMI in 1939.

A dazzling succession of technological breakthroughs, especially the introduction o

electrical recording, allowed for a greater warmth and personality in recorded music,

spawning modern

popular music

. Now, performers like Bing

Crosby

seemed to be

singing directly to each individual listener.

While the Great Depression marked a low point for the recording industry (with record

sales plummeting from a height of 100 million discs in 1927 to only 6 million in 1932),

the onset of the Second World War brought two major changes to the business. On the

technological side, wartime research in electronics led to improvements in sound quality

through magnetic tape recording, the “unbreakable” long-playing rpm) and 45

rpm discs and “high-fidelity”

layback equipment; after the war the invention o

transistors by Bell Labs in 1948 revolutionized the radio. The other key to the

transformation of the recording industry was the expansion of the consumer base with the

baby boom

Teenagers

in the 1950s spent an estimated 10 billion dollars anually much

of that on records and radios.

The technological and market growth helped transform the nature of the music industry

as well. Since the 1920s, the business had been largely controlled by a few dominant

corporate media conglomerations. While that is the case to this day cheaper recording

costs and an expanded marketplace allowed more independent record labels to flourish.

Especially with the advent of

rock ’n’ roll

as a mass-market phenomenon in the 1950s,

smaller labels like Chess, Sun and Atlantic were able to achieve a degree of success in

introducing popular music that the major labels ignored to varied audiences. While the

majors caught on to the new musical genres and new markets (RCA, for example, bought

out Elvis

Presley

’s contract from Sun in 1955 for the then astronomical sum of $35,000),

independents have continued to fill the niches ignored by the majors.

Technological improvements continued to transform recorded music, from multi-track

recording and Dolby noise reduction to the advent of digital recording in 1978 (though

audiophiles might quarrel over whether digitization is an improvement). The compact

disc and DAT in the 1980s and MP3 technology in the 1990s transformed recorded music

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into patterns of sound waves encoded as a sequence of numbers. The promise is o

superior sound quality but the real revolutionary possibility rests with the new methods o

distribution. While the recording industry is still controlled by a handful of multinational

corporations (which seemingly change ownership weekly), the transmission of recorded

sound over the

Internet

threatens to break their dominance.

Further reading

Eliot, M. (1989)

Rockonomics: The Money Behind the Music,

New York: Franklin Watts.

Chapple, S. and Garafalo, R. (1977)

Rock and Roll is Here to Pay,

Chicago: Nelson Hall.

DEWAR MACLEOD

recycling

Along with the popularization of environmental concerns in the 1970s and 1980s came a

growing critique of the highly consumerist, resourceintensive American lifestyle. In the

wake of

Earth Day

1990, recycling came to be seen as the perfect solution to these

concerns, allowing each American to participate in a perceived ameliorative effort

without actually making a substantial sacrifice in consumption. For many advocating

recycling is synonymous with environmental awareness, while purchasing recycled

roducts (paper and plastic goods abound) is seen as a kind of consumer activism. By

social convention, all businesses and academic institutions are expected to recycle.

BRAD ROGERS

Redford, Robert

b. 1937

Blond, blue-eyed handsome romantic hero whose roles have embodied some of the

most characteristic images of American

masculinity,

while sometimes adding tragic or

ironic reverberations. In a string of movies that made him one of the country’s most

popular

actors

from the 1970s onwards, Redford has been the outlaw (

Butch Cassidy an

the Sundance Kid,

1969, and others), the operator (

The Sting,

1973), the athlete (

The

atural,

1984), the crusading journalist (

All the President’s Men,

1976) and, always, the

romantic lover (

The Way We Were,

1973;

Out of Africa,

1984;

Up Close and Personal,

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1996). As he has matured, Redford has also become involved in production and direction,

winning a directing Oscar for

Ordinary People

(1980). That same year, he founded the

Sundance Institute near his Utah resort and ranch, which has grown to be a major site for

the training and exposition of independent film-makers through the Sundance

Film

Festival

GARY McDONOGH

rednecks

Derogatory term typically meaning ignorant,

white

and

Southern

. Although derived

from reference to rural, laboring whites whose necks turned red in the sun, the term is

now used for any lower-class white population taken to be racist and reactionary

including others in the interior US and Australia. “Redneck,” along with “hillbilly,”

“cracker,” “trailer-park trash” and “white trash,” glosses a racial and class position taken

to be synonymous with anti-government and racist sentiments combined with

Bible belt

religion. These are the last “socially approved” racist epithets.

Further reading

Goad, J. (1997)

Redneck Manifesto,

New York: Simon & Schuster.

JANICE NEWBERRY

referenda

Direct action on political issues through popular vote, either by legislative or statutory

demand or as a result of citizen petition. Control on legislative activity through referenda

has been especially strong in Western

states

and in

cities;

there are no equivalent federal

redresses. Referenda commonly cover major bond, taxation and expenditure issues as

well as structural changes in government. Divisive issues like statewide

gambling

may

also be put to a popular vote. As citizen actions, however, they have embraced topics as

diverse as controls on re-election, immigrant rights, property

taxes

and the use of medical

marijuana

GARY McDONOGH

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Reform Party

parties and elections; Perot, H. Ross

refugees

Beyond those who immigrate via legal and illegal channels each year, 70,000–80,000

people also enter the United States as designated “victims” of political and other

repressive conditions worldwide. Some of these people have established flourishing

communities in the US, while others struggle to gain the support granted to those

identified with

Cold War

struggles.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, US government policy favored refugees

from “enemy” nations (and failures of US foreign policy—hence 38,000 Hungarians

were accepted after the failed uprising of 1956). Later, thousands arrived after

Castro

’s

emergence in

Cuba

and plans to reunify families, as well as massive boatlifts and

escapes from the island. Other large populations of refugees followed the

Vietnam War,

including those evacuated for political reasons and subsequent waves of

boat people

who

survived ocean travails and refugee camps to find American sponsorship. Many of these

refugees were initially dispersed as church and civic groups across the country supported

them. In time, new and specialized enclaves emerged—100,000 Hmong resettled in the

Minnesota area, while other

Southeast Asians

clustered in

Los Angeles

and suburban

Washington, DC

Refugee policy has shifted only slowly from its anti-communist visage to wider

political and human-rights issues, including right-wing regimes in Central America and

those oppressed by conditions of poverty exacerbated by globalization. Nonetheless,

families from Bosnia and Kosovo or leaders of the Tiananmen incidents in China have

been lionized in

mass media

and popular support, while those fleeing female

circumcision in Africa or other human-rights issues have faced more obstacles. Also,

many, especially those from Latin America, contest the marginal status they are given as

illegal immigrants rather than escapees from terror abetted by American intervention in

their homelands.

ee also:

Cuban Americans; immigration; Polish Americans; Vietnamese Americans

Further reading

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 954

Hein, J. (1995)

From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia,

New York: Twayne.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Regents of the University of California

Bakke

In this 1978 case, the

Supreme Court

invalidated a fixed affirmative-action quota

system used at the medical school of the University of

California

at Davis. The suit was

brought by Allan Bakke, a

white

applicant rejected while non-white applicants with

lower test scores and grades were admitted. The Court held that the school’s setaside

rocedure, guaranteeing admission places to people from various minority groups,

contravened federal anti-discrimination law. The five-to-four decision still permitted

race

to be used as a remedy for past discrimination when it is one of many factors for

admission.

ee also:

affirmative action

BRIAN LEVIN

regions and regionalism

The major geographical divisions of the United States—North,

South, Midwest

and

West—

reflect different attitudes, dialects, literature,

folklore, food,

history perspectives,

climate and lifestyle that have fostered extensive literary and historical study of each.

Still, many scholars argue that the term is too imprecise to be meaningful. Subregions

such as Northwest,

Southwest, New England, Rocky Mountains

and

Great Lakes

are

erhaps more specific markers of culture, social ties and identity. Additionally,

differences between inhabitants of a particular region may be greater than similarities.

Los Angelenos may have more in common with New Yorkers than they do with residents

of Taos, New Mexico, although both

California

and New Mexico are considered part o

the West. In spite of these complications, regional identities have been and continue to be

a significant aspect of American heritages.

Stereotypes of “genteel Southerners,”

“rednecks,”

“reserved New Englanders” and

“rugged Westerners” remain as plentiful in contemporary median culture as they were in

the nineteenth century when regionalism was first identified. The labels may be adopted

y residents, imposed and reproduced in film, television and popular culture, or both.

Throughout history, regional identity has often been constructed in relationship to

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