Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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Sarandon, Susan

b. 1946

Beginning with her breakthrough role as Janet in the 1975 cult classic

Rocky Horror

icture Show,

Sarandon’s characters have had a powerful influence on both popular

culture and substantive social debate. Her portrayal of a hardened, but hopeful Southern

woman in the 1991 film

Thelma and Louise

reflected women’s awareness of both their

power and vulnerability in modern society Sarandon’s Oscar-winning role as a nun in

ead Man Walking

(1996) articulated new complexities in the moral debate over

capital

punishment

. Sarandon’s unusual looks also defied traditional concepts of beauty and sex

appeal. Her long-term relationship with Tim Robbins is also part of her political and

public persona.

SARAH SMITH

SATs (Scholastic Aptitude Tests)

standardized testing; universities and colleges

Savannah, GA

This port and tourist center of 137,000 inhabitants often epitomizes the

South

in popular

media (e.g. John Berendt’s 1994 bestseller

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe with a unique

urban plan

based around a

succession of squares, its antebellum center survived the Civil War to be restored since

the 1950s as a gentrified historical district. The city’s majority

African American

opulation also has created educational (Savannah State College) and religious legacies

(First African/First Bryan Baptist Church are among the earliest independent

congregations in the US). The city hosted

Olympic

yachting events (1996).

GARY McDONOGH

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savings and loans

banks and banking

Sayles, John

b. 1950

As a film-maker, John Sayles has often been drawn to historical subjects, which he

uses to illustrate injustice (racial, ethnic, gender and

class

), as well as the sheer

complexity of social interaction in modern America.

Matewan

(1987) chronicles the 1920

coal miners’ strike in West Virginia, while

Eight Men Out

(1988) investigates

baseball

’s

Black Sox scandal of 1919. More recently

Lone Star

(1996) confronted the weight o

history itself, delving into the past and present life of a small town in southern

Texas

Though rarely commercial successes, Sayles’ films display a rare willingness to address

difficult issues of identity and social justice.

SUSAN SCHULTEN

scab labor

strikes

Scandinavian Americans

Although Swedes participated in the colonial settlement of the

Mid-Atlantic,

most

Scandinavian immigrants arrived in the US between 1880 and 1920, including some

300,000 from Denmark, 750,000 Norwegians and 1.25 million Swedes. While smaller

than some other groups, these numbers were extremely large for the populations

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involved—one-fifth of all Swedes lived in the US at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Subsequent

immigration,

however, has been primarily professionals and sojourning

usiness people; in the 1970s, emigration to Sweden (a haven for Vietnam protestors)

exceeded immigration to the US.

While Danes scattered throughout the northern United States, Norwegians and Swedes

often chose rural homesteads in the upper

Midwest

—especially Minnesota, Wisconsin,

Illinois and South Dakota. Nonetheless, in 1900,

Chicago, IL

was the second-largest

Swedish city in the world after Stockholm. Lutheran churches, ethnic press and society

and a liberal populist political orientation united these communities, although all were

highly assimilated by the 1930s. By this time Swedish Americans became American

heroes (aviator Charles Lindbergh) and interpreters (poet Carl

Sandburg

As older institutions and language faded, some pan-Scandinavian associations

solidified through Lutheran church mergers, social clubs and parades attuned to the new

ethnicity of the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, radio essayist Garrison

Keillor

also

popularized a nostalgic yet tender vision of “bachelor Norwegian” farmers and

Scandinavian American rural life in his fictional Lake Woebegon.

Further reading

National School Boards Association (1998) “Beliefs and Policies”Z, June 7:

http://www.nsba.org.

GAIL HENSON

school prayer

Upholding the constitutional separation of church and state, the US

Supreme Court

1963 interpreted the 1st Amendment and the

Bill of Rights

to mean that children should

not be subject in

public schools

to involuntary participation in the prayers of others.

Those who advocate instituting school prayer, often heard on

Christian media

and

among those on the

Christian Right

of the

Republican Party,

argue that the 1st

Amendment should protect them from government interference in the practice of their

faith. In some areas of the country (e.g. the

Bible belt

), communities continued after

1963 to sanction prayer in the schools, leading to cases like that in Pontotoc County,

Mississippi, when newcomers objected and took the school board to court. Focus has

shifted to the word “voluntary” and supporters of prayer in schools have been pushing for

the introduction of a moment of silence during which students may pray. Opponents, led

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by the

American Civil Liberties Union,

question how voluntary this may be and

whether it would not still be oppressive to

atheists, Buddhists,

Hindus, Jews

and

Muslims, among others, who might feel obliged to conform to Christian-imposed ritual.

ROBERT GREGG

school vouchers

private schools

Schwartz, Delmore

b. 1913; d. 1966

Intellectual

poet of alienation and short-story writer. Schwartz had many issues to work

out about both his family and his place in society; his later work is marked by a descent

into madness. His major works include

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

(1938),

The

World is a Wedding

(1948),

Summer Knowledge

(1959) and the verse-play

Shenandoah

(1941).

GARY McDONOGH

science fiction, film

Since early cinema, the power to present marvelous effects and visions of societies in

future time and distant space has made film a choice medium for science fiction. While

these possibilities often have been realized as serializations of war/adventure dramas with

rockets and exotic creatures (like the 1930s

Buck Rogers

), science-fiction cinema also has

envisioned society and its possibilities through prisms of horror, philosophy and

fantasy—the power

of Blade Runner

(1982) or

Alien Nation

(1988). At the end of the

century computers and related technologies have revitalized epic science-fiction film-

making at the same time that they have become the subjects of ominous speculation (

The

atrix,

1999).

Postwar science fiction reflects many images and concerns of the

Cold War

. It shows

a continuing fascination with new technology and its impacts—whether in George Pal’s

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estination Moon

(1950) or the more ominous

Forbidden Planet

(1956). Yet technology

also had an edge, disrupting the natural order in the creation of monstrous ants (

Them!,

1954), spiders, shrews and even women (

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,

1958). Especially

chilling were situations in which technological advances combined with extra-terrestrial

control, whether aimed at world conquest (

The Thing,

1951, remade 1982;

Invaders from

ars,

1953;

Invasion of the Body Snatchers,

1956) or world peace (

The Day the Earth

Stood Still,

1951). These films evoke concerns with the speed and motives of scientific

changes, especially nuclear energy, and the scientist, who often ends fighting some heroic

heterosexual couple who restore order.

Science fiction remained a genre to meditate on the present and future throughout the

1960s, as evidenced in Stanley Kubrick’s very different visions of the future in the anti-

nuclear war

Dr Strangelove

(1964), the spaceship meditations of

2001: A Space Odyssey

(1968) and the alternative society of

Clockwork Orange

(1971). Indeed, moral

dimensions of science-fiction arguments rather than science itself also pervade more

popular series like those that envisioned humans replaced and enslaved by apes (

Planet o

the Apes,

1968 and sequels). These movies also drew on important authors like Arthur

C.Clarke and Anthony Burgess. Ray Bradbury’s

Fahrenheit 451

was also transformed

into a movie by French director François Truffaut.

Science fiction began to experience a rebirth in the late 1970s through George

Lucas

and Steven

Spielberg,

who produced blockbuster combinations of visionary plots, human

engagements with the limits of their possibilities on Earth, and off it, and fantastic special

effects.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

(Spielberg, 1977),

Star Wars

and sequels

(Lucas, beginning 1977) and

E.T.

(Spielberg, 1982) changed the ways in which movie-

goers saw the future, and underpinned a renaissance of sciencefiction movies for the

decades that followed.

Despite technological inventiveness and exotic characters, however, many science-

fiction movies replicate stereotypic themes of gender,

race

and American idealism, and

coincide with wellestablished genres and scenarios of

Hollywood

. There remains a

strong, sometimes xenophobic relationship with

horror films,

suggesting that what’s out

there

will

hurt us. Masculine heroism, teamwork and democratic ideals also underpin the

action of

Total Recall

(1990) and the

Star Trek

series. Hence, dreams, fears and

memories meet on the sci-fi screen for spectators in the US and the world.

Further reading

Biskind, P. (1983)

Seeing is Believing,

New York: Pantheon.

Kuhn, A. (1990)

Alien Zone,

London: Verso.

Kuhn, A. (1999)

Alien Zone II,

London: Verso.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

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science fiction, literature

The literature of change. After its European origins with the Industrial Revolution,

American science fiction has flourished since Edgar Rice Burroughs’

A Princess of Mars

(1912). An American imagination was fired by the ideas of new

frontiers

and new

ossibilities, as well as social, economic and religious freedoms unimaginable in worlds

left behind. Science fiction, in many ways, is a literature of hope and the human potential

to rise above circumstances and adapt to change.

American science fiction began to grow in depth and breadth with the first science-

fiction magazine,

Amazing Stories,

edited by Hugo Gernsback (1926), followed in 1938

Astounding Science Fiction,

edited by John W.Campbell, Jr., who fostered science

fiction’s golden age. Writers explored themes still pondered today including robots,

computers,

cheap energy overpopulation, world government, alternative social

structures, particle transference, genetic engineering, alien encounters, faster-than-light

travel, interplanetary travel, communication and settlement, galactic empires, telepathy

immortality time travel, alternative histories and utopias/dystopias. In the 1940s and

1950s, Robert A.Heinlein, (

Methuselah’s Children,

1941), Isaac

Asimov

(

Foundation,

1942), Arthur C.Clarke (

Childhood’s End,

1953) and others published stories of “hard”

science fiction, using scientific or military knowledge to detail backgrounds for high-

technology futures. Science fiction was seen largely as escapist literature, until Hiroshima

taught the world that the unimaginable was here already. After the war, science fiction

competed with science fact in

space

and technology. Other important writers include Ray

Bradbury (

Fahrenheit 451,

1951), Frank Herbert (

Dune,

1966) and Theodore Sturgeon

(

More Than Human,

1953).

In the 1960s and 1970s, interest turned towards cognitive speculations. The New Wave

brought in some darker stories (Philip K.Dick,

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,

1968), more humanoriented stories (Ursula LeGuin,

Left Hand of Darkness,

1970) and

experimental writing styles (Harlan Ellison,

Repent Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman,

1965). A broader science fiction included more non-Americans, writers of color (Octavia

Butler,

Mind of My Mind,

1977) and authors of alternative sexualities (Samuel Delany,

halgren,

1975). Women (Kate Wilhelm,

Margaret and I,

1971; Anne McCaffrey,

ragonflight,

1967; feminist Joanna Russ,

The Female Man,

1975) found themselves

slightly more welcome in science fiction, although Alice Sheldon wrote for decades as

James Tiptree, Jr. Science fiction also expanded full-scale into

television

and

film,

well as cartoons and comic books. Radio, film and other genres were established earlier,

but blossomed with new technologies and audiences.

In the 1980s and 1990s, science fiction has matured. The quality of the writing

increased and the genre speaks to a much wider audience. William Gibson

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1002

(

Neuromancer,

1984) ushered in the age of cyberpunk, while other notable writers

include Margaret Atwood (

The Handmaid’s Tale,

1985), David Brin (

The Postman,

1985), Orson Scott Card (

Enders Game,

1986), Pat Murphy (

The Falling Woman,

1988),

C.J.Cherryh (

Cyteen,

1989), Michael Crichton (

Jurassic Park,

1991), Vernor Vinge (

ire Upon the Deep,

1994), Kim Stanley Robinson (

Blue Mars,

1997) and Connie Willis

(

To Say Nothing of the Dog,

1999). Often impressionistic, these novels have texture and

grace, and they create credible cultural paradigms—these worlds were built to last!

Shorter-length stories common in science fiction reflect the tradition of

magazine

ublication (hence many anthologies by author or theme as well). In the 1980s, the glossy

science-fiction magazine

Omni

had a good run. Currently, the field is dominated by

simo

’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact

(a descendant of

Astounding

)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,

and

Science Fiction Age

. Fantasy is a

closely related genre, yet, while fantasy is characterized by mythic tradition and the

supernatural, science fiction writes about the theoretically possible. In fact, science

fiction has not only pre-dated scientific and social developments but has also influenced

them.

Science fiction also inspires many related associations. The writings of science-fiction

writer L.Ron Hubbard form the foundation of the high-

rofile Church of Scientology.

Science fiction also creates long-term relationships between the fan and finely nuanced

worlds that grow with each installment. Hundreds of science-fiction conventions

featuring various authors or themes are held all over the world. The yearly Hugo and

Nebula Awards are also key events.

Science fiction provides an arena in which to imagine some of the possibilities, good

and bad, that technological change might bring America and the world. Perhaps through

this it is possible to make more intelligent decisions about the small planet on which we

live…for now.

JULIE PRITCHARD WRIGHT

science fiction, television

Although television presented a postwar door to the future, even its visionary series have

faced difficulties balancing family audiences (fewer monsters), small screens (diminished

special effects) and continuing characters. Hence, science-fiction television has tended to

borrow plots from other genres—especially

westerns

and war movies—and sometimes

recycled sets and props as well (evident in

Star Trek

Time Tunnel

and even later

shipboard ensembles like

Battlestar Galactica

Space

and technological wizardry

nonetheless, have underpinned children’s programs, including the 1950s

Space Patrol

and

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

and the animated

sitcom

The Jetsons

(ABC, 1962–3).

Beyond science fiction, moreover,

TV crime

adapted sci-fi technology and formula

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morality to anachronistic settings and international intrigue (

The Wild Wild West

Meanwhile, a submarine framed high-tech melodrama in

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

(ABC, 1964–8), and robots and monsters enlivened a

family

Lost in Space

(CBS, 1965–

8).

Nïght Stalker

(ABC, 1972) even brought newsroom humor to revisit classic monsters.

Nevertheless, a few series really tested the medium and its mass audiences.

he Outer Limits

(ABC, 1963–5) and Rod Serling’s eerily masterful

Twilight Zone

(CBS 1958–65, 1985–7, syndicated 1987–8) both became classic not only on the basis o

their disquieting imaginations, but also through careful direction and vivid acting. Each

set itself apart from television itself in famous introductory sequences—the first warned

the viewer not to try to control the set, which had been taken over by unknown forces,

while

Twilight Zone

offered a surrealist montage with Serling’s clipped voiceover. Both

the entire series and individual episodes have become classics.

The 1980s and 1990s proved dry decades for science fiction, unlike movies, although a

new sci-fi

cable

network presents movies and older series.

Alien Nation,

however,

extended the premise of a refugee alien population in the United States beyond the 1988

movie’s themes of race and drugs to encompass family culture and sexuality. The closing

of the millennium, moreover, coincided with the

X-Files

(FOX, 1993–), where aliens and

unexplained phenomena converge with paranoia about the government itself. In 1999

Matt Groening, creator of

The Simpsons,

launched

Futurama,

vaulting a New York

teenager into the year 3000.

Sci-fi TV betrays roots of American media and culture. Only after decades did

Sta

Trek’s

universes produce female and black

leadership,

although it offered a wider range

of characters than many mainstream shows. Family, nation, consumption and morality

moreover, seem continuous, however futuristic worlds lament twentieth-century

war,

pollution, racism and poverty). Perhaps the primary divide between shows like

Star Tre

and the alternative

Twilight Zone, Outer Limits

and

X-files,

however, is the divergence

etween the future as a continuation of the American way and those shows that

underscore an unease with the way things are and might be.

GARY McDONOGH

scientific creationism

Explanation of the origin of the Earth on the basis of Biblical interpretations. In an

extreme form, adapting fundamentalist interpretations that life was created by divine

action 10,000 years ago; a moderate vision notes that the complexity of life systems

shows evidence of a supreme intelligence. The debate between

religion

and science

formed the heart of the famous 1920s Scopes trial in Tennessee; many thought this a dead

issue in the postwar era. Yet creationism remained a prominent issue in local Christian

activism in the

South

and

Midwest

. While the

Supreme Court

ruled that this could not

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1004

be forced on school curricula, partisans have also attacked evolution as an “unproven

theory.” In 1999, for example, the Kansas School Board ruled, over protests from

teachers and scientists, that macro-evolution and the big bang theory could no longer be

included in state science curricula.

GARY McDONOGH

Scientology

cults

Scotch-lrish Americans

Descendants of the 2 million Protestant, mostly Presbyterian, emigrants from Ulster, the

northern province of Ireland, who arrived in the US from the seventeenth to the twentieth

century. “Scotch Irish,” a North American term, was increasingly used to distinguish

them from the Catholic

Irish Americans

who emigrated to America after the Great

Famines of the late 1840s. One in eight Americans traces ancestry to the Scotch Irish.

While found everywhere in the US, most live today in Pennsylvania, the Virginias and

the Carolinas. They have excelled in American

education,

publishing,

commerce,

finance, the military,

religion

and politics. No fewer than ten presidents of the US were

of Scotch-Irish descent.

THOMAS M.WILSON

Scottish

Scotch-Irish Americans

scouts

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