Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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of Native American crafts industries. The status of Native Americans as subjects of a

colonizing state was clear in the early ethnological and archaeological explorations

among the pueblo dwellers funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the concessions

given to

mining

companies such as Peabody Coal, despite the fact that the reservations o

the Navajos, Hopis and Zunis are sovereign territories. Early visitors also established

discourses of the region, talking about both Native Americans and the colors and forms

of deserts and mountains.

In the postwar years, the desert Southwest grew as a destination for American families

on vacation, lured by the Grand Canyon and the last reminders of the

frontier,

evident in

abandoned mines, ghost towns and places like Tombstone, Arizona.

Roadside

attractions

like the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo (Texas) and trading posts, natural

henomena like the Petrified Forest and historical sites such as Los Alamos (New

Mexico),

Santa Fe,

the alleged

UFO

landing site at Rosewell (New Mexico), Native

American reservations and missions from

San Antonio

(Texas) to the California coast all

pulled in tourists. Like the

road movie,

the family driving vacation along western

highways,

including Route 66, has produced enduring images of the neon-lit motor

courts and the station wagon as symbols of American freedom,

family values

and leisure.

The monumental landscape of the Southwest also figured significantly in the romantic

imagination of North Americans in literature and film. The red rocks of Monument

Valley evident in John

Ford westerns

such as

The Seekers

(1956) and

Cheyenne Autumn

(1964), suggested not only the desolation and wildness that was the American West, but

the epic proportion of human struggles there. This evocation of the West as a lonely place

in which to hide, where freedom and danger were mixed, remains a theme in more recent

films such as

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kïd

(1969) and

Thelma and Louise

(1991); the quest also underpinned television’s 1960s series

Route 66

. The landscapes

and intersecting peoples of the desert Southwest also have inspired popular authors such

as Barbara Kingsolver, Tony Hillerman and Leslie Marmon

Silko

As the industrial Northeast declined, the Southwest grew into the

Sunbelt,

attracting

an influx of rich

white

North Americans to planned retirement communities like Sun City

and poor South and Central Americans to its transient-

ased service economy Early

redictions of a massive movement of people from the Rustbelt to the burgeoning

Southwest have not been entirely borne out, although

Phoenix,

the largest city in the

region, proved popular as a vacation and conference site. Beginning in the 1960s and

1970s, the Southwest also became a mecca for those seeking an alternative lifestyle.

Inspired by writers such as Carlos

Castañeda,

young whites moved to Tucson and

northern New Mexico. The

New Age

movement is the heir to this earlier migration;

mystical places like Sedona, Arizona continue to draw those interested in harmonic

convergences and holistic healing.

The contemporary Southwest is also organized by the border, which produced a mixed

opulation including white retirees, ranchers, entrepreneurs, transient white laborers,

Mexican cross-border workers, Native Americans, a

Chicano

underclass and a Mexican

American middle class, among others. Pockets of Hispanics, descendants of the original

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Spanish land grantees, can also be found.

African Americans

remain under-represented.

This hybridity is clear in the development of the distinctive Southwestern

architecture,

cuisine and culture: Southwest style.

The architecture of the Southwest, for example, spans Navajo hogans and Hopi

ueblos, retirement cities and condo complexes. The architectural style that characterizes

the region, often referred to as Santa Fe style, is based on traditional single-story adobe

houses with saguaro cactus rib-ceilings. Modern home construction now produces pink,

orange and pastel versions of these houses all over the Southwest. The frequent inclusion

of ornamental ladders reminiscent of those found in pueblos indicates increasing

commodification, while the saguaro cactus is now an iconic design element. Art and

architecture have become kitsch in the Southwest, where Navajo turquoise jewelry vies

with painted wooden coyotes wearing kerchiefs and howling at the moon. The artistic

richness of Georgia

O’Keefe

is now overlaid with the prolific paintings of Amado Peña,

known for his prints of Native American and

Latina

women depicted with pottery and/or

children. Native American crafts have also been subjected to the mass marketing and

roduction which have degraded local artisanal values while simultaneously producing a

Southwestern “look” across the US.

Food in the Southwest shows the influence of cross-

order traffic and a longstanding

hybrid cuisine of Native American and Latino traditions. Tex-Mex refers to the spicy

lending of border foods that has led to chili with beans and meat, the use of guacamole

and sour cream and the success of Taco Bell as a franchise. Navajo tacos, made with

avajo fry bread rather than tortillas, also show the creative mixing of ingredients and

cooking styles found in the Southwest. What is generically referred to as “Mexican food”

includes many variations, from Tex-Mex to the Sonoroan home-style cooking with its

carne asada

and

salsa verde

. The national ubiquity of salsa attests to the widespread

appeal of the hybrid cooking coming out of the Southwest.

The turbulence produced by the border is clear not only in aesthetic hybridity but in

regional politics. The Southwest often has been characterized by the conservative,

libertarian politics of white politicians like Barry

Goldwater,

who exemplified the

western individualist’s rejection of federal government intervention. Yet, issues o

ethnicity historical memory bilingualism and illegal

immigration

(captured in John

Sayles’

Lone Star,

1995) have worked to consolidate a more liberal, Latino political

consciousness. A radical political tradition associated with the Tucson-

ased Earth First!

was inspired by the radical environmentalism of Edward

Abbey

in his

Desert Solitaire

(1968). Environmental politics also focus on water—the Southwest has been particularly

shaped by disputes over saline water in the Colorado River system, treaty obligations to

Mexico

and largescale water projects like the Hoover Dam and Lake Powell. The

relevance of these border politics to the rest of the country is clear in the controversy

surrounding

NAFTA

Further reading

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Findlay, J. (1992)

Magic Lands,

Berkeley: University of California.

Hill, J. (1993) “Hasta la vista, baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest,”

Critique

of Anthropology

13(2): 145–76.

JANICE NEWBERRY

Soviet Union

Russia

Space

The US exploration of space emerged in large part because of the pressures of national

defense during the

Cold War

with the Soviet Union. The civilian side of the space effort

egan as a result of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), a scientific endeavor

conducted around the world in 1957 and 1958, one component of which involved the

launching of an orbiting scientific satellite. The Soviet Union launched

Sputnik

October 4, 1957, ushering in the space age in a very deliberate and identifiable manner.

A full-scale crisis resulted in the United States as a result of

Sputnik 1

. It had a “Pearl

Harbor” effect on American public opinion, creating an illusion of a technological gap,

and provided the impetus for increased spending on aerospace endeavors, technical and

scientific educational programs, and the chartering of new federal agencies to manage air

and space research and development.

Sputnik led directly to several critical efforts aimed at “catching up” to the Soviet

Union’s space achievements. Among these:

• A full-scale review of both the civil and military programs of the United States

(scientific satellite efforts and ballistic missile development).

• The establishment of a Presidential Science Advisor in the White House who had

responsibility for overseeing the activities of the federal government in science and

technology.

• The creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense,

and the consolidation of several space activities under centralized management.

• The establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to manage

civil space operations.

• The passage of the National Defense Education Act to provide federal funding for

education in the scientific and technical disciplines.

Even though the space frontier opened as a result of the Cold War crisis, the seeds o

acceptance had been a part of American popular culture for several years. For example, in

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1952 the designer of the German V-2 and an émigré to the US, Wernher von Braun, burst

onto the public stage with a series of articles in

Collier’s

magazine about the possibilities

of space flight. Three special issues about space flight from the popular magazine

appeared in the next two years, each expertly illustrated with striking images by some o

the best illustrators of the era.

The first issue of

Collier’s

devoted to space appeared on March 22, 1952. In it readers

were asked “What Are We Waiting For?” and were urged to support an aggressive space

rogram. An editorial suggested that space flight was possible, not just science fiction,

and that it was inevitable that humanity would venture outward. It framed the exploration

of space in the context of the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union and concluded that

“

Collier’s

believes that the time has come for Washington to give priority of attention to

the matter of space superiority. The rearmament gap between the East and West has been

steadily closing. And nothing, in our opinion, should be left undone that might guarantee

the peace of the world. It’s as simple as that.”

Following close on the heels of the

Collier’s

series, Walt

Disney

Productions

contacted von Braun to ask his assistance in the production of three shows for Disney’s

weekly television series. The first of these,

Man in Space,

premiered on Disney’s show

on March 9, 1955, with an estimated audience of 42 million. The second show,

Man an

the Moon,

also aired in 1955 and sported the powerful image of a wheel-like space station

as a launching point for a mission to the Moon. The final show,

Mars and Beyond,

premiered on December 4, 1957, after the launching of

Sputnik 1

. Von Braun appeared in

all three films to explain his concepts for human space flight, while Disney’s

characteristic animation illustrated the basic principles and ideas with wit and humor.

Because of this, during the decade following the Second World War, a sea change in

American perceptions took place on the viability of space travel as a near-term reality.

This can be seen in a December 1949 Gallup poll where only 15 percent of Americans

elieved humans would reach the Moon within fifty years, while 15 percent had no

opinion and a whopping 70 percent believed that it would not happen within that time. In

October 1957, at the same time as the launching of

Sputnik 1,

only 25 percent believed

that it would take longer than twenty-five years for humans to reach the Moon, while 41

percent believed firmly that it would happen within twenty-five years and 34 percent

were not sure. An important shift in perceptions had indeed taken place, and it was

largely the result of well-known advances in rocket technology coupled with the efforts

of such popularizers as Wernher von Braun about the possibility of space flight.

During the first years of the space age, the United States emphasized its civil space

program consisting of several major components:

• Human space-flight initiatives—Mercury’s single astronaut program (flights during

1961–3) to ascertain if a human could survive in space; Project Gemini (flights during

1965–6) with two astronauts to practice for space operations; Project Apollo (flights

during 1968–72) to explore the Moon; and sustained operations in Earth orbit with the

space shuttle (1981–).

• Robotic missions to the Moon (

Ranger, Surveyor

and

Lunar Orbiter

), Venus

(Pioneer

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Venus),

Mars (

Mariner 4, Viking, Pathfinder,

and

Mars Global Surveyor

) and the outer

planets (

Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo

and

Cassini

• Orbiting space observatories (

Orbiting Solar Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope

and

Chandra

) to view the galaxy from space without the clutter of Earth’s atmosphere.

• Remote-sensing Earth-satellites for

information

gathering (landsat satellites for

environmental monitoring and a host of others).

• Applications satellites such as communications (

Echo 1, Tinos

and

Telstar

) and weather

monitoring instruments.

• An orbital workshop for astronauts

(Skylab)

• A space station for a permanent presence in space.

he capstone of this effort was, of course, the human expedition to the Moon, Projec

pollo. A unique confluence of political necessity personal commitment and activism

cientific and technological ability economic prosperity and public mood made possibl

he May 25, 1961 announcement by President John F.

Kennedy

to carry out a luna

anding program before the end of the decade as a means of demonstrating the Unite

tates’ technological virtuosity

The first Apollo mission of public significance was the flight of

Apollo 8

. O

ecember 21, 1968, it took off atop a

Saturn

V booster from the Kennedy Space Center

lorida

. It orbited the Moon on December 24–5, and then fired the boosters for a retur

light. That flight was such an enormously significant accomplishment because it came a

time when American society was in crisis over Vietnam, race relations, urban problem

nd a host of other difficulties. If only for a few moments, the nation united as one t

ocus on this epochal event.

The first lunar landing came during the flight of

Apollo 11,

which lifted off on July 16

1969 and landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Astronauts Neil A.Armstrong and Buz

ldrin soon set foot on the surface, Armstrong telling millions who saw and heard him o

arth that it was “one small step for [a] man—one giant leap for mankind.” The next da

hey launched back to the

Apollo

capsule orbiting overhead and began the return trip t

arth, splashing down in the Pacific on July 24.

Five more landing missions followed at approximately six-month intervals throug

ecember 1972, each of them increasing the time spent on the Moon. The scientifi

xperiments placed on the Moon and the lunar soil samples returned have provided gris

or scientists’ investigations ever since. The scientific return was significant, but th

rogram did not answer conclusively the age-old questions of lunar origins and evolution.

hree of the latter

Apollo

missions used a lunar rover vehicle to travel in the vicinity o

he landing site, but none of them equaled the excitement of

Apollo 11

Project Apollo in general, and the flight of

Apollo 11

in particular, should be viewed a

watershed in the nation’s history It was an endeavor that demonstrated both th

echnological and economic virtuosity of the United States and established national pre

minence over rival nations—the primary goal of the program when first envisioned b

he Kennedy administration in 1961. It had been an enormous undertaking, costing $25.

illion with only the building of the

Panama

Canal rivaling the Apollo program’s size a

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1050

the largest non-military technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States and

only the Manhattan Project being comparable in a wartime setting.

After Apollo the human space-flight program went into a holding pattern as nearly a

decade passed before the first flight of the space shuttle. On April 12, 1981, the

Columbia

took off for a test mission. By January 1986, there had been twenty-four shuttle flights,

ut the system had not delivered on all of its promises in making possible inexpensive,

routine and reliable operations in space.

Criticisms of the shuttle reached crescendo proportions following the tragic loss o

Challenger

during a launch on January 28, 1986. Although it was not the entire reason,

the pressure to get the shuttle schedule more in line with earlier projections throughout

1985 prompted NASA workers to accept operational procedures that fostered shortcuts

and increased the opportunity for disaster. The accident, traumatic for the American

eople even under the best of situations, was made that much worse because

Challenger’s

crew-members represented a cross-section of the American population in

terms of race, gender, geography background and religion. The explosion became one o

the most significant events of the 1980s, as billions around the world saw the accident on

television and empathized with any one or more of the crewmembers killed.

With the

Challenger

accident, the space shuttle program went into a two-year hiatus

while NASA worked to redesign the system. The space shuttle finally returned to flight

without further incident on September 29, 1988. By the end of 1999 NASA had launched

a total of ninety-three shuttle missions, all but one without incident. Through all of these

activities, a good deal of realism about what the space shuttle could and could not do

emerged as the century ended.

In the late 1980s, a new generation of planetary exploration began. Numerous projects

came to fruition during the period. For example, the highly successful

Magellan

mission

to Venus by 1993 had provided significant scientific data about the planet. Another such

project was the troubled

Galileo

mission to Jupiter, which even before reaching its

destination had become a source of great concern for both NASA and public officials

ecause not all of its systems were working properly but it did return useful scientific

data.

Finally planetary exploration received new impetus beginning on July 4, 1997, when

ars Pathfinder

successfully landed on Mars, the first return to the red planet since

Viking

in 1976. Its small, 23-pound robotic rover, named

Sojourner,

departed the main

lander and began to record weather patterns, atmospheric opacity and the chemical

composition of rocks washed down into the Ares Vallis floodplain, an ancient outflow

channel in Mars’ northern hemisphere. This vehicle completed its projected milestone

thirty-day mission on August 3, 1997, capturing far more data on the atmosphere,

weather and geology of Mars than scientists had expected. In all, the

Pathfinder

mission

returned more than 1.2 gigabits (1.2 billion bits) of data and over 10,000 tantalizing

pictures of the Martian landscape.

At the end of the twentieth century, the effort to develop an international space station,

inaugurated in the 1980s with the launch of the first components in 1998, promises a

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future permanent presence in space and the possibility of renewed exploration of the

Moon and the nearby planets in the twenty-first century A truly international effort,

fourteen other nations have contributed to the project, ranging from

Canada,

the nations

of western Europe,

Japan

and

Russia

. Once in orbit, this space station is intended to

enhance human understanding of the rigors of space flight as no other research facility

has been able to do.

Since its inception in 1958, space exploration has transformed the lives of all

Americans, whether it be in applications made possible by global satellite

communications or by research and development that has found its way into commercial

roducts or by other altogether unknowable means. Perhaps most important, space

exploration has taught us to view the Earth, the cosmos and ourselves in a new way

Because of space flight, humanity has seen its home from afar—a tiny, lovely and fragile

“blue marble” hanging in the blackness of space. Writer Archibald MacLeish summed up

the feelings of many people when he wrote in the 1960s that “To see the Earth as it truly

is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves

as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—

brothers who know now that they are truly brothers.”

Further reading

Burrows, W.E. (1998)

This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age,

New York:

Random House.

Chaiken, A. (1994)

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts,

New

York: Viking.

Heppenheimer, T.A. (1997)

Countdown: The History of Space Exploration,

New York:

John Wiley & Sons.

Launius, R.D. (1994)

NASA: A History of the US Civil Space Program,

Malabar: Kneger

Publishing Co.

Launius, R.D. (1998)

Frontiers of Space Exploration,

Westport: Greenwood Press.

McCurdy, H.E. (1997)

Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership,

Urbana:

University of Illinois Press.

McCurdy, H.E. (1997)

Space and the American Imagination,

Washington, DC:

Smithsonian Institution Press.

McDougall, W.A. (1985)

The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space

Age,

New York: Basic Books.

ROGER D.LAUNIUS

Spam

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1052

Canned, processed pork luncheon meat created by Hormel in 1937. It holds an

ambivalent place in American cuisine—rejected by some because of associations with

institutional

food,

others have championed it as comfortable nostalgia. The official web-

site (http://www.spam.com) offers a history of the US from a spamish perspective, as

well as a fan club and gift items. The word has also come to be used for unwanted e-mail.

CINDY WONG

Speaker of the House

Second in line to the

presidency

after the

vicepresident,

the Speaker is chosen by the

majority party in the House of Representatives. All the people who have held this

osition have wielded considerable power, but particularly so if they have belonged to the

arty not currently occupying the presidency When this is not the case, then the Speaker

has generally been overshadowed, having the purpose mainly to ensure that the

president’s legislative program is passed through the House. In such a case, the Speaker

is judged merely according to success in this endeavor.

Sam Rayburn provided the exception to this rule. Rayburn, a Texas

Democrat,

was

Speaker during the

Kennedy

administration and, along with most Southern Democrats,

opposed much of the northerner’s “New Frontier” agenda. When fellow Texan, Lyndon

Johnson became president following the Kennedy

assassination,

however, Rayburn’s

role was reduced to that of an assistant to Johnson in the passage of his “Great Society”

legislation.

William “Tip” O’Neill, as Speaker during the

Reagan

administration, was highly

visible as Democrats negotiated with the presidency over which elements o

“Reagonomics” and the rollback of the welfare state to pass through

Congress

. This

power and visibility were curtailed considerably however, by Reagan’s 1984 landslide

reelection victory over Mondale.

Newt

Gingrich

succeeded in giving the position of Speaker perhaps the greatest

visibility it has received. Only two years after the election of

Clinton

on a platform o

“change,” Gingrich trumped him in the 1994 elections by demanding more change still.

Announcing his “Contract with America,” Gingrich pushed for tax cuts and an end to big

government. The

Republican Party’s

astounding victory giving the Grand Old Party

control of both Houses, placed Gingrich in the unusual position of dictating policy to a

presidency that had lost control of its legislative agenda.

Gingrich’s ability to inspire great hostility among those who were not in his faction o

the Party made his ascendancy relatively short-lived. Miscalculations leading to the 1995

shut-down of government over the budget, which greatly reduced Gingrich’s popularity

and increased Clinton’s, began to provide room for congressional Democrats and

moderate Republicans to begin to oppose the Speaker. When ethics violations were

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unearthed that appeared to far outweigh the magnitude of those that had caused the

downfall of Democrat Jim Wright (and for which Gingrich would be fined $300,000), the

Speaker’s claims to being a new style of politician were destroyed. An attempted

Republican coup in 1998 failed, but following the surprise setbacks in the November

elections of that year Gingrich resigned.

Another power struggle ensued within the Grand Old Party which saw the rise and fall

of Bob Livingstone, who was forced to step down because of claims of marital infidelity

(which didn’t look good for the Party endeavoring to impeach the president for acts

arising out of extra-marital liaisons). Into the vacuum left by Livingstone moved ex-

House Deputy Majority Whip J.Dennis Hastert, whose main appeal was that, in contrast

to Gingrich, he was offensive to none.

ROBERT GREGG

speed limits

As in other nations, variable speed limits “zone” roads and highways according to local

norms and contexts, from 15 mph in active school zones to accelerated speeds for limited

access expressways (which, in some western states, had no limits). The energy crisis in

1974 allowed the federal government to fix 55 mph as a national maximum, raised to 65

mph in some areas in 1987. Yet, both individual drivers and advocates of

states’

rights

chafed under these limits, which soon became justified on the basis of safety as much as

energy (given the growing popularity of large fuel-eating

automobiles

). Speed connotes

freedom,

whether in

advertising,

driving or western states’ attempts to get around these

laws. In 1995 federal rules were repealed, allowing most states to adjust some highways

to 70 or 75mph.

GARY McDONOGH

speed traps

Areas of especially vigorous enforcement of

highway

speed limits, often involving

marked cars or abrupt changes of posted velocities. While argued as legitimate controls

on speeding, these traps, which may endure for decades, are viewed by motorists as

harassment or money-makers for local sheriffs. They also figure prominently in

road

movies

GARY McDONOGH

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1054

Spelling, Aaron

b. 1928

Aaron Spelling has produced almost one hundred different TV series and movies,

many in

syndication

. In four decades, he has created some of the most popular—if not

critically acclaimed—1-hour television shows, often appealing to the eversought-after

eighteen to forty age group. He is best known for

Mod Squad, Dynasty, Melrose Place,

The Love Boat, Charlie’s Angels

and

Beverly Hills, 90210

. He is also known for casting

virtually unknown (but beautiful)

actors

and placing them in projects with a clear

formula and target audience. Spelling was born in

Dallas, TX

and started out as a

teleplay writer. After working with partners, he formed his own production company in

1986 and started Spelling Entertainment, which has diversified concerns, including

merchandising and film production.

EDWARD MILLER

Spielberg, Steven

b. 1946

The most financially successful Hollywood

director/producer,

with

blockbusters

.T. the ExtraTerrestna

(1982),

Jurassic Park

(1993; 1997) and

Indiana Jones

(1981;

1984; 1989). Spielberg has also achieved critical success by attacking such subjects as

slavery the Holocaust and the Second World War. His visually striking films,

Schindler’

(1993) and

Saving Private Ryan

(1998), will likely represent the Second World War

era for future audiences, a fact which troubles some

documentary

filmmakers and

historians. Spielberg’s film

Jaws

(1975) is also credited with being the first “Summer

Event” movie. In 1997, with David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Spielberg created the

film studio Dreamworks, SKG.

ee also:

Hollywood

MELINDA SCHWENK

Spock, Benjamin

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