Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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and self that includes

sports utility vehicles,

“sporty and powerful” touring cars, luxury

cars, family vans, pick-up

trucks,

etc.

Further reading

Boyne, W. (1990)

Power Behind the Wheel,

New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang.

GARY McDONOGH

sports stadiums

Icons of “major-league cities.” Historical ball-fields for

baseball

and

football

—Fenway

Park in

Boston, MA,

Comiskey Park in

Chicago, IL,

Candlestick Park in

San

Francisco, CA

—

rovided centers and landmarks for metropoles imitated by later

monumental public constructions like

Houston

’s enclosed Astrodome

(Texas)

. As

neighborhoods and audiences changed and owners sought to cash in on lucrative boxes,

these stadiums have also become battlegrounds for urban planning. While

Cleveland,

and

Baltimore, MD

have used them to stimulate revitalization of waterfront areas,

others question the public expenditures and corporate perks, including naming, that hold

cities hostage to franchise-owners against the promise of sometimes ambivalent returns in

obs, revenues and image.

Further reading

Cagan, J. and Demause, N. (1998)

Field of Schemes,

Monroe, ME: Common Courage.

http://www.fieldofschemes.comwebsite.

GARY McDONOGH

sports utility vehicles (SUV)

Off-road vehicles adapted to unpaved excursions emerged in

California

in the 1970s;

their impact on wilderness areas was soon decried nationwide. In the 1990s, however,

nature

and freedom have been repackaged in massive, luxurious cars far distant from the

functional dune buggies or jeeps of the past. Sports utility vehicles, which are

trucks,

have been attacked for gas guzzling, dangerous designs in collisions and sheer bulk that

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1066

strains urban roadways and the environment. Yet they connote status and security in a hot

market dominated by American

automakers

building ever-more elaborate vehicles that

will never ford a stream or climb a mountain, despite their ads. In 2000, Ford

acknowledged that SUVs cause serious safety and environmental problems.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Springsteen, Bruce

b. 1949

Coming of age in the late 1960s, Bruce Springsteen reflects the musical and social

influences of the time, combining social critique of the folk tradition with the exuberance

rock ’n’ roll

. Though his live performances have always earned him a devoted

audience, his popularity exploded in the mid-1980s when he released “Born in the USA.”

The album’s title song, a searing critique of a nation embattled by the

Vietnam War

and

economic decline, was misinterpreted by many (including President

Reagan

) as a

nationalistic anthem. Springsteen has raised money for political organizations such as the

Christic Institute and the anti-nuclear movement. A 2000 song, “41 Bullets,” criticizes

police

brutality in

New York

City, NY.

SUSAN SCHULTEN

standardized testing

Inspired by the efforts of French psychologist Alfred Binet, who in 1904 designed a

measure to determine students at risk of failure in school so that those students could

receive remedial attention, there emerged what came to be known as intelligence tests

which yielded a number defined as a person’s intelligence quotient or IQ. This and

related tests were developed using the population of enlisted men during the First World

War, and this group of

white, middle-class

males came to be the “norm” to which all

other individuals and groups were compared.

Mental measurement and scientifically grounded assessment tools were part of a

general movement at the beginning of the twentieth century to develop a “science o

education,” which reflected the obsession of schools and culture with the efficiency o

production at that time. As schools became like factories, and under pressure from a tax-

aying public (whose money supports public education), school administrators needed

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clean, fast, relatively inexpensive and accurate ways of measuring their schools’

roducts. The Educational Testing Service, founded in 1947 with the support of the

Carnegie Foundation, emerged as (and has remained) the primary regulator of students’

access to learning at all levels and to professional opportunities beyond school through

their production and control of standardized tests. These include the SATS (Scholastic

Aptitude Tests), LCATS (law), MCATS (medicine) and GREs (graduate school).

Standardized tests are mass-produced, primarily multiple-choice, criterion-referenced

tests administered to students individually and

en masse

under highly regulated (timed,

directed, monitored) conditions as early as preschool and regularly (as often as several

times a year) subsequently. These tests are intended to measure students’ aptitude and

achievement, and they are used to compare and sort individuals and groups of students

within and across classes, grade levels and schools.

In recent years, there has been substantial debate about the efficacy and fairness o

standardized tests. Advocates argue that what American

education

lacks is rigor, high

standards of excellence and effective measures for holding schools and students

accountable. Because they judge all students according to the same criteria, standardized

tests appear to offer “scientific” data upon which to make educational decisions, and thus

they are thought by some to be objective and fair.

Critics argue that the tests are biased in terms of

race, class, gender

and other forms o

diversity and that they offer an unfair advantage to those students whose

home

and

community

experiences most closely parallel the middle class, Anglo-American values

generally emphasized in

public schools

which were established as the norm over eighty

years ago through the first IQ tests. Furthermore, critics argue that standardized tests

reinforce meritocratic competitiveness, fear of failure, curricular influence and

manipulation by those who create the tests, over-emphasis on results and a trivialization

of knowledge in their emphasis of facts (as opposed to critical thinking).

The basic disagreement is that proponents of standardized tests argue that the scores

reflect students’ intelligence and potential, and critics argue that the tests reflect the

iases of those who design them and serve to reinforce the inequities inherent in the

status quo.

ALISON COOK-SATHER

Stanford University

Founded in 1885 by railroad magnate and political leader Leland Stanford and his wife in

memory of their son, Leland Jr., who died as a teenager. Located 35 miles south of

San

Francisco, CA,

at the northern tip of

“Silicon Valley,”

whose hitech business and

research facilities the University spawned. Stanford emerged after the Second World War

as one of America’s premier institutions. Its undergraduate and graduate schools

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consistently rank within the top five and it boasts numerous

Nobel Prize

winners on its

faculty. Students and alumni have included President Herbert Hoover,

Olympic

gold

medalist Summer Sanders, Astronaut Sally Ride, computer magnates William Hewlett

and David Packard,

Supreme Court

justices William H.

Rehnquist

and Sandra Day

O’Connor

and

Secretary of State

Warren Christopher.

BRIAN LEVIN

Stanislavski, Konstantin

actors

stars and sex symbols

Stars and sex symbols are a crucial part of popular culture and the pleasure the audience

takes in watching

film

and

television,

but they are also crucial to the economics of the

entertainment industry as well. The tradition of the star precedes twentieth-century

mass

media

(nineteenth-century

theater

and

opera

promoters advanced the careers of certain

erformers in order to boost sales of tickets). Yet, postwar American entertainment

worlds have increasingly fixated upon the

body

of the sex symbol in order to encourage

public consumption.

Perhaps because of the importance of the

Hollywood

studio system, sex symbols in the

1940s and 1950s emerged from film. In the 1950s, women who moved from this realm

onto the pages of

magazines, newspapers

and posters, and into the popular imaginations

of men, seemed to reflect the growing economy of the country. These women, such as

Marilyn

Monroe

and Jayne Mansfield, were buxom, breathy, blonde and, at first glance,

seemed to exist for the sexual and visual pleasure of men. Sex symbols stood in

contradistinction to the more appropriate standards of domesticated

femininity

that were

eing portrayed in television in the 1950s. These women stood outside traditional

marriage

and were more interested in seeking out fun than in keeping a good, clean

home.

Similarly the male sex symbols that emerged out of the crumbling studio system,

James

Dean,

Marlon

Brando,

Paul

Newman

and Montgomery

Clift,

unlike the efficient

corporate model of

masculinity,

were intense brooders who refused to fit into

suburbanized America.

Richard Dyer, who writes on the meanings of

celebrity

and film in

Stars

(1979) and

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elsewhere, argues that for famous

actors,

films are a vehicle for the display of the star’s

ersona. The performance of this persona requires repetition of key elements of narrative,

visual style and iconography. Thus when Marilyn Monroe became a star, her roles, the

way she looked and the ways in which she became styled and shot in film and publicity

outlets became similar, solidifying a persona. Although a sex symbol is unattainable and

an object of fantasy, he or she must also seem knowable and familiar to the masses.

After the Hollywood studio lost power, agents and

public relations

have taken over

the management of stars. Along with this change, stars have tended to emerge from

different sectors of the entertainment industry. For example, one of the most popular sex

symbols of the 1980s and 1990s,

Madonna,

started out as a pop singer. Her career

benefited from

MTV,

where her

videos

featured her dancing and knowing sexual come-

ons. Although she has never successfully maintained a film career, she has always

managed her persona well—with the help of agents, publicists, magazine editors and

gossip columnists eager for copy. The contemporary sex symbol is also a corporate entity

who, like Madonna, has moved into book publishing, as well as the music and film

industry. Much of what Madonna’s work has centered upon is her experience of her own

body and her popular philosophizing on the importance of sex.

The body of the sex symbol in the 1990s changed dramatically. Whereas in the 1950s

the female body featured an hour-glass figure and the male body was wiry, the 1990s sex-

symbol body for both was lean, muscular and sculpted, reflecting the importance o

working out and also marking the entrance of the

fashion

model as a massmarketed sex

symbol. White models Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss and Christy Turlington have moved

from the runway into superstardom with forays into television, video and film. Black

models such as Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks have become the first minority stars

that have been marketed as sex symbols to both black and white audiences. A black male

model, Tyson, sporting the clothing of

WASP

-aspiring Ralph Lauren, has established

himself as a sex symbol, as have black actors Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes. In

1999

Latino

singer Ricky Martin broke into the mainstream of sex symbolism,

recognized as much for his gyrating hips just as Elvis punctuated the meanings of his

songs with his pelvic thrusts.

Even as America’s sex symbols diversify, one rule remains in place: when the star

sings and speaks of love, his or her body must make the audience think of sex. As a result

the movement and posture of the star, as well as the publicity machinery that supports

him or her, is always crucial for keeping sales up.

EDWARD MILLER

Star Trek

and “Trekkies”

NBC

science-fiction

television series (1966–9), created by Gene Roddenberry Originally

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1070

pitched as a

space

-faring

western,

Star Trek

was notable for its cerebral engagement

with questions of identity in addition to more traditional action, and for the humanitarian,

even utopian, project behind its multicultural crew of pioneers. Its appeal lay more in the

dynamic between its regular characters—the impetuous Kirk frequently clashing with the

cool, logical Mr Spock—than in the crew’s interaction with alien cultures. While

white

males still dominated the

Enterprise,

the series broke new ground with the first

“interracial kiss”

roadcast on American television. Technically a ratings failure, the

series was cancelled after three years but retained immense fan loyalty through protest

campaigns, conventions and fanzines. It has been kept alive through

syndication,

a series

of feature films, bestselling

novels

and further television spin-offs from the original

premise, including

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager

and

Deep Space Nine

The degree of affection and involvement displayed by Star Trek fans has led them to

be stereotyped as social rejects and obsessives; indeed, the very term “Trekkies” has

become pejorative (“Trekkers” is often preferred). Jenkins (1992) has suggested the

complexity at work in these fangroups, whose interpretations frequently highlight the

series’ egalitarian portrayal of gender and

ethnicity

. Some, like the “Gaylaxian”

organization, are still lobbying for their own

queer

readings to be incorporated in the

current program.

Further reading

Jenkins, H. (1992)

Textual Poachers,

London: Routledge.

WILL BROOKER

states and government

Each of the fifty states of the United States has its own government. These governments

are very similar to the national government in form, each having its own executive

(headed by a

governor

), its own legislature and its own

judiciary

. State government

responsibilities are quite broad, and include fields as diverse as

environment,

roads and

vehicle licensing, public safety and corrections,

usiness regulation and licensing. States

are responsible for policing,

education

and

public health,

although in these areas the

federal government also has much responsibility. Some powers are shared concurrently,

ut in other cases there is no clear division, and there are frequent disputes between the

states and

Washington, DC

over jurisdiction.

State legislatures are bicameral, with houses of representatives and senates mirroring

the national structure; Nebraska is unique in being unicameral. Legislators, like

governors, are usually elected on a four-year term. In many states the legislatures are

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dominated by representatives from rural areas, who are often more conservative (and

Republican

) than their urban counterparts and have little interest in or affinity with

issues affecting the

cities

. The larger cities in turn tend to seek to guard their own

privileges and are reluctant to recognize the authority of the state government—

New

York

City and

Los Angeles, CA,

for example, are virtually independent of state control

as far as day-to-day administration goes.

State judiciaries consist of several types of trial courts and appellate courts, headed by

a state supreme court. The decisions of the latter can usually be referred to the federal

Supreme Court

in Washington. In most states judges are elected; terms of four years are

most common, but some terms are for as little as two years, and in Rhode Island and

Massachusetts judges are elected for life.

States themselves are divided into various subordinate levels of government, including

counties, cities, towns and townships. These are responsible for exercising various

owers devolved to them by the state government, such as education, fire and police

services, waste disposal and so on.

As noted previously, conflicts between state governments and the federal government

are common. Most of these concern the infringement of the jurisdiction of one party by

officials of the other. Many federal agencies (the

FBI,

the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco

and Firearms, and so on) have wide-ranging powers which allow them to usurp

urisdiction from state authorities. This is often strongly resented by the latter, so also is

the fact that cases concerning jurisdiction are always heard by federal courts.

Perhaps the most famous and bitter conflict in recent years was that which took place

in the 1960s over the desegregation of schools. In forcing the Southern states to accept

mixed-race schools, federal

Attorney-General

Robert

Kennedy

used the courts and

even mobilized some elements of the armed forces to push federal policy through (see

Civil Rights movement

). All the protests of the state governments were ineffectual in the

face of a determined effort to enforce federal policy.

MORGEN WITZEL

state university systems

Unlike many other nations, the United States has not promoted universities under direct

federal control—apart from military academies—although federal funding and

intervention in research,

affirmative action

and regulation of individual rights have

shaped tertiary education in the postwar era. Instead, public education has evolved

through systems organized and substantively funded by

states

and their citizens. These

systems include major research universities such as the

University of California

Berkeley, University of Michigan, UCLA, Penn State, University of Indiana, University

of Illinois and others in systems whose enrollments in undergraduate, graduate,

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1072

rofessional and related programs may surpass 100,000 students. These institutions also

ecome interwoven with local development and identity in politics, medicine and sports.

Yet these great universities also participate in systems that incorporate formerly limited

regional colleges and teacher’s colleges, divisions inherited from segregation,

community colleges

and extension programs. In all, state institutions have spread college

and advanced education beyond the elite served by

private schools,

at minimal costs—

tuition at public four-year colleges in 1998 averaged $3,000, about one-quarter the cost o

rivate institutions. Nonetheless, state universities face important questions of quality,

funding, politics and social meanings far beyond the

campus

The earliest state schools emerged in the South—University of Georgia (1789),

University of North Carolina (1789) and Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia

(1923). Northern states, instead, debated public control over finance and curriculum in

the private institutions that became the

Ivy League,

leading to a court battle confirming

the private charter of Dartmouth College. State foundations were helped by federal

allocations of land as endowment through the 1862 Morrill Act that funded agricultural

and mechanical universities. Some states founded separate schools (Texas A&M), while

others expanded state universities. Over time, states also founded and took over regional

institutions serving specific areas—Eastern Michigan versus Western Michigan—or

specific functions like teacher training (normal schools) and rural outreach. Consolidated

state systems, in turn, grew in the postwar period with junior and community colleges

that extended public education, albeit in a highly stratified manner.

There remains great variety between systems and within them. California has highly

elaborated relationships among

colleges and universities,

while SUNY has sought to

unify and improve New York colleges into universities since 1948 while increasingly

funding another public-complex system in

CUNY

(City University of New York). Some

systems focus on a single university (New Hampshire, Vermont), while others have

multiple universities and feeder schools (Kentucky,

Texas,

Florida,

etc.). In the South,

the role of historically

African American

colleges within desegregated state systems has

often proved problematic.

State systems, as they extend education to more citizens, often face fights over

resources within the state to be allocated to each unit and within programs or cities that

may compete for recognition. The mass culture of such institutions also has entailed

constant challenges of sports versus academics, and demands for mass (practical) and

vocational education versus research. While desegregation has made these systems o

diversity, they have faced 1990s challenges over the use of race and class to foster

admissions that reflect state populations. Student behavior, including excessive

alcohol,

roblems of sex and relationships and social unrest, has also arisen as student

organizations have competed with other university ideals—whether

fraternities and

sororities

or the radical political associations in the 1960s who took over campus offices.

Here political traditions clearly differentiate a leftist Berkeley from more social

campuses, and the problems of college towns dominate myriad students and academic

employers.

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Fights over programs also go beyond the campus. While most state universities have

een buffered from direct political influence by independent Boards of Trustees, these

may be targeted by governors in terms of influential appointments. Moreover, political

issues of diversity, salary and productivity, and ideology can spill over into the state

legislature and funding process.

Costs are also an issue. The early commitment of public tertiary education often

involved free tuition for qualifying students (within the state). This has given way to fees

substantially lower and sometimes more flexible than private schools, but not necessarily

negligible. Out-of-state tuition, in fact, may equal that of private schools, although

research universities may offer generous stipends to foreign students as well as a cross-

section of American scholars. Still, containment of costs in salaries, construction and

other areas is as real for these systems as for most private universities.

Nonetheless, state universities still embody the triumph of American democratic

education as a limited right. They are also constant scenarios for media depictions o

coming-of-age

events—a somewhat more adult extension of high-school dramas o

romance, sports and mayhem.

Further reading

Campbell, J. (1995)

Reclaiming a Lost Heritage,

Ames: University of Iowa.

GARY McDONOGH

Steele, Danielle

b. 1947

Alternatively termed a “teflon novelist,” and the companion to “Sunday afternoons

with a box of bonbons,” Danielle Steele remains unarguably a

publishing

sensation. Her

romance

novels, featuring often glamorous heroines grappling with the demands o

work, love and

family

and moving through melodrama towards emotional catharsis, have

soared to the top of the bestseller list over twenty-five times and sold 85 million copies in

over forty-two countries. Steele’s readers run the gamut of age and income; 40 percent

are male. Born to privilege (the Lowenbrau beer family), Steele found writing—

oems,

reviews and ad copy as well—a comfort from loneliness after a

divorce,

and quietude

from the limelight. Her reign also encompasses the television

miniseries,

including

ABC’s

Crossings, Wanderlust

and

Thurston Place

MARIAELENA BARTESAGHI

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Steinem, Gloria

b. 1934

Author, editor, feminist activist and cofounder of

Ms.

magazine. Deemed by some

historians to be as important to the second wave of American

feminism

as Susan

B.Anthony was to the first. Steinem began her career as a journalist. As a feminist, she

organized protests, recruited supporters, raised money, founded new feminist pressure

groups and made speeches on behalf of the

women’s movement

. She published

numerous books, including:

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

(1983), a

collection of articles previously printed in

Ms.;

a feminist interpretation of Marilyn

Monroe

’s life; and

Revolution from Within

(1992), a guide to enhancing self-esteem.

MARY-CHRISTINE SUNGAILA, ESQ.

steroids

Anabolic steroids, artificial synthetic derivatives of the male sex hormone testosterone,

romote the growth of muscle tissue, increase overall body strength and improve

athletes’ recovery time to facilitate intense training regimens, while adversely affecting

the liver and both the cardiovascular and reproductive systems. Limitations in testing

equipment account for the failure to detect the drug at major sporting events, along with

competitors’ efforts to evade detection, timing their dosages to avoid testing positive, or

substituting urine samples by various clandestine methods (many of which were

graphically depicted in the movie

The Program,

1993, about a university

football

rogram). The requirement in American football that players bulk up has made this a

sport in which the use of

body

building drugs is endemic.

ROBERT GREGG

Stevenson, Adlai Ewing

b. 1900; d. 1965

Urbane intellectual and liberal

Democratic

candidate for the

presidency

. After an

Ivy

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