Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture
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While Puritan Boston seems distant, however, one notes that institutions like Harvard and
family lines and foundations have continued over centuries. New money becomes old—
Dupont, Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon—through shared political economic interests and
shared social and cultural institutions.
Education, marriage,
patronage and
foundations
all mingle economic and cultural capital—one need only think of universities bearing
names like Johns Hopkins (Quaker merchant), Vanderbilt (shipping), or Duke (tobacco).
This does not deny new resources, industries and opportunities—trade, oil and tobacco
have given way over time to finance, computers and media. Hence, names like Gates,
Annenberg,
Turner, Spielberg, Trump
and Eisner, among others, control resources,
fame and increasing attributes of older upper classes, including roles of civic patronage,
foundations and public service. Relations of power, money and celebrity in politics also
underscore meshings of elites. Indeed, can upper classes be defined in national terms,
given multinational corporate interests and cultural ties? Can Rupert Murdoch belong to
the American upper class? His descendants? Issues from taxation to battles over
government control of resources like media and computers to definitions of “approved”
places, pedigrees and behaviors continue to bridge from old to new. Indeed, they suggest
interesting questions that should be addressed to subsequent generations of new wealth
and the reconstitution of upper classes.
Further reading
Fussell, P. (1983)
Class,
New York: Summit.
Mills, C.W. (1956)
The Power Elite,
New York: Oxford University Press.
GARY McDONOGH
urban planning
The term “urban planning” can be said to refer to a wide range of city-oriented activities:
what planners do; what planners say they do; what citizens do to plan their cities; the
p
rocess by which comprehensive plans are produced; and what planning schools teach.
These activities can be quite different, yet all are facets of the ongoing creation o
f
American cities.
Planning involves an understanding of the concept of “city,” as well the underlying
social and governmental processes that shape a city. Its practice entails establishing goals
and objectives, developing and evaluating alternatives for attaining those goals and
selecting an appropriate course of action. This process is viewed by some as primarily
“rational,”
b
ased in the scientific method, by others as primarily political, and by others
still as a combination of the two. Differences in these viewpoints are reflected in
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1156
p
rofessional practice. Some planners emphasize professional expertise while others
emphasize organizing, interaction and consensus building. American planning has
evolved from a focus on development of the physical plan (City Beautiful) in the first
half of the twentieth century to an emphasis on analytical modes in the 1960s and 1970s.
Communicative and collaborative modes dominated the 1980s and 1990s.
The focus of modern urban planning up to the 1960s was the “comprehensive plan,” o
f
which the centerpiece was the “image” or “form” of the city. Plans were created by
governmental entities to address rapid growth by implementing changes in physical,
social and economic patterns. Viewed by some as a mechanism of control over
development, planning was viewed by others as a process for balancing competing
private and public interests, or addressing pressing problems such as inner-city decay
transportation, pollution and housing.
Pre-1960s planning was typically a governmentcontrolled, centralized process that was
later found to be inadequate for dealing with issues like transportation that transcended
urban boundaries, for achieving public support, or adapting to the rapidly changing and
uncertain conditions of the cities. Although the last two decades of city planning
emphasized procedural activities and plannerstakeholder interactions, some suggest that a
renewed interest in urban design has sparked a revival in the image of the city and the
plan.
Today public participation is mandated by law in most planning activities. This entails
b
ringing more and new players into the planning process, transferring power from
government representatives to citizens and re-defining planning in ways that often defy
the bounds of a traditional academic discipline or profession. These idiosyncrasies
notwithstanding, planning can be said to distinguish itself from other disciplines by
including some or all of these themes: (1) improvement of human environments; (2)
forging interconnections among various sectors; (3) consideration of the future; (4)
consideration of equity issues; (5) public participation; and (6) linking knowledge and
action (Myers 1997).
S
ee also:
cities; urban renewal
Further reading
Hoch, C. (1994)
What Planners Do: Power, Politics and Persuasion,
Chicago: Planners
Press.
Myers, D. (1997) “Anchor Points for Planning’s Identification,”
Journal of Planning
Education and Research
16:223–4.
Neuman, M. (1998) “Planning, Governing, and the Image of the City,”
Journal of
Planning Education and Research
18:61–71.
BERYL FERNANDES
Entries A-Z 1157
urban renewal
Refers, on one level, to a specific series of federal acts and programs enabling radical
replanning of the physical fabric of American cities. In a broader cultural sense, urban
renewal stands for a political movement and cultural attitude towards the redevelopment
of old, dense
cities
and their new, predominantly
African American
inhabitants after the
Second World War. It was one of the more cataclysmic eruptions of a longstanding
American fear and hatred of the big city. Urban renewal was the planning end of modern
architecture
that despised the nineteenth-century city—its crowds and historic buildings,
its dirt and disease—and sought to replace it with a new, logical and planned system o
f
urban living.
The “origin” of urban renewal is often tied to the passing of the 1949 Housing Act,
which authorized the radical demolition of whole areas of central cities to make way for
highways
and new housing. In fact, fifty years previously, the City Beautiful movement,
Progressive Era slum clearance and urban park reforms had created precedents. Federal
and
state
powers were harnessed to demolish aging and crowded housing stock, creating
a cleaner and more efficient place for business (which widely endorsed the remaking o
f
downtowns), and making the city more amenable to the increasingly dominant
automobile. Urban renewal was also put to a distinct social purpose: establishing
de facto
walls, in the form of highways and public buildings, between growing African American
districts and white
neighborhoods
and downtowns. Despite its messianic overtones,
urban renewal was also a code word for “Negro removal.”
Urban renewal’s destructive impact on cities quickly led to a counter-movement, most
articulately presented in two seminal works. Jane Jacobs’
D
eath and Life of Grea
t
A
merican Cities
(1961) celebrated the very old, complex neighborhoods which urban-
renewal planners sought to eradicate. Against the aerial view of cities, which urban
renewal presupposed, Jacobs looked at the view from the street and found something
remarkable: the “blighted” (the favorite term of urban renewal) neighborhoods were in
fact good places in which to live. Robert Caro, in his massive
The Powerbroker: Rober
t
M
oses and the Fall of New Yor
k
(1974), portrayed urban renewal, as embodied in Robert
Moses, the primary builder of every public work in postwar New York City and region,
as anti-democratic, destructive of good communities and racist. The demolition of the
massive Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in
St. Louis, MO
in 1973, only eighteen years after
it was built along orthodox urbanrenewal models, has become a convenient date to mark
the end of the movement.
MAX PAGE
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1158
USA Today
s
ee
newspapers
USSR
s
ee
Russia; Cold War
V
vacation Bible camps
Summer child-education programs, generally under the aegis of Protestant and
fundamentalist churches. They occupy the space of secular camps and daycare, but focus
on religious training, including memorization of the Bible, plays, prayer and games. They
are often associated with the Southern evangelical tradition, although they have been
adapted to wider circumstances, including the pressing need for summer care in working
families.
GARY McDONOGH
Valens, Richie
b. 1941; d. 1959
Entries A-Z 1159
Born Richard Valenzuela in the San Fernando Valley Valens died before he could
realize his full potential as a
rock ’n’ roller
before his eighteenth birthday. His first
single, “Come On, Let’s Go,” recorded when he was 17, was a western regional hit in
1958. Later that year the ballad “Donna” reached number two on the charts. Valens’ fame
would rest ultimately on the flipside, the traditional Latin party song “La Bamba.” Valens
died in a plane crash on his first major US tour with Buddy Holly and J.P.Richardson (the
Big Bopper).
DEWAR MACLEOD
variety shows, television
Combinations of multiple acts—singing, dancing, comedy and drama—strung together
b
y a genial host like Milton Berle linked early television to Vaudeville and radio. In
subsequent decades, variety shows have gone through cycles of popularity and innovation
as well as decline in the 1990s.
Ed Sullivan, who moved from Broadway columnist to famously wooden host, created
the classic variety show (
Toast of the Town,
CBS 1948–55;
The Ed Sullivan Show,
1956–
71). While known for bizarre juxtapositions—“Next Week, the Beatles and the Pietà”—
Sullivan also showcased Elvis
Presley, Broadway,
Vaudevillians and emergent black
p
erformers between acrobats and hand puppets. Other classic early shows include the
E
rnie Kovacs Show
(various networks),
Your Show of Shows
(NBC, 1954–7) and the
long-running
Tonight Show
(see
late-night television
).
Subsequent shows have tended to use comedy or music as a skeleton for skits and
spotlight appearances. While white male-dominated, variety shows’ eclecticism has
created mass media entrée for African American performers, including hosts Nat King
Cole, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Flip Wilson, who had their own shows from the 1950s
through the 1970s. Strong women like female comedian Carol Burnett (CBS, 1967–78)
also have made their mark.
Other shows marketed
Las Vegas, NV
(Dean Martin),
rock
(Hullabaloo),
Nashville
(Hee-Haw) and puppets (the
Muppet
shows). Variety shows nonetheless rarely looked
b
eyond Americans and occasional British celebrities (until the arrival of cable chains like
Univision). Meanwhile, linkages of television to other fields have fostered guest
spotlights to promote film, music and celebrity sports.
Given television’s orientation towards mass audiences, variety-show comedy is often
tame, involving take-offs on television or movies or suggestive soundbites like those o
f
the rapid-fire Rowan and Martin
Laugh-in
(NBC, 1968–73). Political humor did appear
in the 1960s with the short-lived satirical review
That Was the Week that Was
(NBC,
1964–5). Later, the controversial
Smother’s Brothers Comedy Hour
(CBS, 1965–7)
brought countercultural performers on screen while attacking the
Vietnam War
and
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1160
other sensitive issues before CBS pulled the plug. Sexual
humor
was more controlled but
safe, although Flip Wilson (NBC, 1970–4) challenged categories of gender and propriety.
Other variety shows, in fact, promoted the merging of politics and entertainment—
Richard
Nixon
appeared on
Laugh-In,
while Bill
Clinton
campaigned on latenight
shows. Sonny Bono, who moved from music to variety shows with wife Cher, later
became a mayor and a member of
Congress
.
In the 1990s, variety shows seem to have played out their popularity except for late-
night viewers.
Saturday Night Live,
begun in the 1970s, offers a hip sensibility in
ensemble television that has produced star comics for the baby boomers and
Generation
X,
with hot musicians and guest hosts ranging from Joe Namath to Jesse
Jackson
.
Despite this network decline,
MTV, cable
television networks like E! and even
tal
k
shows
have picked up some of the elements that made variety shows a showcase, nursery
and sales department for American entertainment.
GARY McDONOGH
V-chip
A technical device that supposedly allows parents to control their
children
’s TV-
watching activities by screening out undesirable programs. The 1996 Telecommunication
Act mandated that all TVs manufactured after January 1, 2000 need to be equipped with
the V-chip (V stands for either violence or veto). This goes hand-in-hand with the
requirement that broadcasters (not cable operators) establish a rating system for
objectionable programming. This allows the conservatives to claim victory over the
decaying media culture, and put the burden of TV censorship into the hands of the
parents, i.e. the public/consumer, not the producers.
CINDY WONG
Venturi, Robert
b. 1925
Architect, theorist and forerunner of
postmodernism
. Venturi broke the spell o
f
modernism
with his controversial book
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
(1966) and later
Learning from Las Vegas
(1972). Winner of the Rome Prize in
Architecture (1954), Venturi looked to history and the vernacular in his designs, as
exemplified in his Vanna Venturi House (1963). He also designed the Sainsbury Wing o
f
Entries A-Z 1161
the National Gallery, London (1986), and the
Seattle
Art Museum (1991). Venturi, based
in
Philadelphia
in partnership with architect and wife Denise Scott Brown, has expanded
his designs with a series of furniture.
ISABEL KRIEGEL
veterans
Like other nations that have engaged in the bloody wars of the twentieth century, the
United States honors those who have risked their lives for their country. Official
holidays
of remembrance for those who saw combat in the armed forces include Veteran’s Day
N
ovember 11, commemorating the armistice ending of World War I, and Memorial Day,
in May. Meanwhile, politicians of the post-Second World War era, especially, have used
their status as veterans to help catapult them into positions of importance in
Congress
or
the
presidency
(e.g.
Eisenhower, Kennedy
and
Bush
). John McCain’s surprise
performance in the 2000
Republican
primaries owed a great deal to the candidate’s
experiences as a
navy
pilot and
POW
in Vietnam, which gave him a degree of gravitas
not shared by his younger and non-veteran opponent.
In a country reluctant to provide social
welfare
benefits to its citizens, the reverence
p
aid to veterans is shown by the support available to them since the Civil War. Indeed,
one of the largest departments in the federal government, given Cabinet status by
Reagan
in 1988, is Veterans Affairs (VA), which coordinates a range of benefits from provision
of housing and education loans, healthcare and funeral assistance (including burial in
specially designated cemeteries). Eligibility for veterans’
b
enefits requires ninety days o
f
active service in combat or two years of enlistment, and discharge or release from active
duty under conditions that are not in any way dishonorable. Those in the Reserve or
N
ational Guard currently (Congress must extend eligibility past 2003) need to complete a
total of six years to receive the same benefits.
These benefits were dramatically increased by President
Roosevelt
in the
GI Bill
o
f
1944, intended to counteract the problem of readjustment many veterans returning from
the First World War had faced (including great class turmoil). The GI Bill helped
fundamentally to alter American society When the Department of Veterans Affairs was
established in 1930, there were 4.7 million veterans alive, and the department ran fifty-
four hospitals around the country with as many as 31,600 employees. By 1993 the
number of employees at the VA had grown to over 266,000; only the Department o
f
Defense is a larger federal agency
That the readjustment act reflected reverence for veterans, needs some qualification.
Indeed, the emergence of the VA occurred at a time when many veterans were facing
considerable hostility. Those who came back from fighting “to make the world safe for
democracy” and complained that the war had not done so, faced the vigilantism of the
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1162
American Legion, with its 100 percent Americanism campaigns. Further, while the
Second World War was “The Good War”and most veterans were welcomed home
(although
Wyler’s
Best Years of Our Lives,
1946, challenges this), the Korean conflict
became a protracted “police action” and many veterans returning from the “Forgotten
War” felt that their struggles were neglected. The greatest hostility met those who fought
in Vietnam, as the popularity of the war waned and as atrocities came to light. Vietnam
veterans often felt reviled. In addition, fighting in conditions for which they often were
not prepared, sensing the futility in the way the
Pentagon
prosecuted the war, they often
suffered acute difficulties overcoming the trauma of their frontline experiences. Media
depictions of the crazed or addicted Vietnam vet became ubiquitous during the 1980s.
Meanwhile, the
Rambo
movies suggested that the Vets themselves would have been able
to take care of the Vietcong and/or rescue MIAs (missing in action) and POWs
(prisioners of war), if the government had let them.
A
frican Americans
and other minorities (including female veterans, for whom the VA
hospitals were unprepared) often were not revered alongside white veterans, whether or
not the war was popular. A frequent cause of the lynching of African Americans in the
South
was the treatment meted out to the returning soldier. Nor did African Americans
generally reap the benefits from the GI Bill, since they could not buy newly constructed
suburban
houses. The prominence of African American soldiers in the armed forces in
Grenada, Panama
and the Gulf, however, has begun to change this experience.
S
ee also:
Gulf War Syndrome
ROBERT GREGG
Viagra
The pharmaceutical company Pfizer hit the big time with Viagra (sildenafil citrate),
finding what it proclaimed to be the cure for erectile dysfunction, a problem which may
affect as many as 30 million Americans. The drug, administered in tablet form,
essentially increases blood flow to the penis enabling a man to have an erection. By 2000,
the drug had been prescribed to over 5 million men in the United States, and its use had
spread worldwide. Part of its fame resulted from its stint as a staple for late-night comedy
and also from former presidential candidate Robert
Dole’s
declaration that he benefited
from the drug.
ROBERT GREGG
vice-presidency
Entries A-Z 1163
In the last fifty years, and especially during the most recent presidential administrations,
the office of the vice-
p
resident has grown from a position of relative powerlessness to
one of some importance. The vice-president’s official responsibilities are few: should the
president die or be deemed unable to fill his or her position, the vice-
p
resident takes on
the role of president; the vice-
p
resident is also the official head of the Senate and has the
power to cast a tie-
b
reaking vote. In recent times, however, presidents have begun to
allow their vice-
p
residents to become more involved in the policy process and have
allowed them greater access to White House resources.
The vice-
p
resident now meets often with the president, has an office in the White
House and a staff of his or her own. Although these are privileges granted by the
p
resident and could be removed at any time, the likelihood that this will happen decreases
as the practices become more institutionalized. It has been suggested that the fact that
these privileges were retained during the tenure of Dan Quayle (George
Bush’s
vice-
p
resident), who was widely regarded as a poor choice for the job, indicates their likely
permanence.
The manner and method of choosing the vice-
p
resident have also changed over the
years. For almost the whole first half of the twentieth century vice-
p
residential candidates
were chosen by party bosses. This changed in 1940 when Franklin
Roosevelt
insisted on
choosing his own runningmate. This practice has remained in place allowing presidents
to choose vice-
p
residents with whom they are compatible. Before this time, it was not
unusual for vice-
p
residents to disagree openly with presidents under whom they were
serving; it is almost unheard of today The greater compatibility between vice-
p
resident
and president has also facilitated the expansion of the vice-president’s powers and
responsibilities.
Many vice-
p
residents have gone on to run successfully for the presidency. Holding the
office of vice-
p
resident can aid a politician by providing national name recognition and
executive experience; however, there are also drawbacks. Because vice-
p
residents are
expected to support the president, it can be difficult for them to create their own political
identity in the eyes of the public. It was widely believed that George Bush suffered from
this problem. Although
Reagan
was very popular, Bush was often regarded as unable to
form opinions independent of the president. Matters became even more complex as
questions arose regarding Bush’s role in the
Iran-Contra affair
. Al
Gore,
who has
longstanding presidential ambitions, has faced a similar dilemma in dealing with the
scandals surrounding Bill
Clinton;
he had to support the president while distancing
himself from Clinton’s actions. This balance is difficult to maintain and can make it
especially difficult for former vice-presidents to run for president.
Further reading
Pika, J. (1998) “The Vice Presidency: New Opportunities, Old Constraints,” in M.Nelson
(ed.)
The Presidency and the Political System,
Washington, DC: Congressional
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 1164
Quarterly Press, pp. 527–64.
EMILY CLOUGH
Vidal, Gore (Eugene Luther)
b. 1925
Patrician chronicler, playwright and critic of the American century Vidal has skewered
p
olitics, sexuality and religion in novels and essays, identifying himself with the
historical establishment through family ties, yet standing outside it through his wit,
homosexuality and preferences for Europe.
The City and the Pillar
(1948) shocked
readers with its discussion of homosexuality while in
Myra Breckinridge
(1968) the
sexual/media satire is broad.
Messiah
(1954) tackles American religion. Historical
novels, including
Burr
(1973),
Lincoln
(1984),
Hollywood
(1990) and
The Smithsonian
I
nstitution
(1998) recast American history Vidal, who twice ran for Congress, has
p
ublished extensively as a liberal political critic and essayist on American sexuality
(
Gore Vidal, Sexually Speaking,
1999).
GARY McDONOGH
video
The portable consumer video cameras that came out in the late 1970s extended the range
of the portable 16mm camera that had allowed cinema vérité to flourish. Unlike film
cameras, video cameras first used analog, and then digital, technologies to capture sound
and image, dramatically lowering the price of footage and potentially democratizing
p
roduction as well as distribution of moving images. On the other hand, the movingimage
industries also incorporated new video delivery systems to reach an even larger audience,
through
video cassette recorders, cable
and satellite.
The availability of cheap video technology in the 1970s allowed average lay people to
p
roduce moving images. Many more families have home videos now, even though their
content differs little from previous 8mm home movies, except for accessibility. While
most associated video in America with the VHS cassette, other formats have been used
by professionals or independents. Hence, there was euphoria when the U-Matic was
introduced with good quality BetaSP tape. More “prosumer” models followed, including
8mm, high-8 and super VHS; all are analog videotapes.
The digital age arrived in the mid-1990s, further improving the quality of the image
Entries A-Z 1165