Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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in the past half century. For most of its history the West was in a subaltern position—

olitically economically and culturally dominated by the East. The Second World War

was its watershed. With the growing importance of Asia and the

Pacific Rim,

the West

became a central, and often even pace-setting region.

The growth, maturity and influence of the West in contemporary American culture can

e traced in many areas. Politically the New Right, the main development in American

olitics since the decline of New Deal liberalism, is a Western phenomenon. Barry

Goldwater,

who began the movement, is from Arizona; Ronald

Reagan,

from

California,

was its culmination. Richard

Nixon,

a pivotal figure of recent American

olitics, was another Californian. Prior to the Second World War no American president

had been from the West. Since the Second World War, only

Kennedy, Carter

and

Clinton

have not had western affiliations (and Kennedy ran with Lyndon

Johnson

The tilting of American political power westward was propelled by population shifts.

The West has been the most rapidly growing region in America for decades. California

surpassed New York as the nation’s most populous state in the 1960s.

Texas

will soon

rank second.

Los Angeles

recently overtook Chicago as the nation’s second-largest city

and

San Diego, San Antonio

and

Phoenix

continue to push upwards.

Economically since the Second World War, the West has left behind its colonial status

as a plundered province. Three Pacific wars—the Second World War, Korea and

Vietnam—

romoted westward shifts in military spending and the defense industry. A

highly symbiotic relationship exists between the West, the military and America’s

emergence as a global superpower, as San Diego and

Seattle

attest.

Moreover, America’s military might was closely tied to “big science.” Again the West

played a prominent role: from Berkeley to Los Alamos and Alamagordo to

Silicon

Valley,

it has been a twentieth-century laboratory. In addition, the West is America’s

main energy producer. During energy shortages in the 1970s and 1980s, energy-oriented

cities like

Denver

and

Houston

boomed.

The West is now arguably the nation’s cultural leader. Even in the 1920s and 1930s,

Hollywood

was a major shaper and exporter of American culture, and California was

already pioneering lifestyles that would become standard nationwide after the Second

World War.

Disneyland

is an American and global cultural icon, as is

Las Vegas

. The

counterculture of the 1960s originated in the

San Francisco

Bay area, and influential

American rock music, from the

Beach Boys

to the Doors to acid rock, came from

California. In the 1990s, Seattle has been the home of alternative rock and

grunge

lifestyles. From the popularity of sun tanning and outdoor barbequing to the television

programs

Dallas

and

Baywatch,

from Pacific Northwest or “cowboy chic” influences in

fashion to California, Tex-Mex and Southwest cuisine, the West has set the standards for

American popular culture in recent decades.

At the same time, America’s growing

environmentalism

also has Western roots.

Environmental symbols, including the wolf, the buffalo, the grizzly bear, the redwood

and the spotted owl, are mostly Western. America’s leading environmental advocates

have come from the West and crucial environmental battles have taken place there.

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The West has been one of the most dynamic regions of the country in the past hal

century. Its vitality is reflected in a lively and widely varied Western regionalism.

Examples include the flourishing of Western literature, especially Hispanic, Native and

Asian American

variations; the New West

History;

a resurgent popularity of

country

and western

music; influential Southwestern and

ostmodern architecture and interior

design; and Western art and photography. All of these factors make the West arguably

the most intriguing and important of the nation’s regions. Americans have always been

fascinated with the historic West. Now the contemporary West is at the center o

attention too.

Further reading

Johnson, M. (1996)

The New Westers: The West in Contemporary American Culture,

Lawrence: University of Kansas.

Nash, G. (1973)

The American West in the Twentieth Century,

Englewood Cliffs:

Prentice Hall.

White, R. (1991)

It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own,

Norman: University of

Oklahoma.

KENT BLASER

West, Cornel

b. 1953

Considered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who brought him to Harvard University’s Afro-

American Studies program in 1994, the pre-eminent

African American

intellectual o

our time. Author of the bestselling

Race Matters

(1993), and collaborator with bell

hooks,

West has blended religious homilies with loose-fitting Marxist analysis. His

criticism of the black

middle class

for being “decadent” resembles that of E.Franklin

Frazier,

and his discussion of the “psychic pain” inflicted upon the urban poor fits with

current views that the

“underclass”

is dysfunctional. He has criticized hip-hop culture

for being nihilistic, in contrast to

intellectuals

like Robin D.G.Kelley and some of the

practitioners themselves, who have emphasized its deep politicization.

ROBERT GREGG

westerns, film

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Westerns, perhaps the most important, recognized and popular genre of

Hollywood

movies worldwide, are as old as narrative film itself. Many scholars consider

The Grea

Train Robbery

(1903) to be the first important narrative film, which coincidentally

established cinematic themes that would define westerns to this day: outlaws and

lawmen, a train robbery a chase on horseback and a shoot-out, all within a wilderness

setting. These motifs, which along with those of

cowboys,

cattle, Native Americans,

cavalry, settlers and covered wagons had been established in American culture since the

nineteenth century through the popularity of dime-store novels, wild-west shows and the

writings of authors such as James Fennimore Cooper and Bret Hart, sustained the genre

through to the era of the Second World War, when more mature and complex themes

surfaced.

The era of the classic western feature film was ushered in with

Stagecoach

(1939), by

veteran director John

Ford,

regarded by many critics and fans as the premier western

film-maker in American cinema. Ford’s westerns had an epic quality that, along with an

attention to characterization and dialogue, marked most western films throughout the

1940s and 1950s. This was the period of the epic western, filmed on location, which dealt

with the broad sweep of American myth and history yet found time to confront the social

roblems and psychological torments which were the root causes of the conflicts between

such groups as ranchers and homesteaders (

Shane,

1953), whites and Indians (

The

Searchers,

1956), lawmen and badmen (

High Noon,

1952) and cattlemen and society

(

Red River,

1948). Many of these films transcended the confines of the western genre to

deal with issues relevant to contemporary America, but did so in ways which did not

confront the mythical roots of the western itself.

The 1960s brought the anti-hero to westerns in films where protagonists, doomed in a

West that could not survive a civilizing America, turned to violence as mercenaries (

The

agnificent Seven,

1960), outlaws (

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kïd,

1969), or

sociopathic killers (

The Wild Bunch,

1969). These “end of the

frontier”

themes

paralleled growing American alienation in the 1960s and 1970s, which led western film-

makers and authors to question the accuracy of western history and the role of the West

in the origins of American culture. As a result, views of Native Americans, long

portrayed as the stereotyped “other” in the Manifest Destiny sagas of the epic western,

were revised in such films as

Little Big Man

(1970) and

Dances With Wolves

(1990). This

grittier approach to the people and events of the filmic West, both Old and New, has been

mirrored in the novels of Elmore Leonard, Larry McMurtry and Thomas McGuane.

Many great directors of western films such as Ford, Howard Hawks and Anthony

Mann won critical acclaim and fame in other movie genres. Some, like Sam

Peckinpah

and Budd Boetticher, seemed most at home in the West. This was also true of actors, like

John

Wayne,

whose career was inextricably linked to his celluloid image as a Westerner,

and Clint

Eastwood,

famed over the last four decades for his western film acting and

directing.

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Further reading

Buscombe, E. (ed.) (1988)

The BFI Companion to the Western,

London: The British Film

Institute.

Kitses, J. (1969)

Horizons West,

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

THOMAS M.WILSON

westerns, literature

The western occupies a permanent place in American literature, as it does in other media.

The

individualism

of the American culture seems nowhere better captured than in stories

of the

cowboy

—the ultimate American hero—and in rugged individualists who

populated the landscape of the

West

. The western appeals to the need for

freedom,

wide

open spaces and frontiers, self-sufficiency, triumphing over adversaries and survival

against the elements. Westerners’ corrals, groups of collectors, writers and historians all

write about the history way of life and heroes of the West, past and present.

Westerns are nonetheless interpretations and ideologies. Stereotyped plots, overly

romantic dialogue and misuse of dialect characterize one popular form of western. As

Diana Herald writes in

Genreflecting:

“the stereotypic western can be recognized on the

first page: a lone rider is crossing a valley or desert and a shot knocks off his hat or hits a

rock, startling his horse, and a range war begins” (1995:18). Other themes and types o

westerns include plots about wagon trains moving west, mule trains and stage lines,

mining and lost mines, captivities, cattle

ranching

and cattle drives, range wars, boys

becoming men, romance, picaresque heroes and parodies of cowboys.

Texas

and

Mexico

and

American Indian

territories provide settings and issues. Characters include

mountain men, buffalo runners, black cowboys, Mormons, marshals, strong women,

doctors, preachers and celebrity characters.

Popular series have been written by Louis L’Amour and Hank Mitchem, among many

others, providing a seeming masculine counterpart to female-oriented

romances

Contemporary westerns, such as those by Barbara Kingsolver, Edward Abbey and

William Eastlake, set in the twentieth century keep the themes of the cowboy wide open

spaces, wild adventures and Indian-Anglo relations, although they may add on more

environmental sensitivity or an Indian viewpoint (e.g. Tony Hillerman’s

Southwestern

mysteries). Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy have also added new literary

dimensions to classic scenarios.

Other contemporary trends include “adult” westerns of heroic, sexual adventures that

started with

Playboy

Press in 1975. The western, as a genre, has been the subject o

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numerous parodies as well. Even these underscore its place in the myth-making of all

America.

ee also:

westerns, television; television; westerns, film

Further reading

Herald, D. (1995)

Genreflecting. A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction,

4th edn,

Englewood: Libraries Unlimited.

Perkins, G., Perkins, B. and Leininger, P. (1991)

Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of

American Literature,

New York: HarperCollins.

GAIL HENSON

westerns, television

From 1955 to 1975,

Gunsmoke,

the longest running prime-time ensemble drama in

television

history, told stories of a sheriff, his sidekicks, Miss Kitty in the saloon and

other drifters through a Western city. In the heyday of the TV western, literature and

prior films spurred a plethora of

cowboys,

rugged landscapes and moral issues of the

frontier

for viewers every week. These series both launched stars—Clint Eastwood,

Steve McQueen, James Garner—and showcased cinematic legends like Barbara

Stanwyck, confronting a male world in

The Big Valley

(ABC, 1965–9). While no major

shows followed

Gunsmoke,

the impact of the western nonetheless lingers.

The Brauers (1975) have categorized the television western by three phases. The first

horse phase included cowboys and chases with heroes like

Roy Rogers

(NBC, 1951–7),

the Lone Ranger (ABC, 1949–57) and the Cisco Kid (syndicated, 1950–6). This family

entertainment (including Saturday morning fare) offered comical sidekicks and idealistic

cowboys. Rogers merged public and private life with Dale Evans, while the Lone Ranger

introduced a terse Indian companion, Tonto, and

Sky Kïng

(ABC, 1953–4) substituted a

plane for a horse.

The second, adult evolution of the western followed the gun (e.g.

Gunsmoke,

CBS,

1955–75), with increased violence and retribution. The sheriff or some honest man versus

criminals and occasional Indians recapitulated themes of freedom, justice and gunplay

found in movies such as

High Noon

(1952). Moral ambiguities and irony crept in with the

gambling Maverick family (ABC, 1957–62) as well as Bat Masterson (NBC, 1959–61)

and his cronies.

The Wild, Wild West

(CBS, 1965–9) paired the western formula with

James Bond-like espionage, humor, vamps and toys.

The consummate example of property was the vast Ponderosa ranch, owned by Ben

Cartwright and his boys in

Bonanza

(NBC, 1959–1973), another top show. But this was

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echoed by both Stanwyck and Lee J.Cobb in

The Virginian

In all these melodramas of “Americanness,” strong, independent and virtuous men

overcame obstacles for weak and evil men as well as forces of nature—floods,

stampedes, blizzards—that tempered their character. Indians were not so badly defined as

in earlier Hollywood westerns, but were rarely central to action or perspective. Hispanics

also had a slight presence in the nebulous West; Asians were drawn between

Bonanza’s

faithful cook, Hop Sing, and David Carradine’s later half-Chinese Caine, wandering the

West dispensing justice and wisdom in

Kung Fu

. Females tended to be love interests,

domestic or flirtatious, until a stronger female/family perspective emerged with

ittle

ouse on the Prairie

(NBC, 1974–83). In the 1990s, however, the only longrunning

western,

Dr Quinn Medicine Woman,

cast a female star in a professional role.

While the Hollywood western was rekindled in the 1990s by films that introduced dark

lines into heroes amidst epic grandeur, no such rebirth hit television. Yet westerns retain

an impact in other ways.

Star Trek

(NBC, 1966–9) is heavily indebted to this schema on

“the final frontier.” Moreover, prime-time soaps like

Dallas, Dynasty

and

Falcon Crest,

all set in the West (the latter including a faithful Chinese servant), recalled the

freewheeling property and even guns of older days, although in boardrooms rather than

saloons and corrals.

Further reading

Brauer, D. and Brauer, R. (1975)

The Horse, The Gun and the Piece of Property,

Bowing

Green, OH: Bowing Green University

Stark, S. (1996)

Glued to the Set,

New York: St. Martin’s.

GARY McDONOGH

whiskey

alcohol

white

The color white represents base on the color scale. This symbolic meaning has often been

resupposed when white, or whiteness, represents racial identity. When white represents

racial identity it often represents normalcy naturalness or homogeneity. It is this type o

affiliation that often leads white identity to be unexamined by cultural or social studies.

Yet, this lack of critical engagement solidifies a conundmm where various racial

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identities are constantly discussed, but whiteness is left simply to exist. Thus, white

becomes a substitute for power and stands atop a supposed racial hierarchy that

represents a natural order. A critical understanding of white identity is found when

various histories, affiliations and representations are critiqued for their attachment to

whiteness over time (see Frankenberg 1997).

White identity has historical roots in a worldview generated in Enlightenment Europe

and a Victorian ideal of beauty and civility The historical attachment of white identity to

normalcy and power can be found in many scientific and social proclamations of the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see Gould 1991). These historical accounts often

skewed scientific methodology and fact to assert that white identity had a natural position

atop a racial order, especially in the United States. This coincided with slavery

colonialism and an influx of

immigration

that brought various others into contact with a

white AngloSaxon Protestant social order that was dominant at the time. Therefore, the

attempts to assert white identity as a natural occurrence became a defense mechanism and

fed a Eurocentric worldview. White has also been affiliated with national and ethnic

identity. The idea and conception of national identity, especially in England and the

United States, has been synonymous with whiteness historically. This has had a number

of consequences for cultural representations of the United States where model citizenship

becomes synonymous with being white and, usually male.

The affiliation of white identity to

class

status is prevalent as well. The notion of white

rivilege has come to symbolize this affiliation due to the fact that people socially

defined as white often possess greater opportunity and rapid class mobility The

relationship of whiteness to class status is often found in the built environment. The

segregation

of public facilities, social services and

neighborhoods

as “white only”

throughout the United States in the beginning of the twentieth century demarcated white

identity Upper-middle-class neighborhoods became a code word for white neighborhoods

in a process known as

“white flight”

after the Second World War. This movement to the

suburbs

essentially “whitened” an entire generation of people previously considered to

e ethnic others, but now possessing new racial identities because of their class mobility

Solidification of this new white identity was found in television shows of the time like

eave it to Beaver

. This entire process was dependent on the consistent racial segregation

African Americans

and other people socially constructed as “others” in the United

States.

Further reading

Gould, S. (1991)

The Mismeasure of Man,

London: Cambridge University Press.

Frankenberg, R. (ed.) (1997)

Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural

Criticism.

Durham: Duke University Press.

MATTHEW DURINGTON

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White, Edmund

b. 1940

American writer, essayist and gay activist whose works depict the evolution of gay life

in the United States, particularly the complex issues of the

AIDS

epidemic. White

worked as an editor for

The Saturday Review

and

Horizon

. He co-founded the Violet

Quill, a group of gay writers, in the mid-1970s. His most notable works include two

largely autobiographical novels and an anthology

Gay Short Fiction

(1991). His most

recent works include a biography of Jean Genet, whose exploration of homosexuality

through plays and novels long has interested White. White has lived and worked in

France since 1983.

JIM WATKINS

white collar

class; middle class

white-collar crime

White-collar crime refers to offenses such as

tax

evasion, misuse of public funds,

embezzlement, fraud and abuse of power. Its perpetrators are most often members of the

social elite who have positions of influence in business and government. The term

“white-collar crime” was first popularized in 1940 by criminologist Edwin H.Sutherland.

However, the phenomenon first became prominent in the American consciousness in the

early 1970s, when President Richard M.

Nixon

was forced to resign amid allegations that

he had abused his presidential power to cover up his involvement in the

Watergate

scandal.

The legal system has traditionally been lenient in its punishment of white-collar

criminals, while penalties for crimes like burglary, drug dealing and murder have grown

increasingly stringent since the Second World War. This trend has reinforced class

divisions between white-collar and traditional criminals, who often come from poor

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backgrounds.

Authorities have grown more vigilant in their prosecution of white-collar offenders

since a wave of highly publicized cases in the 1980s and early 1990s. Successful

Wall

Street

traders Ivan Boesky and Michael

Milken

paid millions of dollars in fines and

served substantial prison terms during this period for their involvement in illegal insider

trading on the stock market. White-collar crime also played a role in the financial

collapse of the savings and loan industry. Banking executive Charles H.Keating, Jr.,

whose institution was one of about 700 that went bankrupt, was prosecuted and jailed for

defrauding his customers by persuading them to make high-risk investments in his bank’s

arent company. Several US senators who had received large contributions from Keating

were reprimanded for ethics violations after a Senate investigation found that they had

lobbied federal regulators on Keating’s behalf. The federal government’s ultimate

decision to help rescue the savings and loan industry with $130 million in federal funds

(as of the end of 1996) angered many taxpayers. They accused the government o

protecting the interests of wealthy business people at the expense of average citizens.

The federal government focused increasing attention in the 1990s on its own

victimization by white-collar criminals. Growing numbers of businesses and individuals

have faced prosecution for defrauding government agencies. Financial abuses have been

especially prevalent in the federal Medicare and Medicaid entitlement programs.

All forms of white-collar crime expanded in scope in the 1990s as perpetrators began

to use the

Internet

and the World Wide Web as tools for corporate espionage and other

illegal business practices.

SARAH SMITH

white flight

In the 1960s, as blacks and

Latinos

slowly integrated school and housing in American

cities,

many

white

middle-class families abandoned changing neighborhoods for newer,

segregated

suburbs

. This created a fundamental shift in demography wealth and power

as cities lost income and property while governed by new majorities of color in Detroit,

Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, etc. Middle-class blacks sought new suburban

options, while poor and older whites, often in

ethnic enclaves,

built uneasy defenses.

Gentrification

later returned younger, wealthier whites to a

dual city,

but zones between

the downtown and suburbs have been scarred by decades of neglect.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

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Whitewater scandal

In 1978 Arkansas Attorney-General Bill

Clinton

and Hillary Rodham Clinton joined a

artnership with James and Susan McDougal to buy and develop riverfront land as

vacation homes: the Whitewater Development Corporation. The plan failed and the

Clintons reported a loss of more than 140,000. McDougal also owned Madison Guaranty

Savings and Loan Association, which, like many such institutions, went under in the

1980s partly as a result of fraudulent loans, and Hillary was the lawyer for Madison

Guaranty. In addition, many opposed to the Clintons believed they had paid McDougal

hush money

Following the chronicling of the Whitewater case in

The New York Times

in 1992, the

Republican

-led

Congress

called for a special prosecutor. In August 1994 Kenneth

W.Starr was appointed

independent counsel

(replacing the more moderate Robert Fiske)

and he quickly expanded the hearings to encompass the firing of White House travel

office clerks (Travelgate), the suicide of the Clinton’s friend/advisor Vince Foster

(Filegate), and then the Paula Jones

sexual harassment

case against Clinton and the

Monica Lewinsky affair. Besides mushrooming into the 1999

impeachment

case against

Clinton, the Starr grand jury investigations achieved few indictments. The McDougals

oth spent time in prison (James died of heart failure a few months before his scheduled

release, while Susan defied the court and was imprisoned for contempt). Clinton’s

successor as governor of Arkansas, Jim Guy Tucker, also spent eighteen months in home

detention for his involvement in Madison Guaranty.

ROBERT GREGG

Wideman, John Edgar

b. 1941

Novelist educated at the University of Pennsylvania; in 1963, only the second

African

American

to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. Wideman returned to the

Ivy League

university to teach English and to write. His first novel,

A Glance Away

(1967), was

followed by a succession of fictional works leading to

Sent for You Yesterday

(1983),

which won the PEN/Faulkner Award of 1984. Wideman’s next work, the non-fictional

rothers and Keepers

(1984), focused on the divergent paths he and his brother, who was

imprisoned for armed robbery had taken. Subsequent novels have blended fiction and

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