Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Party

). Conventions also faced popular protest outside halls, like those that erupted at the

1968 Democratic Convention in

Chicago

and smaller protests at subsequent events.

Yet, with primary reform, conventions have become stages for propaganda and

coronation of incumbents or victors decided months before, as is the case with Al

Gore

or George

Bush,

Jr. in 2000. Hence public interest has dropped with regard to spectacles

and speeches, and networks no longer offer gavel-to-gavel coverage of political pep

rallies/

infomercials

GARY McDONOGH

convict labor

Among the concerns of those demanding harsher punishments throughout American

history has been the demand for labor as recompense or reeducation for those imprisoned.

Convict leasing, in the post-Civil War

South,

in which prisoners were passed to private

osses at minimal costs, often functioned as an extension of slavery before it ended in the

1930s. “Chain gangs,” in which workers under public guards work on highways and

other projects, have continued and are even cited as a deterrent because of the public

humiliation involved. Within prisons, convicts have been employed in many day-to-day

functions of the prison—laundry food, etc.; in the 1990s, prisons also became areas for

telephone services nationwide. Prisoners receive some or all of this money although it

may be taken from them for supplies or privileges within the system.

GARY McDONOGH

cookbooks and cooking media

Up to 1,000 cookbooks were published annually in the US in the late twentieth century.

Such proliferation represents not only a diversity of audiences and tastes, but also a

recognition of cooking as cultural capital (for the

middle class

), as well as a realm in

which domestic knowledge has given way to outside mass-mediated expertise.

Cookbooks, cooking television and other media, like

food

itself, thus embody critical

changes in American society and culture.

This can be seen by successive editions of the classic

Joy of Cooking

(1931) created by

Irma Rombauer. Unlike the equally popular

Better Homes and Garden Cookbook

(first

published 1930; multiple re-editions), linked to a publishing empire, or the

Betty Crocker

Cookbook

(1950; multiple re-editions) of food manufacturer General Mills, this was an

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 296

individual effort, originally self-

ublished. Early editions met the needs of a world where

domestic service was disappearing. Collecting recipes from friends and additional

information that now seems dated in its reliance on canned soups or overcooked pasta,

Rombauer later adapted easily followed recipes to new conditions like wartime rationing.

This tradition of change was continued by her daughter and her grandson, who produced

the new 1997 edition. This last comprehensive volume—which ranges from beating eggs

to comparing caviars—takes into account sophisticated palates and distinctions between

newly available ingredients, global cuisines, health concerns and family dynamics that

make

pizza

a meal category

oy of Cooking

emerged in a relatively limited market. Postwar prosperity and nuclear

family

domesticity changed the needs and markets for cooking guidance.

Magazines

and

the press also taught cooking (including published collections from food editors like the

ew York Times’

Craig Clairborne).

Television

food shows also appeared with the

earliest stations, incorporating cooking teachers like Dionne Lucas and showman cooks

like James Beard, who linked his recipes to commercial endorsements as well as

cookbooks. Julia Childs’ inimitable

PBS

French Chef

(1963–73), with sequels, set new

standards in cookbooks and television for generations to come, re-establishing food and

an acceptance of kitchen mistakes that French cuisine as a goal, yet doing so with a love

of demystified haute cuisine. Her success was followed by other PBS shows and a

cable

food channel, again often linked to cookbook sales and celebrities.

Meanwhile, advertisers supplied recipes to enhance sales and create new uses for their

roducts, from gelatin to cream cheese to soup. This onslaught for the food consumer

increased with new machines—pressure cookers to microwaves to breadmakers—that

altered the American

kitchen

. Some products, in fact, became identified with specific

recipes: Nestle’s chocolate chips and Toll House cookies or Chex cereals and snack

mixes.

Other cookbooks have expanded with affluence and leisure, as well as exposure to new

immigrants and travel. Prominent among cookbook categories and television shows are

those that champion cuisines of Italy France and Asia, as well as domestic regional/ethnic

specializations like

Cajun, Southwestern

or soul food. Celebrity chefs become

multimedia institutions with restaurants (chains), cookbooks, shows and guest

appearances. Other writers incorporate the ethnography of food into their writings, like

Paula Wolfert on the circum-Mediterranean or Marcella Hazan on Italy. Newspaper

sections and magazines targeting affluent consumers—

Saveur, Food and Wine,

Gourmet

—also combine narrative, pictorials and recipes. Often, these make demands on

time and ingredients that set the process and results of cooking apart from everyday

eating, reinforcing its cultural capital in the middle class. Other cookbooks meet

specialized interests and needs, whether in preparation categories—

asic, grilling,

baking, speedy etc.—or nutrition and diet, featuring light, low-fat and salt-free foods.

Clubs, schools, churches and other groups also elaborate

community

through

cookbooks and cookbook sales. Folklorists and anthropologists have examined these food

ways and contributed celebrations and collections patronized by institutions like the

Entries A-Z 297

Smithsonian

. Indeed, these complexities of community and change permeate media that

permit cooking for status or raise questions of identity embodied in Jeff Smith’s wry

subtitle on his

The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors

(1990): “Recipes you

should have gotten from your grandmother.”

Further reading

Bower, A. (1997)

Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories,

Amherst: University of Massachusetts.

Mendelson, A. (1996)

Stand facing the Stove,

New York: Henry Holt.

Stern, J. and Stern, M. (1991)

American Gourmet,

New York: Harper.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Cooke, Sam

b. 1931; d. 1964

Classic

soul

singer of the 1950s and early 1960s, Sam Cooke mixed sensuality and

sophistication with movie-idol looks and gospel-singer poise. His warm, confessional

voice won him a devoted gospel following as lead singer for the Soul Stirrers and sent

“You Send Me” to the top of the pop and R&B charts. It was the first of twenty-nine Top

Forty hits for the Chicago-born singer, including “Chain Gang,” “You Send Me,”

“Another Saturday Nïght” and “Twisting the Night Away” each proving the singer’s

versatility Cooke was also a pioneering black entrepreneur who started his own music

publishing company and record label. He died mysteriously in a shooting in 1964.

EDWARD MILLER

cool

In American youth and popular culture, “cool” is the desired pose. Cool is also a

ervasive marketing tool. Coolness is in part about a confidence in appearance (in

etween trendy and nerdy), creating a visual style, but it is also a comment on an

observable attitude—a mixture of nonchalance and self-absorption in attitude. Designer

clothing comes in and out of style, for seemingly mysterious readings, making it cool to

wear and, then, in a flash, “tacky.” Places—discos,

neighborhoods,

cities—come into

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 298

style and are cool. For example, recently South Beach in

Miami, FL

became cool—after

the artists moved in, celebrities followed, but with the advent of too many tourists it

became passé. Some bands are cool. These bands tend not to be the most highly regarded

y the population at large, but a secret amongst those who consider themselves in the

know. Those long considered to be the antithesis of cool—nerds and geeks—have

become cool with the rise of hacker and now

Internet

-related culture. In time, they too

will be passé.

Further reading

Frank, T. (1997)

The Conquest of Cool,

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

EDWARD MILLER

Cooper, Gary

b. 1901; d. 1961

Whether stumbling into truth and love in

Capra

comedies (

Mr Deeds Goes to Town

Goes to Town,

1936;

Meet John Doe,

1941), saving America reluctantly on the battlefield

(

Sergeant York,

1941, Oscar), or standing alone to define justice in the

West

(

High Noon,

1952, Oscar), Cooper stood for American myths of masculine virtues—strong, silent,

reluctant to become involved, yet ultimately committed to justice and truth. A star

without appearing to want the trappings, Cooper’s inter-texts made

Sergeant Yor

powerful propaganda for entry into the Second World War,

erhaps also foreshadowing

the apparent reluctance America overcame in global situations to follow.

GARY McDONOGH

Copland, Aaron

b. 1900; d. 1990

After study in

New York

City, NY and Paris (with Nadia Boulanger), Copland began a

career of stylistic exploration ranging from abstract pieces to adaptations of American

rhythms from

jazz

and

folk music

. He created classic anthems that recur in American

public events, including themes from the ballets

Billy the Kïd

(1938),

Rodeo

(1942) and

ppalachian Spring

(1944), which uses old Shaker hymns. His “Fanfare for the Common

Entries A-Z 299

Man” (1942) has also become a standard. Copland also became known as a teacher,

composer for movies and writer on music, as well as one of the US’ most revered

composers.

Further reading

Copland, A. (1960)

Copland on Music,

New York: Da Capo.

GARY McDONOGH

Coppola, Francis Ford

b. 1939

Director whose remarkable

Godfather

trilogy (1972, 1974 and 1990) defined an

auteurial vision in American cinema through its sweeping mythic vision, lavish detail and

extraordinary ensemble acting. Coppola directed and produced other singular films

ranging from comedy (

Peggy Sue Got Married,

1986) to the grim horror of

Vietnam

(

Apocalypse Now,

1979). His career has also been plagued by numerous financial

debacles that shuttered his independent studio, American Zoetrope in 1990. Coppola’s

vision has almost always focused on America—dreams as well as nightmares and

failures—which permeated his intriguing biographical study

Tucker

(1988), as much as

his own life.

GARY McDONOGH

Corvette

sports cars

Cosby, Bill

b. 1937

Born in

Philadelphia, PA,

Cosby was the first

African American

actor to star in a

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 300

dramatic series on

television

(

I Spy,

NBC, 1965–8). Wellknown for his

comedy

routines

and stage act, often based on

children’s

stories and perspectives of the world, which

were adapted for the cartoon series,

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kïds

(CBS, 1972–7), he

developed a less politically charged style than that of other black comedians like Dick

Gregory

and Richard

Pryor

. He parlayed his popularity into the top-rated family

comedy the

Cosby Show

(NBC, 1984–92), which anchored NBC’s Thursday night

programming and won several Emmys. The show presented the Huxtables, a black upper-

middle-class

New York

City family steeped in “family values,” who countered the black

stereotypes then common on

television

. Cosby returned in 1996 with a similarly

conceived family show, without achieving the same success.

ee also:

black colleges and universities

ROBERT GREGG

couch potatoes

Term denoting a person who merely watches rather than participates in sports, sits on the

sofa surrounded by

pizza,

potato chips and beer, and phones in his or her bet to out-of-

state

gambling

brokers. Often stereotyped as males between the ages of eighteen and

fifty advertisers target the couch potato constituency with commercials during

Monday

ïght Football,

Sunday afternoon

football

games, or during televised college

basketball

games. The commercials, often for beer, feature men sneaking off to watch sports (while

wives complain bitterly).

ROBERT GREGG

country and western music

Country music emerged in the postwar period as one of the most popular forms o

American music. Although its first fans and performers were

working-class

and rural

whites of the

South,

it is now popular worldwide.

Country music’s most recent influences are bluegrass music,

cowboy

music and

western swing; its roots can be found in Scottish and English

folk music, Cajun

music

and

African American

spirituals and

blues

. The music is renowned for plaintive songs

about betrayed love, rendered in regional accents by voices often raw with emotion. The

word “twang” has come to describe the vocal style of most country singers. The musical

arrangements favor the steel guitar, the fiddle and the guitar, but the voice is always

Entries A-Z 301

foreground. Concerts highlight singers and bands; the visual style of some of the

performers—leather, lace and fringe—is also quite remarkable.

Most country performers remain white. Only two artists have challenged this norm: the

lack singer Charlie Pride, who was popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and the lesbian

singer k.d.lang, who emerged in the 1980s and borrowed freely from country forms in

order to create her own persona.

Since the war, country music can be divided into a few distinctive styles: honky tonk,

the

Nashville

sound, outlaw country and urban cowboy music. In the 1940s and 1950s,

the great Hank Williams, who sang of love and loss in robust, rough and ironic tones,

epitomized the honky tonk style. Other popular honky tonk stylists were Lefty Frizzel

and Kitty Wells. The Nashville sound was slicker, more produced and centered around

the renowned Grand Ole Opry theater.

The silky smooth voices of Gentleman Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold embodied this

style in the 1950s and enlarged the fan base of country Singers like Patsy Cline combined

honky tonk with the Nashville sound and paved the way for other female singers like

Loretta

Lynn

. Johnny

Cash,

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard came to prominence in

the late 1960s and established the style of outlaw country—a mixture of honky tonk with

southern rock, which expressed a defiant blue collar perspective.

By the 1970s, country music began to go urban with Dolly Parton’s crossover hit “9 to

5” and the success of Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt and others who mixed country with

more mainstream pop. Following upon the pop-influenced new country of Reba McEntire

and Randy Travis in the 1980s, Garth Brooks became in the 1990s a country-

ased

crooner with mass sex appeal, bringing country music to its largest audience ever.

Despite its great popularity at the century’s end, country music has lost some of its

emotive poetry substituting polish for rougher tales of poverty and unfaithful lovers.

Further reading

Kingsbury P. (ed.) (1996)

Encyclopedia of Country Music,

New York: Oxford.

EDWARD MILLER

courts

judiciary

cowboys

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 302

Whether John

Wayne

fighting the Indians or the Marlboro Man hawking

tobacco,

the

cowboy has been a consummate symbol of American individualism and

freedom

worldwide. The legend was shaped by generations of penny novels,

western

movies and

television

shows (which contemporary cowboys have also watched). “Cowboy” conjures

up a rugged

white

male on horseback, tanned by wind and work, drinking, smoking and

fighting when he comes to town. Unfortunately this imagery—and the slick boots, dance

music and dude ranches that commercialize it—overlook the diversity and problems o

past and present. “Cowboys” in the past included

African Americans

and

Latinos,

well as white loners, in work that was often brutal, ill-rewarded and led not to ownership,

ut to continual labor and loneliness in a world especially hard on women and wives. As

rail and trucks have replaced cattle drives and agro-

usiness has favored fodderfattened

eef, being a cowboy remains an underpaid job and a demanding lifestyle, requiring

organization, mechanical skills, endurance and knowledge of nature (horses, cows,

weather). This way of life, even while changing, is celebrated in

rodeos,

the arts and

museums

. Meanwhile, students of the

West

allow us to understand how complicated

cowboy life actually has been. The dilemmas of late twentieth-century cowboys have

been poignantly chronicled in Jane Kramer’s (1977)

The Last Cowboy

and novelist Larry

McMurtry’s

In a Narrow Grave

(1968).

Further reading

Kramer, J. (1977)

The Last Cowboy,

New York: Harper & Row.

McMurtry L. (1968)

In a Narrow Grave,

Austin: Encino.

GARY McDONOGH

Crawford, Joan

b. 1904; d. 1977

Glamour, ambition and drive crystallized a star quality around Crawford that carried

her through decades of success, although the off-screen cost of these qualities pervaded a

muckraking biography (

Mommie Dearest,

1978) and a highly stylized film biography in

which Faye Dunaway portrayed her as a consummate monster (1981). Yet Crawford on

screen often moved outside the comfort zone of

gender

stereotypes, whether in her wild

roles in the 1920s or her working-girl personae of the 1930s. Crawford reinvented hersel

as the suffering mother in

Mildred Pierce

(1945) and later as a harridan opposite Bette

Davis in

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

(1974). Her vivid image has lived beyond

her both in the impact of her films as a chronicle of women and imagery and in the

destruction of that star figure through

Mommie Dearest

Entries A-Z 303

GARY McDONOGH

creationism

scientific creationism

credit and credit cards

According to the Federal Reserve Board, outstanding consumer credit has soared from

$6,577.8 million in January 1943 to $1,370,880 million in October 1999. Much of this

increase has come in revolving credit, a concept that appears in Federal Reserve statistics

as of 1968, as major associations like Visa and Mastercard consolidated. By the late

1990s, over 2 billion credit cards circulated in the United States—roughly nine per

erson. Credit has facilitated consumerism (and debt) as hallmarks and dangers of the

middle class;

credit cards have become badges of identity as well as status. Yet, this

global revolution has also excluded the poor in important ways.

Earlier credit arrangements incorporated divisions of wealth and

class

Department

stores,

clubs and other services arranged billing or charge accounts for the bourgeoisie.

American Express, founded in 1850, has carved out a niche based on travel, corporate

money management and financial networking for an elite clientele, competing with

Diner’s Club and Carte Blanche. American Express charges a user’s fee for this service

and demands complete monthly payments; it also charges merchants more.

By contrast, those of limited means have depended on personalized arrangements

which have sometimes kept them locked into debt with merchants or employers. Others

have relied on layaways (planned pre-

ayment to gain necessary goods), as well as

savings and denial. Through yet another scheme, rental-

urchase, those without credit

ay many times the value of goods as they use them before possessing them outright. In

emergencies not covered by public assistance, the poor turn to families or fall into the

hands of predatory loan sharks who compound high interests on a weekly or monthly

asis. Credit unions and similar community ventures have sought to establish more

concrete savings and credit plans for workers and low-income groups.

Middle-class credit, by contrast, took shape in particular through consortia of banks

that facilitated payment through interconnecting branches in major cities. Franklin

ational Bank offered such a card in 1951, replacing experimental bank script. By 1966

the Interbank Card Association emerged, establishing global ties for what would become

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 304

Mastercard within a few years. Visa emerged from the Bank of American Bankamericard

(1958), consolidating national and international ties in the early 1970s and taking on its

current name in 1976. Together, these cards now account for 75 percent of the American

market; 50 percent for Visa, which issued 298 million cards in the US in 1998. They are

also hotly marketed at people at the beginning of financial maturity: 70 percent of

college

undergraduates have at least one, while special offers (usually reduced initial financing)

are mailed out weekly to target demographics, and televised

advertising

underscores that

“for everything else, there is Mastercard.” Citizens, in turn, use these cards to establish

credit ratings to validate future borrowing.

Since

banks

issuing one or both cards do not handle other cards, this Visa-Mastercard

monopoly has been attacked by American Express as well as by the smaller Discovery

card, originally founded and backed by merchandiser Sears Roebuck. In fact, Visa and

Mastercard have shown flexibility in organizing co-

randing arrangements with airlines,

vendors and even charities that account for 20,000 different kinds of credit cards

available. The message of all, however, is the same:

consumerism

is part of American

identity and credit cards, like driver’s licenses, are routinely solicited for identification as

well as necessities for such practices as car rental.

Unlike American Express, Visa and Mastercard charge less and may have no user’s

fee; instead, 75 percent of their profits come from charges on balances left unpaid, which

may reach 26 percent annually The weight of this debt has contributed to growing

ankruptcies and emphasized the alternative of debit cards or check cards which draw

money directly from accounts without exceeding available limits or charging interest. For

those who have lost their credit rating, new markets for credit counseling, debt

consolidation (often borrowing against house equity) and secured credit cards, which

allow spending up to a fixed-deposit limit, all offer routes into American consumer debt.

Not all observers are sanguine about the ease or implications of this transformation o

an American way of life. Critics have frequently raised questions about privacy and

control of personal knowledge, especially as credit cards mesh with the ubiquities of e-

commerce and increasingly smart cards are promoted. Yet, in this, it is also clear that the

US is not alone: Visa has issued 800 million cards worldwide and touts itself as a

universal currency where the total expenses for 1998 products and services reached

$1,400,000 million.

Further reading

Mandell, L. (1990)

The Credit Card Industry,

Boston: Twayne.

Ritzer, G. (1995)

Expressing America,

Thousand Oak: Pine Forge.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Entries A-Z 305