Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Gallup, G., Jr. and Castelli, J. (1989)

The People’s Religion,

New York: MacMillan

Publishing Company.

Lewis, J.R. (1998)

Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions,

Amherst:

Prometheus Books.

Miller, T. (ed.) (1995)

America’s Alternative Religions,

Albany: State University of New

York Press.

GAIL HENSON

cultural studies

The very attempt to define cultural studies would be seen by many of its practitioners as

reductive and antithetical to the free-roaming spirit of a subject which, despite an

extended and distinguished history still prides itself on its ability to resist rigid

disciplinary frameworks. During its evolution, cultural studies has incorporated a variety

of approaches, yet has held them intact within itself rather than absorbing and conflating

them. As such it should be seen less as a melting-

ot than a cage of bees, where

feminism, anthropology, film criticism,

Marxism, postcolonialism, literary criticism,

postmodernism

and

queer

theory swarm in debate. As a consequence, it currently has

no single established methodology.

Nevertheless, certain trends and patterns can be drawn from this seeming chaos,

including a history which most would agree stretches back at least to Richard Hoggart’s

The Uses of Literacy

(1957) and Raymond Williams’

Culture and Society

(1958).

Cultural studies in Britain established a solid base through Hoggart’s creation, with Stuart

Hall, of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1964. It would be

inaccurate to draw any kind of “house style” from the debates within the Birmingham

School, but we can identify an interest in “subcultural”

fashions

and behavior and in

audience interpretation of popular texts, made more urgent through an engagement with

feminism, with questions of

“race”

and identity and with the Gramscian notion o

“hegemony,” as it applied to 1970s Britain.

These approaches to cultural studies were not exported directly across the Atlantic, but

reached the United States through the filter of French theory—Bourdieu, Foucault and de

Certeau—whose stress on a decentered micropolitics of society had increasing relevance

to the complex and fragmented cultures of 1980s North America. In practice, cultural

studies in the USA has developed as a mutated anthropology: an investigation into the

urban tribes of sunbathers,

mall

shoppers and

romance

readers which interrogates

popular cultures and “subcultural” fan groups. As such, it brings the unseen—the trivial,

the homemade, the “minority” reading—to light, and makes the familiar seem alien.

Despite the shifts in content and focus, these studies invariably have in common with

oth their French and British counterparts a grounding in issues of cultural power and its

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 316

relation to media representation. John Fiske’s work on the quintessential landscapes and

landmarks of the 1980s were highly influential here, although others have since

questioned his optimism in the supposedly transformative power of audience readings.

If the North American academy gave cultural studies a boost in popularity and

respectability it also prompted a crisis: the expansion of the subject across universities

and conferences meant that this “counter-discipline” had itself become an established and

increasingly profitable media industry Even as cultural studies becomes a truly

international force, with important contributions from Australia, Italy Hong Kong and

even the virtual nation-states of the

Internet,

this paradox continues to hover over the

subject and its practice.

Further reading

Biles, R. (1995)

Richard J.Daley: Politics, Race and the Governing of Chicago,

DeKalb:

Northern Illinois University Press.

Cohen, A. and Taylor, E. (2000)

American Pharoah: Mayor Richard J.Daley: His Battle

for Chicago and the Nation,

Boston: Little Brown.

Royko, M. (1971)

Boss,

New York: E.P. Dutton.

SUSAN BRIN HYATT

Dallas, TX

Formed by conjunctions of railroads, cattle, oil, finance and technology the glassy spires

Entries A-Z 319

of Dallas rise from the Central

Texas

plains, surrounded by highways and

suburban

sprawl. This wealthy city of 1,075,894 (1998 estimate) is also a center for art,

education

(Baylor, Southern Methodist and Dallas Universities),

medicine

and

religion,

especially

massive evangelical churches. NeimanMarcus

department store,

famed for its fabulous

Christmas

catalog,

and

computer

maker Texas Instruments are also based there. Sports

teams include the world champion Cowboys

(football)

and the Mavericks

(basketball);

baseball’s

Texas Rangers play in adjacent Arlington. The city shares an

airport

with

nearby Fort Worth in a metropolitan area of over 4 million, including fast-growing

suburbs like Plano.

The

assassination

of President John F.

Kennedy

on November 22, 1963 and the

televised events that followed inscribed Dallas on world consciousness: the sixth-floor

museum in the Texas Book Depository commemorates this tragedy. In the 1980s, the

city’s image was reshaped by the

prime-time

soap opera

Dallas

. The grittier realism o

Errol Morris’ documentary

Thin Blue Line

(1986) and other works recognize the

class

and racial diversity of the area and its problems.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG.

dance

The dynamic and innovative complexities of the populist and egalitarian aspirations o

American dance in the twentieth century have also expressed the shift of the US from

isolationism to the role of primary world power on the world stage plus internal racial

problems concerning national identity. Contrasting perceptions of “what is American

dance?” resulted, ranging from the external (that usually focus on the more popular multi-

cultural forms) to fragmented internal visions (that depend on what sector of society is

viewing what type of dance).

By the beginning of the twentieth century America had produced two major

“modernist” dance movements based on urban rhythms. Modern dance led by Louie

Fuller and Isadore Duncan referenced back to early nineteenthcentury salon dancing, but

was forward in its use of day-to-day movement techniques. Authentic jazz dance (AJD)

harnessed a unique American thrusting sense of rhythmic dynamics, which had first been

worked out in minstrel shows, and which subsequently influenced most other American

dance forms.

Modern dance began as a reaction against the decorative role of the female body in

ballet and vaudeville, and asserted a creative ‘high-art’ status of the female form.

Reflecting the burgeoning struggles for women’s rights, it inevitably expressed the

compromises the American suffragist movement made with racism. Early modern

dance’s “white” agenda overtly rejected “Negro influences” and acquired its original

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 320

validation in Europe. The “Denishawn School” of Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn, who

overcame Duncan’s free-form legacy looked to Native American and South American

dances for “folk” inspiration to formulate a systematic technique based on movement

method. Images from Denishawn productions have a distinct, early

Hollywood

melodramatic look to them, but their highly gifted students have had a decisive impact on

subsequent developments.

Authentic jazz dance developed through a series of push-

ull impulses in conjunction

with

jazz

music. New dance crazes led to demands for more bands, raising standards o

musicianship and provoking further dance developments. World impacting social dance

crazes like the cakewalk, one-step and Charleston defied a sustained campaign of racist

moral outrage and were incredibly popular in

college

dances and Prohibition-defying

drinking venues. A similar push-

ull dynamic between stage and social versions of the

same dance was at work which took the latest popular dance to new levels of technical

complexity while ushering in its replacement. The segregated “jazz age” developed a

complex network of black theatres around which these artists worked and from which

they made occasional forays into

Broadway

. Hit shows like

Shuffle Along

(1921) and

unning Wild

(1923) brought the “carriage trade’”—upper-class

New York

—uptown

where they were enthralled by an abundance of talent in clubs like the Cotton Club and

Connie’s Inn, largely run and owned by gangsters. Simultaneously major

African

American

stars emerged like Florence Mills, Josephine Baker and Bill “Bojangles”

Robinson.

The 1929 Crash and the ensuing Depression struck hammer blows at this pattern o

entertainment, and the dance forms that emerged afterwards were significantly different.

Segregation

was still in place, but

Roosevelt’s

New Deal engendered a new populist

sense of American identity that shaped the ensuing dance developments. The lifting o

the restrictions in 1934, which had almost wiped out the many forms of Native American

dance, was complemented by a widespread enthusiasm for square dancing in the 1930s.

The prejudicial element of early modern dance was overtaken by a new radicalism led by

a third wave of young dancer/choreographers (the foremost being Martha Graham), who

were christened “modern dancers.” They looked to American cultural icons for

inspiration. Black dancers struggling with the artistic straightjackets imposed on AJD acts

or the associated intense exploitation began to establish a niche in modern dance that led

to the emergence of artists of the caliber of Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus.

Even the essentially foreign ballet residents in the US began to move in the same

direction. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo had toured across the US for many years, and

slowly created a demand for ballet. The realization of a distinct American identity had

been held back in the pre-war years by Balanchine’s feud with the management of the

“Met.” Balanchine’s production

On Your Toes

(1936), set in a gangster idiom, was the

first to tell an American tale. Lincoln Kirstein played a major role in promoting the

concept of an American classic ballet style and wrote libretti for ballets which introduced

American themes such as

Billy the Kïd

(1938) and

Filling Station

(1938). The American

Ballet Theatre, founded in 1939, out of which Jerome Robbins emerged, sustained a

Entries A-Z 321

policy of featuring “stars” and classic works, although its turnover in choreographers

often led to featuring new ones. Eventually Kirstein and Balanchine’s efforts resulted in

the formation of the New York City Ballet.

Mocking high-art aspirations nevertheless remained highly popular in the

musical

dance comedy film of Fred

Astaire

and Ginger Rodgers and the slapstick of the Marx

Brothers which, at the same time, accommodated to those selfsame values. The jazz

tradition emerged from the wreckage of the Wall Street crash as “swing” to become the

dominant popular influence in live entertainment. Included in this reincarnation were the

social and stage dance forms created in the 1920s—lindy hop, rhythm, tap and various

eccentric dance styles—to which the rapidly expanding swing bands gave a new lease o

life. For one brief historical moment, when swing was the popular music of the day the

US achieved a kind of national cultural consensus that lasted until the outbreak of the

Second World War.

The war eventually ushered in another major cultural re-adjustment as the US began to

fulfill its role as a world power. AJD was considered to be socially inadequate to project

the cultural image of the US to the world (although in practice this was exactly what was

happening), while modern dancers were too divided among different schools to construct

a unified picture. Instead, the US took the ballet road. Early in the war, before the swing

identity was rejected, films made a case for American cultural diversity by adopting

Latin/jazz themes which saw the emergence of the astounding Nicholas brothers as major

stars in various dancefeatured films directed by Nick Castle and Hermes Pan. The 1930s

exploration of American themes bore fruit with Agnes De Mille’s

Oklahoma!

(1943) on

Broadway and Jerome Robbins’ comedy ballet

Fancy Free

(1944).

Cowboys

and US

sailors dancing ballet had replaced Russian peasants and, for a while, the Euro-American

identity that the modern pioneers had searched for was actualized and popular, but based

on ballet technique.

The new “musical” form, which used dance and song for narrative purposes, replaced

the old Broadway revue that had ranged from the glories of Zeigfeld to the diverse skills

of the all-black shows. Any hopes aroused by the musical film

Stormy Weather

(1943),

which had merged AJD with black modern dance, were soon dashed by the lack of any

sequels.

Oklahoma!

began a golden age of the musical which is generally thought to

conclude with Jerome Robbins’

Fiddler On The Roof (l964)

. A great deal of the new

allet and modern choreographic talent was diverted into a profusion of shows that

alternated between the two technique forms. Michael Kidd was an outstanding ballet

contributor with

Finian’s Rainbow

(1947) and

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

(1954),

along with Robbins’

West Side Story

(1957). Helen Tamaris, another product o

Denishawn, scored with her choreography for musicals like

Show Boat

(1946), which

featured Pearl Primus, and

Annie Get Your Gun

(1946). Yet another Denishawn graduate,

Jack Cole, was the major modernist in the background whose influence was often

expressed via others. For instance, one of his former company dancers, Alex Romero,

who worked at MGM as an assistant director, staged a Cole-influenced “Slaughter on

10th Avenue” scene for Gene

Kelly,

the

Jailhouse Rock

(1957) sequence for Elvis

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 322

Presley

and actually danced the “difficult” parts in the final

Fancy Free

ballet at the end

On The Town

(1949) that Frank

Sinatra

couldn’t handle. Bob Fosse’s Broadway

breakthrough with

Damn Yankees

(1955), which featured the brilliant Louis Johnson’s

spectacular routine, was also strongly influenced by Cole.

After

Fiddler,

the Broadway musical appeared to be unsettled by the rapidly changing

but dominating “youth culture.” It found success in re-staging former hit shows, reversing

the former progression by making stage hits out of hit film musicals or by striking lucky

with the occasional hit musical that connected with contemporary rock/pop trends.

Further respite was found in the old staple of shows about putting on shows, such as

Chorus Line

(1975) and

Fame

(movie 1980, musical 1995), but they too faded. Modern

dancers had become “successful” in the

postwar situation and were no longer driven by the anti-

allet ethos of their founders

and 1930s political concerns. Downtown New York’s artistic shift towards the abstract

and minimalism pointed to new paths. Merce

Cunningham,

who was connected to

avant-garde painting schools, became the best-known dancer to reject narrative in favor

of chance, both in terms of composition and accompaniment. Paul Taylor, Trisha Brown

and others adopted this rather peculiar definition of

“postmodernism,”

which had more

in common with better known examples of pre-war “modernism.”

The evolving black modern dance companies were not willing to follow this lead. The

expanding

civil-rights

struggles demanded commitment. Black dancers had made

headway in the developing postwar dance scene and crossed between Broadway musicals

and modern, but there was a continuing problem with “

race

casting” that frustrated major

artists like Dunham and Primus. This led to a greater emphasis on setting up their own

schools and conducting research in which they nurtured a new generation of brilliant

young black dancers. Significant companies to facilitate the development of these new

artists were Alvin

Ailey

in 1958 and Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of

Harlem

1969. Interest in various forms of African dance grew in the 1970s as part of the black

consciousness movement, which restored a great deal of the discarded dance vocabulary

Twyla Tharp revised the American dance definition of postmodernism into a kind o

historicism that re-worked many icons of American culture. In the 1970s, she was the

first major white modern choreographer to use jazz music since the Second World War.

Her American-sourced work in general surpassed her occasional lapses into classicism.

Other choreographers have followed Tharp, and many of the former distinctions

concerning “black dance” have been eroded. In the late 1990s, a greater willingness to

work with jazz musicians was evident. However, the replacement of the essential

“creative democracy” of AJD by the direction of the ballet master or choreographer has

diminished the status of the dancer, despite some postmodernist token gestures towards

dancers’ creativity Few, if any of the major modern dance companies pay their dancers a

living wage so they have to support themselves via part-time work. Ironically the

recognition that the founders of modern dance had set out to achieve in terms of its

dancers has yet to be won.

Despite wartime successes, US ballet still needed help and the British Sadler Wells

Entries A-Z 323

company’s repeat tours fanned the flames. A major Ford Foundation grant helped

establish the New York City Ballet in its purpose-

uilt home in the Lincoln Center, as

well as greatly to extend its ballet school. As the American musical lost its élan, new

regional schools helped develop major regional ballet companies in

Miami, FL,

Houston, TX,

Atlanta, GA

and other cities. American ballet, like the musical, has

tended to lose its former special sense of direction as it has become more established, but,

unlike the musical, has had a greater legacy to fall back on.

Regarding developments in popular dance, the major jolt of wartime experience

seemed to result in a postwar elder generation wanting excessively mellow dance music

and a younger one demanding pronounced rhythms. The black community which had

turned in on itself in terms of

rhythm and blues,

found itself invaded by young whites,

leading to a panic among those who believed that

rock ’n’ roll

promoted excessive

“African” bodily movements. Evidently the “twist” temporarily resolved this problem

while the English invasion, by repackaging rhythm and blues in a white form, solved it

y selling it back to the US minus its intrinsic dance connection. Black creativity kept

welling up in successive waves of 1960s

soul,

1970s

disco

and 1980s hip hop. In some

cases, the continuity was quite conscious. The tap maestro “Cholly” Atkins taught pop

music vocal groups, like the Drifters and the Temptations, the old routines to improve the

visual quality of their stage acts. In turn these movement patterns were imitated by new

generations of young Americans and reproduced as the “new” dance styles of the 1970s.

In other cases it was unconscious—as in the hip-hop breakdancers of the 1980s

reworking Charleston footwork with a barely remembered but distinct throwback to the

1910s black American craze for Russian dance, which gave them many of their more

spectacular sequences.

A strong American social dance identity centered on the New York Harvest Moon Ball

Dance contest, survived until 1974 when it too fell victim to the all-

ervasive disco craze.

American competition dancers have found it difficult to make much progress in the

international ballroom world that adheres to the highly mannered English style, but they

have been able to take control of the new “Theatre Arts” category which essentially

reprises classic “musical” sequences. A semi-hidden asset of American dance identity has

been the two most “Americanized” of Latin dance forms—the mambo and

salsa

—which

are still thriving in the city and preserve many core values. American dance has sustained

the spirit of flamboyant rhythmic

individualism

that 1980s stars like Michael

Jackson,

Madonna

and MC Hammer took to new heights, riding on the emergence of the

globalized pop-video art form.

Recently New York has seen a significant enhancement of its American dance identity.

Rhythm tap is back (led by the prodigy Savion Glover), lindy hop has swung out again

onto the ballroom floor, the Fosse style is dominant once more on stage and formerly

derelict 42nd Street theatres have been refurbished. Yet, American dance in New York,

the self-proclaimed “world capital of dance,” is threatened by soaring land values, which

have eliminated adequate rehearsal rooms, and a general indecision as to the way

forward. Radio City Music Hall and its legendary Rockettes are under a rumored

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 324

emblematic ominous threat. Perhaps the legendary toughness of New York dancers will

enable them to hang on and the future of American dance will not have to rest, for the

most part, on whatever resources American

colleges

can devote to preserving the nation’s

heritage.

TERRY MONAGHAN

Danish modern

In the 1960s, Scandinavian design evoked clean lines, simple elegance and bright colors

as statements of modernity in walnut, steel and glass for American

suburban

homes and

sleek new offices. This trend coincided for some with images of Scandinavia as

consisting of progressive liberal societies, whether in politics or

pornography

. Decades

later, this design fad underwent a nostalgic revival, while IKEA has appealed to

yuppie

consumers in major metropolitan centers with new generations of Swedish design.

GARY McDONOGH

Daschle, Tom

b. 1947

Born in South Dakota, Democrat Tom Daschle was first elected to the United States

Congress

in 1978 by only 139 votes. He served four terms in the House o

Representatives before winning his current Senate seat in 1986. In the Senate, Daschle

quickly got involved in the

Democratic Party

leadership, acting for six years as co-chair

of the Democratic Policy Committee before assuming his leadership position in the 104th

Congress. In the Senate’s history only Lyndon Baines

Johnson

had spent fewer years in

the Senate before winning such a post. Daschle also serves on the Senate Agriculture

Committee.

COURTNEY BENNETT

Dash, Julie

b. 1952

Entries A-Z 325