Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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stores also had a new style—cleaner, more open and interwoven with other shops. In the

1960s, downtown department stores faced further challenges to urban life—stores in the

South

were boycotted to end

segregation

that had meant that an

African American

woman could not even try on a hat. In the 1970s, Sunday openings pitted the rhythms o

downtown shopping against suburban weekends, forcing older stores to adapt amid

recessions.

Many institutions have disappeared: Wanama-ker’s in

Philadelphia, PA,

I.Magnum,

B. Altman’s and others, sometimes consolidated into chains but no longer an emblem o

urban triumph. Competition has also challenged the experience of shopping—service,

comfort and overwhelming goods—which Rowland Macy and Joseph Wanamaker

created.

Discount shopping represents a particularly interesting development. In the 1960s and

1970s, new chains offered less service and lower prices: K-Mart, Woolco, Walmart,

Target, Zayres. Such stores had won crucial concessions on manufacturers’ rights to

control prices that challenged their more expensive competitors. Later, hangar-like

warehouse stores like Sam’s, BJs and Costco extended this discount mania, including

higher-end goods. Manufacturers’ outlets also offered bargains (seconds, discontinued

and specially produced lines) for careful consumers, creating not only malls, but

“regions” of outlet centers. Department stores have competed with outlets, even as they

used them to dispose of post-sale goods in specialty outlets run by Sak’s, Nieman’s,

Nordstrum’s and Penney’s among others.

Department stores also changed in the 1980s and 1990s. New York saw the

construction of the extremely expensive new Barney’s (later in receivership), while

Japanese stores such as Takashimaya, Yaohan and Mizoguchi appeared in major urban

centers. Nieman’s and others expanded nationwide. Yet, other comprehensive chain

stores gnawed into individual departments as well—Williams Sonoma for foodware, for

example. Meanwhile, new catalogs offer alternatives for two-career families too busy to

shop, while targeting specialist consumers rather than the general shoppers of the

department store.

Internet

sales represent an emergent threat as well.

Hence, department stores, once monarchs of the city are now competitors in a

fragmented and sometimes placeless world of consumption. Some have tried out

cable

shopping channels (or worked with established ones like HSC or QVC for special

events). Others have highlighted their exclusiveness, historic charms, or convenience.

Macy’s legacy has adapted to both circumstances and imagination.

ee also:

consumerism

Further reading

Harris, L. (1979)

Merchant Princes,

New York: Harper & Row.

Leach, W. (1993)

Land of Desire,

New York: Pantheon.

Trachtenberg, J.A. (1996)

The Rain on Macy’s Parade,

New York: Time Business.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 336

GARY McDONOGH

depression

Often called “the common cold of mental health problems”—10 percent of all Americans

suffer from it, with one out of six experiencing a serious episode. Its causes are unclear.

Its treatment (pharmacological and psychotherapeutic) costs the nation $43 billion a year,

and its numbers are (inexplicably but surely) on the increase. Rates of clinical depression

have increased in each succeeding generation after 1915. While it remains prevalent

among the elderly the age of diagnosis is gradually dropping. With the drug Prozac—

arguably the panacea of the twentieth century—appearing on pediatricians’ (as well as

veterinarians’)

rescription pads amid a conspicuous arsenal of psychiatric

pharmacopoeia, depression is still not being defeated.

So what exactly is it? An imbalance of neurotransmitters—the chemical messengers o

the brain—is one answer. Hence the rebalancing by means of anti-depressant drugs,

including SSRIs, MAO inhibitors and tricyclics, all but replacing electroconvulsive

therapy. But why the imbalance? The answer to this is as comprehensive as whatever life

may bring: family context, loss, poor self-esteem, womanhood, adolescence, drug abuse

and possibly genetics.

While the ontology of depression belongs to medical discourse, depression exists

within a discursive matrix of social relationships, themselves constrained by a variety o

socialized and often tacit norms; for example: what behavior may be interpreted as

depressed, how to talk and behave around a depressed person and the process o

diagnosis. An understanding of depression cannot be divorced from the social and

discursive processes in which it is embedded.

MARIAELENA BARTESAGHI

deregulation

mass media; aviation, commercial; cable television

Detroit, MI

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The “Motor City” across the straits from

Canada

reached its apogee with Second World

War production, when the automotive “Big Three”—Ford, General Motors and

Chrysler—and related industries provided a solid industrial base, burgeoning

employment and global clout. Five decades later, Detroit symbolizes the rustbelt—

hemorrhaging people and jobs and deeply scarred by racial division. The estimated 1998

urban population plunged below 1 million (the metropolitan area exceeds 4 million).

Where

Motown

music celebrated an exuberant city in the 1960s, the recurrent arson o

“Devil’s Night”—when abandoned property blazes on Halloween—

rovides an eerier

emblem for the 1990s.

As Thomas Sugrue argues in

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in

ostwar Detroi

(1998), Detroit’s discrimination in employment and housing laid the

foundations for later decline, foreshadowed in 1943 riots. While manufacturing drew

diverse workers, neither owners nor the powerful United Auto Workers established

equality. By the 1950s, automation cost jobs and the city lacked land for updated plants,

which scattered around the US. The city’s growing black population was slammed by

segregation

and diminishing opportunities. Bloody riots in 1967 increased

white flight

to Grosse Point, Oak Park, Dearborn Heights, etc., while the inner city languished.

Capital and production shifts to cheaper assembly areas as well as the rise of foreign cars

further drained the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, as an

African American mayor

Coleman Young tried to respond with urban patronage.

Detroit retains vestiges of its one-time wealth and power, from the Diego de Rivera

murals in the Art Institute to its extensive library Wayne State University and its

successful sports teams—Tigers

(baseball),

Pistons

(basketball)

and Redwings

(hockey)

. Yet continuing crises overshadow the city in Ze’ev Chafet’s

Devil’s Nïght

(1990) or the chilling future of

Robocop

(1987).

Further reading

Sugrue, T. (1998)

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postward

Detroit,

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chafet, Z. (1990)

Devti’s Night,

New York: Random.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

diet

Diet refers to both the foods we normally eat and to special selections made for reasons

of health or change in body weight. In a country where you can never be too rich or too

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 338

thin, the term’s cultural signification is tied to calorie cutting and weight loss. The

combination of vast disposable income and variety of foods greater than any nation on

Earth, with the equation of beauty and thinness, has contributed to Americans’

schizophrenic approach to nutrition. Over half of the population has at one time or

another attempted to control weight by controlling food intake. With the weight-control

industry booming (miracle supplements, powders, “light” foods, prescription drugs,

fitness clubs, tens of nationwide diet programs, such as Weight Watchers, and thousands

of diet books and magazines), three-quarters of Americans are overweight. But regimens

of near-starvation in order to be thin are also growing, especially among

teenagers,

where levels of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are staggering.

The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) recommends a variety of foods,

low saturated fats, more consumption of fruits and vegetables and controlled

carbohydrate intake. But the nation’s quasi-obsession with fat has not yielded the desired

results. The preponderance on the market of “low-fat,” carbohydrate-rich snacks has

coincided with high rates of obesity While some may resort to fad diets (juice or cabbage

soup anyone?), it is worth noting that the oldest, healthiest people alive today survived

wartime food shortages and (gladly) ate steak. Food for thought.

MARIAELENA BARTESAGHI

dinette

Both the room or space set off from the kitchen and the furniture sets which have created

an informal eating space for American families without servants, especially in the 1950s

and 1960s. Dinette sets include tables and chairs of metal or Formica scaled down from

the formal ostentation of the dining room. The dinette became a place of morning coffees

(often seen in

soap operas

children’s

activities and other informal meals, as well as a

background for more formal events. By the 1990s, the

kitchen

service-counter often

replaced even this space for informal meals.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Dinkins, David

b. 1927

Mayor of

New York

City (1990–4). The first

African American

to lead New York

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City, Dinkins pledged to heal ethnic divisions in the nation’s largest and most diverse

metropolis. Dinkins’ tenure was instead marred by racial violence—in particular, the

1991 Crown Heights riots that erupted over rifts between African Americans and Hasidic

Jews

in Brooklyn. Dinkins was plagued by allegations that he mishandled the crisis,

criticism that subsequently contributed to his failed bid for a second term. He was

defeated by former prosecutor Rudolph W.Giuliani, who had a strong law-and-order

reputation.

SARAH SMITH

directors

As the person responsible for both the creative and technical form of a film, the director

occupies a pivotal position in a collaborative art form involving people, talents and

money In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century American directors have

become integral to the packaging of movies, whether

Hollywood

or independents. Yet,

this vision of director as the film’s primary author belies his or her status under the studio

system.

The earliest directors had wide-open opportunities: D.W.Griffith became a founding

father of Hollywood. His own studio legacy however, converted subsequent directors to

workers

within

the system. While some became identified with distinctive styles and

genres—e.g. Howard

Hawks

or John

Ford

with the

western

—others held control only

through constant battle. Alfred

Hitchcock

manipulated the system; Orson

Welles

went

into exile. Still others, though they produced masterpieces with materials and

stars

given

them, rarely achieved “ownership” and faced arbitrary assignments. The well-established

George Cukor (1899–1973), for example, was replaced after only ten days work on

Gone

With the Wind

(1939).

Re-evaluation of the director’s role came with the studios’ collapse and the

development of a film theory of “auteurship”

ased on European theory and practice o

more autonomous control. In the 1960s and 1970s, older figures were re-evaluated, while

new idiosyncratic visionaries arose, ranging from Sam

Peckinpah

to Woody

Allen,

Stanley Kubrick and Sylvester Stallone. Directorial ranks opened to film school graduates

and the less prestigious realm of

television

directing.

In the new Hollywood, the director is a key player to be negotiated (along with stars) in

producer’s

creation of a picture. Directors command power and prestige because o

their vision (Tim Burton, Martin Scorsese) or their box office (James Cameron, Jonathan

Demme). Steven

Spielberg

and George

Lucas

have become uniquely powerful through

their own economic success. Others build directing on their acting (John

Cassavetes,

Barbra

Streisand

). Directorial centrality also pervades the formation and aspirations o

independent cinema, despite anti-Hollywood trappings.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 340

The budgets and operations of Hollywood, since the 1920s, also have attracted skilled

directors from abroad. Ernst Lubitsh, Josef von Sternberg and Billy

Wilder

came from

Central Europe; Czech Milos Forman made his US debut in 1971. In the 1980s and

1990s, Hollywood has drawn the Taiwanese Ang Lee and Hong Kong’s John Woo.

Yet, even so, directing has remained a predominantly white male role for most o

Hollywood’s history. Despite pioneering work by Dorothy Aznar and Ida Lupino, women

rarely have directed bigger-

udget American movies; not one woman has been

nominated for Best Director. Some early skilled

African American

directors like Oscar

Micheaux (1884–1951) were able to produce and direct forty feature-length films within

a segregated Black cinema, but integration was slow. Photographer-essayist Gordon

Parks, for example, despite his sensitive

Learning Tree

(1969), found his career confined

blaxploitation films

. Since the 1980s, Spike

Lee,

John Singleton and a few other

black

males

have directed features; only Lee, however, has developed a substantive

career. Recognition for black women remains minimal. Women, African Americans and

other minorities—

Asian, Latino,

publicly gay people (after many closeted Hollywood

directors)—have also directed independent and documentary cinema.

CINDY WONG

disaster movies

Generations of cutting-edge special effects have met scene-chewing acting (heroic

sacrifice, cowardice, bonding) in

blockbuster

films about humans and catastrophes. The

1950s saw nuclear nightmares (monstrous animals and the scientists who loved them)

Them

(1954). A 1970s renaissance included

Earthquake

(1974),

Meteor

(1979) and

Irwin Allen shipwrecks and skyscraper fires

(Towering Inferno,

1974). Both “nature” and

human greed figure as causes. The genre also shares features with

science fiction

Ensemble casts mingle current idols, caricaturish villains and glamorous couples, often

with

children

at risk;

New York

City, NY,

Los Angeles, CA

and

Washington, DC

are

frequent targets, reaffirming American images of superiority even in interplanetary crises.

A vigorous 1990s cycle includes

Jurassic Park

(1993),

Twister

(1996) (tornadoes),

Volcano

(1997),

Godzilla

(1998) (transmuting Japanese nuclear nightmares),

eep

mpac

(1998) and

Armageddon

(1998) (meteors);

Titanic

(1997) shares features of the

genre. This florescence reflected fears of the millennium, but it also pushed the frontiers

of computer-generated effects and global box-office profits.

GARY McDONOGH

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disco

Disco emerged in the early 1970s as the most important form of

dance

music in Euro-

American markets—seen as affixed to a hedonistic, escapist and drug-drenched

lifestyle—reaching its apex in New York’s Studio 54. As a genre, the music featured

syncopated rhythms placed forefront in the mix, with the use of many studio synthesizer

effects from strings to percussion, as well as anonymous studio musicians. The tempo o

disco songs was fast; the singers, mostly female and

African American,

decried their

sufferings while insisting upon fortitude and resolve as in the disco anthem recorded by

Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive” (1977). Disco, by nature of the music and its outlets,

furthered the careers both of singers and of record producers. Other disco stars include

Donna Summer, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Cheryl Lynn, Grace Jones and the openly

gay Sylvester (in fact, the Village People, another disco act that both mimicked and

lampooned gay stereotyping, were not openly gay).

Although disco music was influenced by a pop predecessor, glam rock and its

emphasis on the fantastic and theatrical, disco was often seen as opposite to heavy metal

and album-oriented and arena rock that was also popular by the late 1970s and well

instituted on the FM dial. In fact, by 1977, before

punk

spread, there was a “disco sucks”

movement sponsored by radio stations that attracted

suburban

white youth, who insisted

that disco was escapist, synthetic and overproduced. The music was biased in favor of the

producer—as producers like Jacques Morali and Giorgio Moroder also became stars—

disco music attracted an urban audience of gays, blacks,

Hispanics

and

Italian

Americans

clad in sparkles and prints who sang along with Alicia Bridges when she sang

“I Love the Nightlife” (1979). It also fascinated film-makers again in the late 1990s.

EDWARD MILLER

discount stores

department stores

Disney, Walt

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 342

b. 1901; d. 1966

Walt Disney brought visions and values of small-town America to

mass media

and

theme parks;

his multimedia conglomerate continues to grow after his death. Disney

characters, films, books,

toys

and places, aggressively marketed, have sold America as a

magical kingdom to a global audience. Others have read the man and his legacy as an evil

empire defined by exaltation of carefully controlled consumerism, with over 400 Disney

stores around the world selling everything from lunch boxes to the Tarzan CD-ROM.

As an artist in Kansas City Kansas in 1919, Disney became involved in the production

of local

animation

/live-action shorts (Laugh-O-Grams). By 1923 he had moved to

Los

Angeles, CA

and created his own creative team and formats for animation. By 1928,

after business setbacks mediated by brother Roy Disney produced

Steam-boat Willie,

which united Mickey Mouse with sound (Walt did the voice). Over time, Disney’s

productions increased in quality (with music and color in the

Silly Symphonies

series),

while merchandising of Mickey and other items built revenues.

In the 1930s, Disney Studios pushed the boundaries of animation, including the first

animated feature film

Snow White

(1939) and the growing artistry and complexity o

inocchio

(1941) and

Fantasia

(1942), despite continuing financial concerns and

sometimes problematic labor relations. After the Second World War, Disney’s ability to

control products and profits from re-releases, marketing tie-ins and new ventures

provided a foundation to move into

television

and

Disneyland

(1955). The company also

continued to control its labor force tightly supporting

HUAC

investigations o

Hollywood labor organizers.

From Disney’s initial televisual outing, ABC’s

Disneyland

(1954–8), which promoted

the planned theme park on its first show, some form of Disney prime-time

children’s

television showcase continued for thirty years, although changing titles and networks (in

addition to the child ensemble of the

Mickey Mouse Club,

ABC, 1955–9). Disney

continued to seek creative development and public recognition through films like

Mary

oppins

(1964), plans for a larger, visionary Disneyworld and publicity suggesting him

for a

Nobel

prize. At his death in 1966, primary ownership of the studio stayed with the

family Roy Disney finished the Florida project before his death in 1971, by which time

studio profits had reached $250 million.

Despite the creative heritage the Disney corporation controlled, the next decade saw

diffuse initiatives in films and audiences. By the early 1980s, corporate Disney was

vulnerable to takeover battles that attracted Ivan

Boesky

and Michael

Milken

. Finally in

1984, the family reasserted control, bringing in Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey

Katzenberg to revitalize the company. Their initiatives spurred Disney production in

mature films (Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, Buena Vista), distribution (Miramax),

radio,

television,

cable,

multimedia and, finally the second golden age of Disney

animation with

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

(1987),

The Little Mermaid (

1989) and

successors. Disney theme parks continued a global expansion in Tokyo (1983), a still-

growing EuroDisney (1992) and Hong Kong (estimated opening 2005), augmented by the

urban Disney-Quest concept and Caribbean cruises.

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Disney’s corporate growth was rocked by the Eisner/Katzenberg split (as well as

roblems with Michael Ovitz), and subsequent court cases dragged out details of finance

and vituperation. In 1996, nonetheless, Disney moved to acquire the ABC network,

creating a concentration of entertainment power that has generated worries about

conflicting interests in journalism and creative competition. With Celebration, its new

urbanist planned community near Disneyworld, the corporation has blurred the

boundaries of theme park and idealized “real life.”

The Disney saga revels in many themes of American ideology—making it through

work, promoting freedom, supporting

family

and hometown. Darker shadows appear in

heavy-handed control of labor, stereotypes of

gender,

race

and place, and incessant

selling, not of the last product but the next. Here, its expanse, power and ideologies

remain themes of concern even as new generations of children worldwide delight in these

products themselves.

Further reading

Eliot, M. (1993)

Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince,

New York: Carol.

Findlay, J. (1992)

Magic Lands,

Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Thomas, B. (1998)

Building a Company,

New York: Hyperion.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Disneyland and Disneyworld

In the 1950s, Walt

Disney,

founder and head of the immensely successful Disney

Studios, came up with the idea for a new kind of amusement park, unlike existing

boardwalks and midways. Disney’s concept of a “theme park,” in which all attractions

were linked by unifying ideas such as the future, adventure, or fantasy became reality in

1955 when Disneyland opened in Anaheim,

California

From its opening date, known internally as “Black Monday”

ecause an unexpected

crush of visitors filled the park to beyond its capacity Disneyland proved enormously

popular with

families

. Many

children

became familiar with “The Happiest Place On

Earth” through Disney-produced children’s

television

shows. In Disneyland visitors

came face to face with characters they knew from Disney movies, such as Mickey

Mouse, Snow White and Goofy. Many attractions at Disneyland also took their cue from

Disney films. This unification of storytelling across media was both a creative

breakthrough and a brilliant stroke of cross-marketing, spawning numerous imitators.

The concept also changed over time. The integration of Disney shows like “It’s a Small

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 344

World” reveals its sensitivity to changing cultural norms (although employees have been

strictly controlled in look, attire and conduct). Disney also was frustrated by his inability

to control the plethora of cheap motels and competing attractions that enjoyed a parasitic

relationship with Disneyland. Hence, he bought up thousands of acres of undeveloped

property in central

Florida,

just west of Orlando, for a second theme park, although he

died before Disneyworld opened in 1971. While initially consisting of a replica of the

west-coast park, Disneyworld grew to include EPCOT (Experimental Prototype

Community of Tomorrow) Center, which Disney had envisioned as the ultimate product

of his utopian ideal of a functioning city. In practice, EPCOT is merely another theme

park, albeit one which uses technology

community

and globalism as conceptual

frameworks. In subsequent years, other attractions have been added and Disneyworld has

supplanted Disneyland as the number-one tourist destination in the United States. Most

recently Disney’s planned community concept became a reality when the new urbanistic

town of Celebration, Florida began inviting residents to its locale within the Disney

property The corporation has also constructed Disneyland parks in

Japan

and France.

Disneyland and Disneyworld’s most lasting achievement is their unprecedented pre-

eminence as tourist attractions. One or the other has been the top US tourist destination

for four decades. Overall, Disneyland and Disneyworld occupy a particular place in

American culture as the ultimate embodiment of the American urge to escape reality and

indulge in fantasy and as a titan of an industry in which Americans have had particular

success and are conspicuous consumers: dream-making.

Further reading

Bright, R. (1987)

Disneyland,

New York: H.N. Abrams.

Findlay, J. (1992)

Magic Lands,

Stanford: Stanford University Press

The Project on Disney (1995)

Inside the Mouse,

Durham: Duke.

ROBERT ANDERSON

divorce

Although the legal dissolution of

marriage

has existed throughout American history

divorce rates increased dramatically during the late twentieth century This resulted from

many factors, including the relaxation of legislation, secularization and heightened

expectations for emotional satisfaction within marriage. Only two out of 1,000 American

marriages ended in divorce in 1866 (the world’s highest divorce rate at the time). By

1929 that increased to one out of six; by 1990 it was nearly one out of two. Even among

cultural and religious traditions that proscribe divorce, it has become increasingly

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