Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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using night and shadows as primary elements. Camera angles were also less “neutral”

than in Hollywood cinema: directing and yet disorienting the viewer. Frames were

shattered by intervening objects, and characters were seen only in harsh light from the

side or in shadows. Plots, driven by fate rather than logic, were morality plays rather than

cogent narratives.

Film noir was also highly urban, underscoring the economic and moral tensions of the

postwar city Warehouses,

waterfronts,

nightclubs and dangerous streets set the stage,

although

directors

also used monumental

architecture

train

stations, skyscrapers

and bridges.

New York

City, NY,

Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA

became key noir

cities, while “sunny sites” like amusement parks (

Strangers on a Train,

1951) or

California beaches took on destructive meanings (

Kïss Me Deadly,

1955).

Women evidenced new power in film noir. While often duplicitous or even villainous,

they moved the action along at the expense of men who were lost, confused or ignorant

(Barbara Stanwyck versus Fred MacMurray in

Double Indemnity

). The femme fatale’s

slinky costumes, posture and inevitable cigarette identified her as openly sexual—the

antithesis of the bright, cheerful suburban housewife. Men, by contrast, were baggy-

suited detectives, reporters, lawyers, insurance agents or policemen—trapped and

destroyed rather than liberated.

Although film noir is identified with B-movies, Orson

Welles

produced one of the last

great noir films in

Touch of Evil

(1958), while

Hitchcock

shared elements of noir style.

Moreover, noir continues to fascinate audiences and film-makers as diverse as Godard,

John Woo and Wim Wenders. Both the style and the moral ambiguity of noir are used in

later American movies like

Chinatown

(1974),

Blade Runner

(1982) and

Confidential

(1997).

ee also:

Ellroy James

Further reading

Kaplan, E. (ed.) (1980)

Women in Film Noir,

New York: Limelight (provides interesting

gender perspectives).

Silver, A. and Ursini, J. (eds) (1996)

Film Noir Reader,

London: BFI.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

financial aid

Intended to offer a greater range of students access to various educational options,

financial aid to schools and students comes in several forms.

Private schools

are

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 426

maintained primarily by high tuition rates, but many private schools have endowments

which allow them to offer partial or complete financial support to some of their students.

ublic school

education from

kindergarten

through 12th grade is free to students, and

funding sources include revenues generated from local property

taxes,

allocations from

the state based on levels of poverty, and monies from the federal government, usually in

the form of grants for special needs. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act o

1965 included titles aimed at enhancing educational opportunities for “underprivileged”

children,

including Title I, which provides funds for the improvement of educational

programs for students identified as educationally “at risk.”

While K-12 public education is free, postsecondary education is not, and there is a

range of financial aid possibilities available to students wishing to attend both public and

private institutions beyond the

high-school

level. Three major financial aid sources are

college

scholarship money, drawn from endowments; grants or aid, which are a variation

of loans with low to no interest; and work-study money from the Department of Labor,

including Pell grants and Stafford loans. Application for aid is made through the colleges,

each of which receives a particular allocation of loan money and colleges must adhere to

various guidelines by which federal money is allocated and recipients selected.

ALISON COOK-SATHER

Fire Island

A barrier island, accessible only by boat, 2 hours east of

New York

City, With no roads,

Fire Island’s seventeen

communities

each have distinctive identities. Remoteness and

isolation, notably made Cherry Grove the world’s earliest predominantly gay town from

the 1930s onwards. Cherry Grove and neighboring Fire Island Pines are internationally

famous summer destinations for gay and lesbian residents and visitors. In the 1960s, Fire

Islanders helped create the Fire Island National Seashore

national park,

stopping

developers who hoped to build a

highway

. This helped preserve the unique and remote

seaside blend of natural resources and residential communities.

MARC L.OSTFIELD

First Amendment

Bill of Rights

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First Ladies

The wife of the president occupies a central but largely undefined role beyond ceremonial

duties and expectations of help in campaigning, outreach and family life. Each First Lady

has imposed her own stamp upon the role. In the late twentieth century many especially

Republicans,

appeared feminine, dutiful wives in their public persona. Others have

rought more extensive questions and changes to the White House, evoking both

admiration and rejection. Their iconic status is memorialized in a

Smithsonian

Institution

exhibit of First Ladies in characteristic gowns.

Anna Eleanor

Roosevelt

(1884–1962), for example, proved an outspoken liberal

during her husband’s four terms and afterwards, when she remained active in the

Democratic Party

and international affairs. This evoked both devotion and hatred that

often divided along political and social lines. Her successors, Democrat Elizabeth

Virginia Wallace (“Bess”) Truman (1885–1982) and Republican Mamie Geneva Dowd

Eisenhower (1896–1979), took on more typically domestic roles in the 1950s, embodying

small-town,

Midwestern

values; vice-

residential candidate wife Patricia Ryan Nixon

(1912–93) also symbolized these values when her husband refuted influencepeddling

charges by referring to her plain cloth coat. While Mrs Nixon would later become a

protector in her husband’s scandal-ridden administration, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier

Kennedy

Onassis

(1929–94) brought youth (aged thirty-one), beauty style and patrician

charm to her husband’s brief Democratic presidency and became a beloved symbol as

widow and mother after his death. She also made the role of First Lady more publicly

active in terms of restoration of the White House and support for the Arts. Her

cosmopolitan charm on a state visit to Paris led her husband to quip that he was the man

who had accompanied Jackie to France.

After

Kennedy’s

assassination, Democrat Claudia Taylor “Lady Bird” Johnson (1912–

) promoted local and national beautification. Similarly after

Nixon’s

resignation, another

Republican wife, Elizabeth Bloomer “Betty” Ford (1918–), restored light to White House

life. She also became a mentor in discussing her battles with

cancer

and drug and

alcohol

dependency which led to the formation of the Betty Ford Clinic.

In the 1970s, Democratic wife Rosalyn Smith Carter (1927–) established a more

“hands-on”

osition in government, attending Cabinet meetings and touring

internationally which led to accusations of interference that also plagued her Republican

successor, Nancy Davis Reagan (1923–). Reagan used her position to campaign against

drugs (“Just Say No!”); her love of designer

clothes,

wealthy friends, astrology and her

influence on her husband were all attacked by critics. Barbara Pierce

Bush

(1925–),

although devoted to literacy campaigns, also restored domesticity to the White House.

The last First Lady of the millennium, Hillary Rodham Clinton, revived many o

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 428

Eleanor Roosevelt’s liberal public roles—and vicious criticisms. Her search for a balance

etween feminist independence and American expectations of wives and mothers has

een evident in changes of style and presentations of self. With her intelligence, legal

background and drive, she initially appeared as a “partner” in the administration, notably

healthcare reform,

but galvanized hatred among conservatives for this and other

policy and personal issues. Public sympathy for her grew during the

impeachment

rocedures. In 2000 she moved out of the White House to pursue her senatorial bid in

ew York, an independent career no former First Lady has ever attempted within her

olitical marriage. Whether she marks a new role model for the First Lady will be tested

by future candidates and perhaps by the “first man” to shape this public/private role.

GARY McDONOGH

fishing, commercial and angling

Commercial fishing in the United States, as worldwide, has been affected by

environmental degradation. The main source of this degradation since the 1970s has been

over-fishing by fleets of vessels competing in a very lucrative market. According to the

ational Marine Fisheries Service, American fishing vessels caught 9.5 billion pounds o

fish and shellfish in 1991, worth about $3.3 billion. This was double the amount of fish

caught in 1970. Generally American fishermen have caught Alaskan pollock, menhaden,

salmon, crab and cod, with

Alaska

dominating the industry followed by the

Texas

/Gul

and Chesapeake regions. American consumers’ constant demand for shrimp, however,

has led to a large fisheries trade deficit.

The reduced harvests that have resulted from the depletion of numerous fish species

have only exacerbated the problem in the short term as increased prices for fish have

made competition more intense. In the long term, livelihoods are threatened and whole

fishing towns have been hit by widespread unemployment. In addition, the need both to

reduce costs (sometimes in the area of safety procedures) and to locate harvests at a

greater distance from the shore has made work—for those who are able to find it—more

dangerous. In many instances, the vulnerability of old fishing populations has enabled

new immigrants to establish their own fishing vessels, though the continued deterioration

of the harvests makes this only a short-term replacement.

Attempts to control the amount harvested have had significant consequences in

international relations and in relations among social groups within the United States. The

Japanese have often resisted American attempts to limit the amount of their catches,

leading to friction between the two nations. Within the United States,

American Indian

fishing rights have been established by treaties and so cannot be challenged or altered

according to environmental exigencies. For example, whaling remains legal for

American Indian

tribes on the west coast, while for other fishermen there are strict

Entries A-Z 429

prohibitions in place. However, the traditional whaling methods used by

American

Indians

limit the number of whales that they can catch.

Meanwhile, angling is the second most popular recreation in the United States behind

swimming

. An estimated 50 million Americans participate in the sport, 69 percent o

them men. The sport is controlled by the states, which set the rules and regulations and

give licenses to anglers to fish. Thirty-four million such licenses were given in 1994. But,

efore assuming that widespread eradication of fishing populations is occurring in the

streams and ponds of the United States, it should be remembered that it is estimated that

90 percent of the fish are caught by only 10 percent of the anglers. This suggests that

most anglers have little clue about what they are doing, are quite possibly motivated by

other things about the recreation besides the catch alone (a suntan and a snooze) and

perhaps would not enjoy it much if they caught fish too frequently.

Environmental issues also affect fishing significantly. During much of the twentieth

century rivers around the country were so polluted as a result of untreated industrial

waste flowing into them that they were almost completely bereft of fish. With the

intervention of the

Environmental Protection Agency

and the growing concern over the

environment as a political issue, many states have taken initiatives to clean up rivers and

other waterways. Many such bodies of water are now seeing the reappearance of fish

populations that have not been seen for decades.

In addition to pollution, global warming and long hot summers in many parts of the US

have altered the conditions for anglers. In many ponds, streams and rivers dead fish have

een found in the middle of each summer floating on top of algae. Dry weather and heat

contribute to the growth of such algae, which then consume the oxygen in the water and

cause the fish to suffocate. Where this is not the case, the warm water leads fish like carp

and striped bass to head for cooler, fast-moving streams that are more difficult for the

angler to master, or for deeper spots in lakes and streams where they are beyond the reach

of the anglers’ lures. In other words, the fish can adapt to the changing weather better

than the anglers, who are increasingly left with little more than a cancerous sunburn on

the embankment.

ROBERT GREGG

Fitzgerald, Ella

b. 1918; d. 1996

Dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald’s musical career spanned almost

sixty years and extended to forays into movies and

television

. In 1934 she won an

amateur contest at the Apollo that led to her 1935 recording debut with the Chick Webb

orchestra. In 1938 a swinging adaptation of the old nursery rhyme, “A Tisket, A Tasket,”

was her first commercial success. In the late 1950s, she recorded with Louis

Armstrong

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 430

and Duke Ellington. The first black woman ever awarded a Grammy, Fitzgerald went on

to win twelve more.

COURTNEY BENNETT

five and dimes

Typical

Main Street

emporia, offering cheap notions, cosmetics and gifts—the name

referred to the initial prices. F.W.Woolworth (founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in

1879) later constructed a skyscraper in

New York

and claimed to be the largest retailer in

the world, while Kresge, McCrory’s and others were immortalized in songs and movies.

In the 1950s, Southern “five-and-tens” became sites of

civil-rights

battles when blacks

fought to integrate their lunch-counters. In the 1960s, these spun off discount retailers

Woolco and K-Mart, which by the 1980s effectively overwhelmed their parents and

eventually even replaced them on downtown avenues.

ee also:

consumerism

GARY McDONOGH

flea markets

yard sales/flea markets/ consignments

Florida

Mild climate and more than 1,200 miles of coastline have been the impetus of steady

opulation growth for the Sunshine State since the Second World War. During the war,

Florida thrived economically as a major military training area. Needed infrastructure

supporting rapid postwar growth was thus in place. Exposure of servicemen to the area as

well as the inviting climate made Florida a haven for retirees and winter residents,

swelling sizes of some cities tremendously during the “season” (winter months in south

Florida and during the fall in northern Florida). Year round nearly 20 percent of visitors

are attracted by

Disneyworld

alone. Residents such as John and Mabel Ringling, Ernest

Hemingway,

Tennessee

Williams

and Jack

Kerouac

were among those lured to Florida

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for its climate and natural beauty. Migrant workers also increase local populations as they

follow harvesting cycles.

Tourism,

citrus, cattle and phosphorus are currently at the base

of Florida’s economic development, though film is becoming important.

frican Americans

such as Mary McLeod Bethune played a significant role in

shaping Florida’s cultural and economic identity, as chronicled in the more than 141 sites

listed for the Florida Black Heritage Trail. Native Americans are also prominent.

Cuban

Americans

and

Haitian Americans

now constitute a significant proportion of the

opulations in major growth centers, contributing unique cultural influences to areas such

Miami, FL

(Little Havana) and Tampa (Ybor City).

Florida is also well known for its unique natural beauty which is well illustrated

through writings of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

(The River of Grass),

William Bartram

(

Travels;

naturalist art also displayed in the British Museum) and Marjorie Rawlings

(The

Yearling),

as well as Miccosukee and Seminole Indian art and numerous roadside

fol

artists

such as E.B.Ott and Ruby Williams. Zora Neale Hurston

(Of Mules and Men)

described not only the rich environment of rural Florida, but also provided insight into

the struggles of people to coexist in Florida’s subtropical environment. Environment is

also a strong feature in works of John MacDonald (Travis McGee series) and

sciencefiction writer Kate Wilhelm. Florida’s Keys and sunsets are postcard symbols for

the state.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Florida achieved prominence in the glory days of

NASA

Climate played a role in the selection of Cape Canaveral as a primary US spaceport.

Though hurricanes and lightning are common, the strategic location for tracking as well

as the generally good weather have made the Cape the primary shuttle launch/ recovery

site. The spaceport spurred economic growth and sparked an educational boom in

Florida. Today the extensive network of

community colleges,

private

colleges

state

universities (ten with the newest opening its doors in 1997) leaves no Floridian more than

an hour from access to higher education.

The Museum of Florida History opened in 1977 in Tallahassee, provides a glimpse into

the rich past and present of Florida.

ee also:

museums

Further reading

Downs, D. (1995)

Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians,

Gainesville:

University Press of Florida.

Gannon, M. (ed.) (1996)

The New History of Florida,

Gainesville: University Press of

Florida.

SANDRA GILCHRIST

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 432

flower power

Slogan of 1960s

hippie

changes, evoking color, peace and creativity as well as any

reference to nature. Like other motifs and slogans of the period—“Summer of Love,”

“groovy,” “psychedelic,” etc.—it has become a period marker for nostalgic media.

onetheless, the vivid image of flowers inserted into gun barrels of this period was

recreated in 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization meetings in

Seattle,

GARY McDONOGH

folk art

Several distinctions should be made between folk art and the more familiar high art, the

art of the masters and of most museums. In contrast to the materials, practices and

intentions of high art, folk art makes use of common materials, cheap and readily

available, such as those employed by Grandma Moses, who used house paint on

Masonite to portray scenes of rural New York State. The creative act itself is usually self-

taught, without the benefit of allegiance to or education in a particular school or

movement. The intentions of folk art, rather than to express universal concepts or use

road, culturally recognizable imagery, are highly personal and generally concentrate on

topics of regional interest. Folk art usually finds its voice through an intensely individual

expression.

A further distinction should be made between folk art and the closely associated

primitive art (the product of so-called “primitive” societies, such as the tribal cultures o

sub-Saharan Africa and Australian Aborigines) and popular art (art produced for a mass

audience). Though often lumped together, folk art is generally the product of the rural

environment of an industrialized society and, rather than being mass produced for a broad

opular audience, it is often unique in production and values. These classifications are

often lumped together under the general heading of “primitivism,” denoting a naive

expression on topics of limited appeal.

Folk art can be differentiated from folk craft in that the latter is the commercial

roduction of a traditional form of hand manufacturing, such as quilting or basket

weaving.

JIM WATKINS

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folklore

The term “folklore” has somewhat different connotations in popular and professional

usages. Most Americans generally understand folklore to refer to traditional narratives,

beliefs or practices, often transmitted orally, which have no basis in truth, and “the folk”

themselves are believed to be non- or preliterate; yet this is not the case. This notion has

its roots in the antiquarian scholarship of the eighteenth and nineteenth century

influenced by theories of Romantic or cultural nationalism, where conceptions of “the

folk” were equated with European peasant cultures, which scholars believed held the

distinctive “folk souls” of each nation. Early American folklore research concentrated on

marginalized groups within American society. Thus, “folklore” was the preserve o

African Americans,

recent immigrant groups and Southern Appalachians, who were at

that time perceived as the earliest “white indigenous” American peoples. Early American

folklorists collected tales, beliefs and songs, often looking for “survivals” from the parent

African or European culture. Later, with the rise of trade-union activism in the 1920s and

1930s, “the folk” expanded to include the working classes. “Folk music” was then not

confined to Euro-originated ballads and African American musics, but also became more

widely applicable to workers’ music and, later, other protest music.

Folk art

was

similarly a genre of preservation of memories (although it later became a hot commodity

in more sophisticated urban galleries and auctions as well).

In the 1960s, the field of folklore in the United States shifted dramatically in terms o

theory and subject matter. Richard Dorson was one of the first scholars to champion

folklore as a modern academic discipline distinct from either literary studies or

anthropology,

with comparative ethnographic and archival methodologies at its heart.

Folklorists then began to lessen the emphasis on survivals and to explore wider aspects o

ehavior, communication and the relationship of folklore and tradition to society within a

more pluralistic paradigm. The result of this was not only an expansion of the subject

matter that folklorists researched, but also a new conceptualization of that “the folk”

actually were. Rather than only representing the more marginalized groups within a

society, the folk became essentially any subgroup who demonstrated stylized, distinctive

cultural forms, ranging from the

family

to the workplace. Thus, everyone is actually a

member of a variety of folk groups. American folklorists also began researching urban

cultures and exploring the role of technology and

mass media

on traditions and tradition

formation. As a result, categories such as “Xerox lore” and “urban legend” have become

fruitful areas of study. In the twentieth century American folklorists engaged with a very

wide range of material. Although “folklore” may imply to some an emphasis on narrative

or belief, the field comprises a number of different artistic genres, including

dance, food,

speech narrative, festival, music, art, ritual, medicine and

religion

. Folklorists also

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 434

research occupational and business culture,

tourism

and all aspects of popular culture.

A new emphasis on multiculturalism and the shift of the model of American cultures

from “melting-pot” to “mosaic” has resulted in an increased public interest in folklore in

the 1990s. Since the 1930s when the federally funded Workers Education Administration

hired folklorists to collect traditions from various cultural groups in the United States,

there has been a close association between folklore, folklorists and public bodies. Many

states have folklore commissions that hire folklorists to identify distinctive

communities

and individual artists, and then help to educate the public about their work. Folklorists

often work with

museums,

festival organizers and, increasingly with tourism officials to

promote and raise awareness of various cultural traditions. Perhaps the most well-known

example of public folklore display in the United States is the annual

Smithsonian

Festival of American Folklife, which each year showcases various traditions and

ractices of a particular state. In addition to publicsector and arts organizations, some

folklorists also work in the private sector, assisting in inter-office communications and

diversity training.