Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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Further reading

Cantwell, R. (1996)

When We Were Good, The Folk Revival,

Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Harry Smith (ed.) (1997)

Anthology of American Folk Music

[sound recording],

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

CHARLOTTE GREIG

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Fonda family

Hollywood

dynasty chronicling changing meanings of American life and

celebrity

Henry Fonda (1905–82) embodied the speech and values of middle America in dramatic

and comic roles on screen and stage, from

Young Mr Lincoln

(1939) and

Grapes of Wrath

(1940) through the wartime reflections of

Mr Roberts

(1955) to the aging love of

Golden Pond

(1981), for which he won an Oscar. Henry’s daughter, Jane (1937–),

underwent more volatile transformations—from the sexual protégé of husband Roger

Vadim in

Barbarella

(1968) to an antiwar activist, married to Tom Hayden, to a

star/producer

of exercise videos in the 1980s, and finally to the wife of media titan Ted

Turner

. Her brother Peter (1939–) became identified with the

hippie

rebellion of

Easy

ider

(1969), which he produced and starred in, only regaining stardom in the 1990s.

Peter’s daughter, Bridget (1964–), has established herself as a forceful female lead actor.

ee also:

actors

GARY McDONOGH

food

American food, long denigrated as too bland and derivative, has nonetheless spread all

over the world by the early twenty-first century. Contemporary trends, however, are

contradictory. While long venerating convenience and technology, other trends celebrate

diversity and playful innovation or, alternatively ideologies that severely restrict dietary

choice for physical and spiritual well-

eing. Food producing, processing and marketing

corporations have both shaped and responded to these cultural demands with an

outpouring of new commodities: processed foods, new and fashionable types o

restaurants,

cookbooks,

media events and

diet

programs.

Historical processes

In the early

history

of the Republic, American eating was based on English food with

indigenous supplements. Except for colonial trade items (molasses, sugar and rum), most

food was produced and consumed locally. Diverse regional and ethnic cuisines

roliferated as new populations immigrated and new ecological zones were settled in the

nineteenth century, producing creolized systems such as those in the African-influenced

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 438

plantation

Southeast,

the multicultural Mississippi delta and Spanish-dominated

territories of the

Southwest

. Industrialization in the nineteenth century urbanized the

nation. Work moved further from

home,

changing schedules of eating and leisure.

Abbreviated work meals and new venues and occasions for recreational meals developed.

The development of railroads changed the scale of food production and distribution as

national markets for cattle and grain emerged.

A massive wave of labor

immigration

beginning in the 1850s and accelerating

between 1880 and 1920 produced

ethnic enclaves

of food producers and purveyors.

Occasions for public communal eating such as local fairs, community suppers and

commercial eating venues (e.g. German beer gardens in the

Midwest

and Chinese

restaurants serving California miners) transformed some ethnic foods into popular

mainstream items, although taste and form were modified to please a mass audience. The

iconic American hot dog and hamburger entered the mass diet through this process.

In the early twentieth century, there were institutional attempts to create a national

cuisine based on Anglo conformity. This was partly a response to the perceived threat to

unity posed by new migrants. While immigrant

communities

adapted their eating

atterns to their new settings, social workers and dieticians attempted to suppress exotic

immigrant diets as unhealthy

A desire for a standard national cuisine also reflected commercial interests involved in

the rapidly expanding mass production and marketing of food. New products engendered

y industrialized canning and freezing and preserving packaged cereals and grains, along

with refrigerated rail cars expanded food availability. The consolidation of mass food

roduction into conglomerate national brands (e.g. General Foods and Standard Brands)

and mass warehousing (e.g. Atlantic and Pacific (A & P)) created a mass market in which

producers, distributors and

advertising

media (

radio,

homemaking

magazines

) were

mutually interdependent.

The first national cookbooks popularized in the 1930s such as the

Fanny Farmer,

etter Homes and Gardens,

and

Good Housekeeping

cookbooks were built around the

Anglo-American cooking and baking of

Northeastern

states. Central to this cuisine were

meals of meat (roasts, chops and steaks), potatoes and vegetables; bland, starched cream

sauces and gravies were also prevalent. This cuisine avoided the use of garlic and other

spices used in new ethnic foods. For example, as commercially produced spaghetti was

encouraged by the wheat industry the tomato sauce prescribed with it was not the slow-

cooked reduction of meat, vegetables and spices of genuine

ragu,

but fast-cooked and

bland. At the eve of the Second World War,

ethnic food

remained largely within

enclaves except for a few anglicized items with wide acceptance and localized crossovers

related to intermarriage, immigrant servants and communal events.

The postwar decades

Trends in food in the 1950s and 1960s celebrated modern technology. Wartime mass

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feeding led to improved industrial technologies for processing food into canned,

dehydrated, boneless and skinless items far removed from their natural forms. At the

same time, firms’

rocessing and marketing of food consolidated into still larger

conglomerates. The interests of corporate processors in mass marketing paralleled the

optimistic desire for modernity of upwardly mobile suburbanizing households.

Many of the new products merely gave the illusion of dietary innovation. Novelty in

rocessing (frozen and dehydrated versions of ordinary foods) and packaging masked a

lack of variety in content as old products were served in different shapes (sweetened

cereals) and flavors (varieties of Hamburger Helpers). Magazine recipes gleaned from

processor-advertisers evoked “innovation” through mixing different products from the

same conglomerate. The emblem of the age, the TV dinner, enshrined the Anglo-

American platter—meat, vegetables and starch covered with sauce or gravy.

As more women entered the workforce, advertisers touted convenience but also

extolled the virtues of homemaking. Homemade baked goods, made easy by new mixes

and refrigerated dough, symbolized this role and supported the bake-sale as the

foundation of suburban community fundrais-ing. New categories of between-meal

“snack” foods also were mass produced as eating on the run proliferated.

While most food was still prepared and consumed at home, work in corporate

conglomerates significantly altered the daily schedules of consumers. Workers ate food

repared and consumed outside the home in efficient cafeterias. A major expansion o

eating places with take-out facilities was launched to fit the needs of

families

squeezed

for time. Family-owned Chinese restaurants and

pizza

parlors moved from Chinatowns

and Little Italys to newly built

middle-class

communities. Here, they supported new

schedules, presenting limited “made in America” menus reflecting mainstream customer

preferences. Independent

drive-in

restaurants foreshadowed the

fast-food

chain. Howard

Johnsons, an early restaurant and

motel

chain designed to fit the needs of the new

automobile

traveling culture, prided itself on its standardized, predictable menu.

This period saw little change in the traditional American restaurant, in which special

occasions were celebrated with long, leisurely meals. Often decorated with historical

American motifs, they were evaluated in terms of cleanliness rather than cuisine.

Late twentieth century shifts

In the 1970s, eating in America became a focus for reaction to the routinization o

modern life. As a major form of recreation and leisure, eating “good” food became

valued as a source of pleasure worthy of major time and resource investments. Three

notions of “good” eating worked with and against each other in this process. Aesthetic

knowledge and taste marked

class

distinction. Diversity in foods became a way to

express one’s own ethnic identity or to experience pleasure in “otherness.” At the same

time, belief systems related to biomedicine, Asian spirituality ecological movements and

an increasing focus on the body as the “fabricated self” defined “good” through

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 440

restriction and self-discipline.

Except for brief moments (late nineteenthcentury Gilded Age) and exceptional groups

(academics), aesthetic style and high cuisine were never important as cultural capital in

America. This changed as new professional and corporate managerial classes began to

use food as a marker of distinction. Men as well as women required gastronomic

knowledge when entertaining at home or selecting the right chefs and restaurants. Formal

French haute cuisine was the initial standard, marked by the extraordinary success in the

1960s of Julia

Childs’

The French Chef,

on television as well as in the

kitchen

. Upscale

food magazines

(Gourmet, Bon Appetit)

disseminated the code of “good” taste.

The new gastronomic code rejected many elements of America’s mass-

roduced,

processed diet. It extolled time-consuming, handmade dishes. Authenticity and closeness

to nature were exemplified by peasant dishes and rediscovered food varieties such as

organ meats, root crops and traditional varieties of greens (developed by Alice Waters in

Berkeley

California

Authenticity did not preclude playful innovative rule bending. In the 1980s and 1990s,

fluency in traditional cuisines was required of chefs, but fashion demanded creative

innovation, new taste combinations which fused and made references to different styles.

Food critics and writers proliferated. As the demand for fashionable food expanded,

celebrity chefs opened chain restaurants. Labor-intensive cooking as a leisure-time hobby

spread to a large middle-class population through an explosion of cooking classes,

celebrity TV chefs and, ultimately a food

cable

station serving a mass audience.

Cookbooks became one of the major domains of publishing. The market required the

constant production and packaging of new commodities.

Ethnic and regional cuisine became elevated as an antidote to modern over-

rocessing

and refining. A succession of American regional cuisines such as

Cajun,

Creole and

Southwestern rose in status. Their essential elements seemed to represent an authentic,

timeless past. Strong flavors like garlic and chilies found favor, and fresh spices replaced

the standardized canned Americanized curry and chili powders, herbs and spices.

Specialized regional cuisines from China such as Szechuan and Mandarin displaced

Americanized Cantonese food. As demand for new designer food grew, new categories o

broadly defined cuisines such as pan-Mediterranean, pan-Asian and pan-Latino cuisines,

as well as fusions like French-Asian were constructed.

Interest in ethnic cuisine was not limited to the upscale consumer. Since the war, US

discourses about national unity have shifted away from Anglo conformity towards an

emphasis on roots and heritage. This was partially a result of the

civilrights

movement,

followed by

Bicentennial

celebrations of ethnic heritage. The nation was seen as a

mosaic or tapestry of ethnicities, each making contributions. Foodways (unlike “moral”

values or

religion

) was an unthreatening cultural domain through which to display group

contributions and experience “otherness.” Churches, schools and communities produced

ethnic fairs and festivals at which traditional foods were exchanged. The post–1965 new

immigration bringing Asian and

Latino

populations into America increased the

significance of and exposure to new cuisines for a broader population.

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Countercultural reactions to modernity define “good” food through restrictive rules and

selfdiscipline as a means to take control over life. Participants in movements that resist

materialism or ecological degradation may restrict their diet to natural, organically

grown, unrefined foods, or vegetarian foods. Others focus on the fitness or aesthetic o

the body as “a temple,” clearly a major aspect of self that could be perfected by following

similar diets stemming from biomedical and Asian spiritual roots. For the uncommitted

public, mass food processors responded with a series of sugarand fat-free or “lite”

products which deny the need for self-discipline.

In the past two decades, the amount of food prepared and eaten outside the home has

risen to 60–75 percent of total consumption. The restaurant industry is critical in cities

where

tourism

is a major industry Upscale restaurants invest significantly in ambience to

enhance the total experience of eating-out events.

In the more prosaic everyday realm of eating out, regional and ethnic food icons have

been commodified as mass-

roduced, standardized items, marketed through national and

multinational fast-food chains such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Subways,

Pizza Hut and Manhattan Bagels. Items often lose their essential qualities in the interests

of mass sales and profit. For example, Subways uses a softer bread roll than the signature

crusty Italian bread and McDonald’s develops bagel sandwiches that violate Jewish food

rules by using pork-based bacon, ham and sausage mixed with dairy (cheese).

Yet, it is this corporately produced popular American food culture which is spreading

to a world which is eager to consume American culture. Contemporary fast-food chains

and retro 1950s Johnny Rockets hamburger outlets are ubiquitous. Ten former American

diners have been set up in Europe in the past two decades. Meanwhile, Americans

navigate between technologically fabricated and artisan food; snacking/grazing and

leisurely recreational meals; and restricted eating for well-

eing versus indulgence for

leasure to show their ambivalence about modern life. Yet it is these modern products

that symbolize America to the rest of the world.

Further reading

Brown, L.K. and Mussell, K. (eds) (1984)

Ethnic and Regional Food Patterns in the

United States,

Knoxville: University of Tennessee.

Gabaccia, D. (1998)

We Are What We Eat,

Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University.

Levenstein, H. (1993)

Paradox of Plenty,

New York: Oxford University

Mintz, S. (1997)

Tasting Food; Tasting Freedom,

Boston: Beacon.

JUDITH GOODE

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

pharmaceuticals; thalidomide

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 442

football

The National Football League (NFL) is the most popular sports league in the United

States, football surpassing

baseball

in the 1970s as America’s favorite spectator sport.

The organization has thirty franchised teams organized into the American and National

Football Conferences. These teams are separately owned, but share about three-quarters

of their revenues with each other, most significant of which is the money deriving from

1998 television contracts with CBS, FOX, ABC and ESPN to the tune of nearly $18

billion over eight years.

American football developed in the middle of the nineteenth century out of rugby. The

American game developed new rules at the beginning of the twentieth century ostensibly

to make it safer (too many college boys were getting injured and killed), but the long-

term effect of these reforms was the establishment of a game with few rivals in terms o

lethalness. Football is a veritable

Rollerball

(1975), in which part of the attraction is

seeing an opposing team’s player spearheaded and taken out of the game.

If baseball is the game that harks back to a preindustrial age of artisans, football

embodies industrial society No other game has achieved the time-work discipline and

intense division of labor as football. In football each person is given a few specified tasks

to learn by rote. Only one player combines several functions on the field—the foreman

quarterback. It is his job to ensure that each player gets his production schedule and

erforms his task properly. The linemen will hold the opposing line, blockers will block,

wide receivers will run down field, turn their heads and bodies to make a catch, run five

to ten more yards (if they are lucky), and be brought crashing to the ground by several

defenders. The foreman will make adjustments in the huddle, management will call in a

new play from the sideline and the workers will set off to perform their tasks once more.

Such a division of labor also shapes the training required to play the sport. A linebacker’s

ob is to lift weights and eat, bulking up with the ingestion of various body-

uilding

drugs. He needs to study film of his opposing linemen to learn their moves, and he needs

to learn the play book. Like an industrial worker, he will suffer the hardest knocks and

will have the shortest life expectancy Kickers, meanwhile, will strengthen their kicking

legs on an adjacent field.

Football has become the mainstay of sports

television,

dwarfing all other contenders.

Indeed, it is the success of football in its relationship with TV that accounts for its hold

on the public attention. As a game of downs, of precision plays performed with brie

intervals for reorganization, football is a very easy sport to present. The camera

technician seldom has to chase after a ball in a freeflowing game. Instead, just as players

are returned to positions after every play so every camera can be redirected to its pre-

assigned position. Moreover, the time between downs means that each play can be

Entries A-Z 443

presented several times with commentary covering every minute detail.

The National Football League came into existence in 1922 around a few East Coast

and

Midwest

teams—the

Washington

Redskins, Green Bay Packers,

New York

Giants,

Philadelphia

Eagles and

Chicago

Bears. The league did not attract large crowds (like

college games) until it became truly national, absorbing teams established in

San

Francisco, CA

and

Los Angeles, CA

in 1950, and until the success of CBS and NBC’s

television coverage (see

sports media

In 1959 a competing professional league, the American Football League, was brought

into existence as a result of the efforts (supported by the ABC network) of two young

Texas multi-millionaires, Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams, whose bids for franchises for

their hometowns of

Dallas, TX

and

Houston

had been rejected. Although many of the

teams in the AFL were not profitable, the league managed to survive long enough to

threaten the NFL, until an agreement was brought about that united the leagues in 1967,

and created the season finale,

Superbowl Sunday

. Since then the NFL has been able to

fight off any challenges, such as that of the United States Football League in the mid-

1980s, using its congressional exemption from antitrust legislation to ensure its continued

monopoly

Racial practices in football have followed a pattern more akin to

basketball

than to

baseball. There are many

African American

(but few

Asian American

) athletes in the

sport (over 50 percent of the players), but they still face obstacles. Often blacks have

een competitive or excellent quarterbacks at the university level, only to be put at wide

receiver in the professional game. The unwritten rule against selecting black quarterbacks

was broken to some extent when Doug Williams led the Redskins to victory in

Superbowl XXII, but Williams was sidelined a season after winning the Superbowl,

something that would have been unlikely in the case of a white quarterback. Other black

quarterbacks have often faced hostile home crowds, and have been traded earlier than

might have been the case with their white counterparts. Likewise, there have been few

lack coaches in football, and men like Ray Rhodes at the Philadelphia Eagles were not

given the freedom to purchase players that might have been accorded a white coach.

Injury is almost inevitable in football, if not from the common playing surface o

astroturf,

then from the fact that players wear protective padding and helmets. Whereas

in the game of rugby a tackler generally pulls an opposing player down to avoid injuring

him or herself, in football the aim is to knock the player down. Padding makes this

ossible, and injuries to the knees, which cannot be protected, are one consequence.

Since games are often determined by a quarterback’s efforts, he receives much of the

defense’s attention. Many quarterbacks, like San Francisco 49’ers’ Steve Young or

Denver Broncos’ John Elway, have been sidelined with concussions, while others, like

Green Bay Packers’ Brett Favre, have had to fight addiction to the painkillers that make

playing possible. There are few quarterbacks like 49’ers Joe Montana, who, in the words

of a Chicago Bears linebacker, could just “get up, spit out the blood and wink at you, and

say that was a great hit.” The plight of the average quarterback is nicely chronicled in

orth Dallas Fort

(1979).

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 444

Violence is a common feature of football, one of its objectives being to knock an

opposing player out of the game even when he may not have the ball. In recent years, this

violence has spread to the bleachers, though it has not reached the proportions witnessed

in soccer stadiums around the world. In cities where the fans are most notorious, city

administrations have decided to open courts at the stadiums so that a judge can

immediately punish any violent fans. Organizations tracking cases of domestic abuse

have also made claims that the highest incidence of such violence occurs on Superbowl

Sunday.