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stimulate fan interest. The joke: “I went to a boxing bout and a hockey game broke out,”

is often repeated as nightly sportscasts feature fist fights between players which are

calmly observed by referees who have no power to intervene. When the Philadelphia

Flyers’ Broad Street Bullies won in 1974 and 1975, led by Bobby Clarke and Bernie

Parent, many assumed that physical play would always win championships.

However, European players have tended to be quicker skaters and more skillful with

the stick, able to embarrass teams that rely on the body check. This has happened to

Bobby Clarke’s handpicked Flyers’ “Legion of Doom,” led by Eric Lindros, which has

failed to win a Stanley Cup and has consistently been outperformed by playof

opponents.

Women have begun to play the game in larger numbers, in part inspired by the success

of the US hockey team in the new-medal sport in the 1998 Winter Olympics. The

women’s game emphasizes skill over brute force (stricter penalties are given for

infringements), though the intense rivalry between the Canadian and American women

led to an Olympic showdown noted for the frequency of its body checking.

The spread of the game around the United States has been facilitated by the

development of

in-line skating,

enabling people to play a version of hockey on parking

lots and playgrounds around the country This in turn has led to the emergence of a new

semi-professional league of roller hockey fast growing among the nation’s children,

serving the dual function of a sport to train youngsters who want to make their way

towards NHL, and as a new commercial sport in its own right.

Hockey has been used in

mass media

—both news and fiction—to explore male

destructiveness (

Slap Shot,

1977). The growing appeal (and changing image) of hockey

in the 1990s can be seen in its Disneyfication in

Mighty Ducks

(1992) and its sequel, as

well as

Disney’s

acquisition of an Anaheim franchise with the same name.

Further reading

Fischler, S. and Fischler, S. (1996)

Great Book of Hockey,

Lincolnwood: Publications

International.

ROBERT GREGG

Hoffa, Jimmy

b. 1913; d. 1975?

Controversial president of the

Teamsters Union

from 1957 to 1971. Hoffa represented

to many observers the danger inherent in the growing power of

unions

in the 1950s.

Beloved by his union members, he negotiated contracts that granted truckers generous

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 546

wages and fringe benefits, making them the envy of other workers. While openly

acknowledging his friendly relations with notorious

organized-crime

figures, he

vigorously defended his honesty as a union leader. Jailed for jury tampering and mail

fraud, his attempt to regain the union’s presidency after his release ended with his

apparent abduction and death in 1975, allegedly at the hands of the Mafia. His son,

Jimmy Hoffa, later became leader of the Teamsters.

DAVID WITWER

Hoffman, Abbie

b. 1936; d. 1989

Visionary and surrcalist politician. After work with

SNCC,

Hoffman founded the

Youth International Party (yippies) in 1966, which sought to replace “Amerika” or the

“Pig Empire” with a mixture of

anarchism,

Marxist revindications of

class

and

race,

drugs and political theater. His activism led to his famous arrest and conviction as one o

the Chicago Eight for disrupting the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hoffman

went underground from 1974 to 1980, but re-emerged to political activity before his

suicide. Works like

Woodstock Nation

and

Steal this Book—

a manual to living free

convey a vivid sense of personality and politics in the 1960s.

GARY McDONOGH

Hoffman, Dustin

b. 1937

Stage and film actor, Hoffman played in offBroadway theaters in the 1960s. In 1967

Mike Nichols noticed his talent. With Hoffman’s small stature, Nichols had him play a

naive twenty year old in

The Graduate

(1967), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar

nomination. In 1979 he won his first Best Actor Oscar for his role in

Kramer vs Kramer

His role in

Rain Man

earned him a second Oscar in 1988. Hoffman is also a director and

producer

of stage,

television

and film productions.

KATE M.KENSKI

holidays

Entries A-Z 547

Holidays embody multiple calendars, memories and agendas within contemporary

American society. Many formal national holidays tend to reinforce shared civic and

historic values, yet they also have become foci of protest, illustrated in the anti-Vietnam

book and movie

Born on the Fourth of July

(1989). Other celebrations are divided by

religion,

ethnicity region and political meanings. Moreover, holidays vary in scope and

seriousness. Thanksgiving produces national respite (and the heaviest travel of the year as

families re-unite), while President’s Day (combining Washington’s and Lincoln’s

birthdays) is generally marked only by

department-store

sales, school lessons and post

office closings.

An annual cycle of patriotic festivities has emerged since the founding of the nation,

celebrated on Independence Day (July 4), usually outdoors with picnics, political rallies

and fireworks. Other holidays remember the war dead (Memorial Day, last Monday in

May) and workers (Labor Day, first Monday of September). These also delineate the

summer/vacation season, underscored by the 1971 movement of Independence Day and

Memorial Day, among other holidays, to Monday to create three-day weekends.

Thanksgiving, chartered by stories of pilgrims and Indians celebrating their friendship

and survival at Plymouth Rock with a meal of turkey squash and potatoes, was

roclaimed a national holiday by George Washington in 1789. It was fixed on the fourth

Thursday in November by Lincoln; Franklin Roosevelt moved it a week earlier to

romote shopping. Here, diverse family traditions of food and fellowship blend with

charity (meals at soup kitchens), commercial events (parades mark the beginning o

holiday

consumerism

) and sports. While Thanksgiving evokes criticism by Native

Americans, it remains the most widely celebrated expression of united national identity.

Other national public holidays include Columbus Day (October 12 or the second

Monday in October), Veteran’s Day (November 11) and presidential birthdays. A holiday

honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (third Monday in January) was added to national

and state calendars amid intense polemics in the 1980s.

ecial national commemorations have included massive celebrations of the American

Bicentennial

in 1976, and similar anniversaries of wars and battles, sometimes with re-

enactments or political opportunities/speeches. The presidential inauguration celebrated

on January 20 every four years has also taken on trappings of a national festival. In

addition, whole months (Black History Month (January), Women’s History (February),

etc.) and days for specific causes and celebrities are recognized at the national, state and

local level.

New Year’s Eve, while not a patriotic holiday, inscribes the nation through shared

media coverage of the crystal ball dropping in New York’s

Times Square,

as well as

urban festivals like First Night and many private parties. January 1 has become the day

for parades and

football

bowl games deciding the rankings of the college season.

African

American

communities have also celebrated January 1 as Emancipation Day.

In addition to civic celebreation, holidays of Christian origin are widely shared and

secularized. Halloween (October 31) has been transformed from a feast of the dead to a

night celebrating

children

and

neighborhoods,

as costumed kids roam from door to door

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 548

asking for candy. In some

inner cities

it has also become an excuse for arson and

mayhem. Christmas (December 25) once dominated rhythms of school and work, but

udicial decisions since the 1960s have tended to dis-establish its presence in public

forums. Nonetheless, its general coincidence with Hanukah and the more recently

invented Kwanzaa, which celebrates African American values, defines a winter holiday

season for public life and commercial intensification.

Easter by contrast remains a more Christian holiday (with separate dates for Western

and Orthodox traditions), but also proves less obtrusive since Sunday normally functions

as a weekly public and business holiday. The proximity of Easter and Passover also

reaffirms the centrality of Judaism and Christianity to American civic religion.

Hence, other religious ceremonies tend to be regarded as minoritarian, although they

may demand special recognition, such as barring exams during Ramadan. Meanwhile,

these holidays can take on the form of other American holidays, stressing family reunions

and parties (as in the adaptation of Dimwali among South Asians), gifts or invitations to

public awareness.

Religious and national festivals, celebrated in parades, rituals, picnics and fairs, also

transform and delineate

ethnic enclaves

. These include St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) for

urban Irish, Columbus Day for Italians and the Virgin of Guadalupe (December 12) and

Cinco de Mayo (May 5) for Mexicans. These are also popular events for politicians

seeking ethnic votes. Firecrackers, dragon dances and restaurant specials announce

Chinese New Year for tourists as well as Chinese Americans; other Southeast Asian

spring festivals have also blossomed in new immigrant communities.

Localized communities also celebrate special founders or events. Confederate

Memorial days were widespread in the

South,

although their celebration has waned with

integration and immigration from the North. Abolition Day (March 22) (Puerto Rico),

Pioneer Day (July 24) (Utah) and Huey P.Long Day (August 30) (Louisiana) all teach

and celebrate local events. Emergent communities make use of the same American model

to publicize their identity—Gay Pride Week and its parades have become major

celebrations in

New York

City and

San Francisco, CA

Life-cycle holidays tend to reflect individual rhythms—birthdays, quinceañeros

(fifteenth-year parties, especially among

Cuban Americans

), weddings, retirements, etc.

However,

commencement

/graduation season, in the spring, produces rounds of parties

among school-related networks.

Ultimately, many US holidays combine sentiment and commercialism. Mother’s Day

(second Sunday in May since 1912), for example, has become a major celebration o

“family values,”

although long-distance telephone congestion, preprinted cards and

flowers by wire underscore the spatial divisions of modern

families

. Father’s Day

(second Sunday in June) was a later addition, followed by derivative recognitions like

Grandparent’s Day (first Sunday after Labor Day) or Secretary’s Day (April 23). Paula

Jones cited failure to recognize Secretary’s Day as evidence of her mistreatment by Bill

Clinton.

Most major festivals share “American features,” including a stress on

Entries A-Z 549

family/community

food

(both public and private) and opportunities for both internal

rituals and outward celebration in parades, speeches and parties. Whether one-time events

like the Bicentennial or annual celebrations with multiple interpretations like

Thanksgiving, they define shared memories and points of challenge within the national

cultural project.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Holly, Buddy

b. 1936; d. 1959

Born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock,

Texas,

rock-’n’-roll

pioneer Holly became a

teen idol with hits such as “That’ll be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” Featured on

The E

Sullivan Show

and Dick Clark’s

American Bandstand,

Holly was a singer, instrumentalist

and songwriter who performed with the Crickets and as a soloist. Killed along with the

Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash in Iowa, Holly’s career and life-story

inspired both a motion picture and a stage musical.

KATE M.KENSKI

Hollywood

The Hollywood film industry has dominated global film production, both in terms o

style and sheer volume, for much of the twentieth century. To understand properly the

henomenon of Hollywood cinema, it must be examined both as a changing industrial

system and as a distinctive stylistic approach to narrative film, since both of these make it

much more than simply the geographical center of the American film industry.

Situated eight miles from

Los Angeles, CA,

Hollywood first began to attract attention

as a base for film production in the early 1900s. Its ideal climate and location, close both

to a big city and to the open countryside, made it a popular choice. Throughout the silent-

film era, Hollywood developed steadily towards the cherished status of its socalled

“golden age,”

the era of production from 1930–48 and the period during which it

consolidated its “classical” style. Its international success was achieved through a

rigorous approach to film production, built around the oligopoly of the studio system.

The studio system consisted of eight key players. The “Big Five,” namely Warner

Bros, RKO, Twentieth Century FOX, Paramount and MGM, had all been active in taking

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 550

over cinemas and expanding production throughout the 1920s. All five were self-

sufficient in the areas of production, distribution and exhibition, and this “vertical

integration” was crucial to their success. Beneath them in the hierarchy lay the “Little

Three”: Universal, Columbia and United Artists. While not vertically integrated, they

were notable because they held agreements allowing them to show their films in the

prestigious cinemas owned by the Big Five.

By 1930 these eight companies had carved up the American industry between

themselves into a community of interests which allowed very little access to outsiders or

independents. The key organizing principles of the studios involved the specialized

division of labor, mass production along assembly-line methods, and the

star

system

where careers were carefully masterminded and managed. Genre production led to certain

studios gaining specialist reputations and developing an attendant “studio look,” for

example in the gritty gangster movies of Warner Bros. While highly successful, this

process has since been criticized as an example of the industry’s mass standardization

during this period.

In 1948 the

Supreme Court

reached a decision in the Paramount Decree that vertical

integration was in fact unlawful. The studios were forced to sell off their cinemas, thus

ending their monopoly. At the same time, a number of additional cultural and

demographic changes heralded a new age for Hollywood. The rise of

television

meant a

new arena of competition. Furthermore, the return of GIs after the war led to a

baby

boom,

with a surge of interest in domestic leisure and the development of new

suburbs

away from the city locations of prestige cinemas. Cinema audiences dropped dramatically

Hollywood fought back bravely in the 1950s with new innovations such as

drive-ins,

D and a range of wide-screen formats, but the golden age had ended.

Though the end of vertical integration should have meant a far more accessible

industry, the major studios ultimately remained dominant by retaining their control in the

area of distribution. Nevertheless, some forty years later the independents of the 1990s

arguably hold more influence and a bigger share of the audience than ever before. Most

of the major studios are still active, but their survival has only been possible through a

series of shifts in ownership since the 1960s so that most are currently owned by

multinationals and conglomerates. The business interests of these companies are broad

and often mutually supportive so that, for example, merchandising, television and video

can be used both to promote interest in a film and ensure a long-term profit.

The studios of the golden age have acquired a mixed reputation over the years. They

have often been rather pejoratively compared to factories, where a capitalist business

ethic and concern with profits means that artistic concerns are low on the list of priorities.

But the factory analogy while apposite in some ways, does not always do the studios

ustice. Not only did this era produce some of cinem

’s most feted “auteurs,” such as

Howard

Hawks

and John

Ford,

it also established the “classical Hollywood” style, still

evident in mainstream cinemas worldwide, that remains one of Hollywood’s lasting

legacies.

The keynote of classical style is continuity editing, an aesthetic of “transparency”

Entries A-Z 551

which disguises the construction of the film-making process. Bordwell, Staiger and

Thompson’s seminal analysis of classical style (1985) identifies additional features such

as the construction of a believable world, the centrality of clearly motivated characters, a

cause—effect logic, linear narrative progression and a momentum directed at overcoming

initial disruption with a strong sense of resolution and closure. However, stylistic

variations since the 1970s–the so-called “New Hollywood” period—have demonstrated

that these conventions are not immutable.

Reservations about the quality of Hollywood cinema are often indicative of the

enduring cultural debate over whether the aims of “entertainment” and “art” are somehow

intrinsically incompatible, raising fundamental issues as to what constitutes “art.” The

conglomerates and multinationals controlling the studios now are still accused o

producing mindless, predictable

blockbusters,

and the classical Hollywood style, though

resilient, is not without its critics. Left-wing critiques of Hollywood and its adherence to

verisimilitude maintain that it was, and largely remains, a “dream-factory” churning out

escapist fantasies for the masses. While contemporary Hollywood undeniably enjoys

more freedom to negotiate the boundaries of classical style, such critiques suggest that

Hollywood has an ideological agenda where naturalization and the emphasis on closure

continue to distract the audience from the more irresolute nature of real-life conflicts.

ee also:

Hollywood, New

Further reading

Bordwell, D., Staiger, J. and Thompson, K. (1985)

The Classical Hollywood Cinema,

London: Routledge.

Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (1993)

Film Art,

New York: McGraw-Hill.

Cook, P. (1985)

The Cinema Book,

London: BFI.

DEBORAH JERMYN

Hollywood, New

Post-studio, end-of-the-millenium Hollywood since the 1970s belongs to a new industrial

structure. Film is not the only product; the new Hollywood has become home to

expanded mass entertainment entities, including

television, cable,

satellite,

publishing,

newspapers,

music, merchandising, theme parks and other entertainment venues. The

industries, now owned by multi-national conglomerates, like

Disney

or News

Incorporated, are vertically integrated while they have expanded horizontally.

Aggressively entering other world markets, they often control production, distribution

and exhibition of transnational entertainment products, whether international film

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 552

financing of non-American films, distribution of Hong Kong kung fu films, or ownership

of multiplexes in Europe.

CINDY WONG

Holocaust museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in

Washington, DC

houses exhibits on

the Holocaust, the systematic effort of the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 to exterminate

the Jews of Europe and members of other groups the Nazis considered “undesirable.” The

museum

also runs a variety of education programs and is a center for Holocaust

scholarship. The bill creating the museum was approved by

Congress

unanimously in

1980, and the museum opened in 1993. The money to build the museum was provided

exclusively through private donations, but the federal government pays for the museum’s

operational expenses. The museum draws far more visitors than originally anticipated and

since the museum’s opening, several states and cities have opened their own Holocaust

museums and memorials. Congress’ decision to charter the museum was in some ways a

reak with past practices as the museum does not focus on an event in American history

although its exhibits do deal with the US reaction to the Holocaust and its aftermath.

DAVID GOLDSTON

home

Not only America’s

middle

and

upper classes,

but also its

working classes

have

constituted a nation of home-owners for generations. Whether suburban ranch houses,

urban row houses or, more recently lofts, condominia and co-ops, homeownership has

een the mark of solid citizenship. Moreover, the generally detached home and yard

enshrines principles of individuality

family, freedom

and responsibility In the 1990s, 70

ercent of new immigrants acquired a home within twenty years of arrival; mortgages

and government support, including tax breaks, reaffirm this centrality for old and new

citizens. Apartments, primarily rental, denote the freedom of young adulthood or the

post-familial conditions of old age—high density residential hotels, as Paul Groth (1994)

notes, imply failure rather than alternative housing. Economic crises are measured, in

turn, by downturns in home construction and the problems of first-time buyers.

The ideal of home-ownership was ingrained in American culture in the early Republic.

By the Victorian period, in

Philadelphia, PA,

for example, many workers acquired their

Entries A-Z 553

own row houses while more elaborate cottages were built in streetcar and railroad

suburbs. After the Second World War,

Levittowns

and other developments promised

new

suburban

houses to expanding families of the

baby boom

. While mortgages

represent imposing debts (an appropriate mortgage is calculated at four times annual

family income), payments on interest are tax deductible, facilitating purchase. For many

families since the 1970s, homes have become their primary investment, seemingly

gaining in value every year. Losses have been terrifying signs of

neighborhood

decay

(blockbusting,

deindustrialization) or wider recession.

The ideal house also codifies basic elements of the American family including

individual space, casual living (including outdoor areas) and display

Kitchens

as well as

recreation rooms encourage “family time.”

Bedrooms

for each family member and even

individual

bathrooms

foster privacy. Gender roles have been emphasized in women’s

control of private spaces

(kitchens

and

bedrooms)

and display areas, while men are

associated especially with dens/recreational rooms,

garages

/workshops and outdoor

areas. Garages, additional rooms, architectural flourishes like cathedral ceilings, elaborate

staircases and outdoor facilities also mark differences in status. These may be

incorporated into building codes that require multi-acre lots or stylistic conformity

Competition fosters continual home improvement (also a title of a popular 1990s

sitcom

satirizing do-it-yourself efforts), which can draw on accrued equity. Relations with

neighbors and local institutions (schools are generally supported by property taxes)

sustain the ideological centrality of the house for citizenship.

As housing follows inflation, issues of affordability and

homelessness

have

underscored the resources necessary to sustain the American dream.

Mobile homes,

rental properties and transient housing offer alternatives without undercutting the

centrality of “home” to individual and family identity. Co-housing and specialized

retirement or dependent planning have challenged the spatial meanings of home, as have

feminist critiques (Wright, Hayden). Yet, the identity of America and home is

underscored by

mass media

that treat both the attainment of home-ownership and the

violation of the home as central dramas of American life.

ee also:

home; gardens; lawn/yard