Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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1965.

History and policy

Prior to the Second World War, the primary ethnic composition of the country included

descendants of northern Europeans and African Americans (the earliest immigrants) in

their second, third or later generations. In addition, large numbers of so-called “new”

immigrants, Russian and Polish Jews, Slavs, Italians and Japanese, had entered the

country between 1880 and the 1920s, constituting first- and second-generation

opulations. The Chinese, coming in substantial numbers after the 1849 California gold

rush, but excluded after 1881, constituted a large but dwindling population.

Immigration had peaked in the years preceding the First World War, after which

controls were imposed. The Johnson—Reed Immigration Act of 1924 limited the overall

number of immigrants and established quotas for each nationality based upon its

proportion of the American population in the year 1880, prior to the influx of the “new”

immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This and other contemporary laws clearly

favored northern Europeans.

The Second World War brought new refugees. The 1952 McCarran—Walter Act

removed racial bars to immigration, although it imposed new ideological checks. Only

the Simpson—Mazzoli Immigration Act of 1965 reopened mass immigration (without

national quotas, but limited to 170,000 for the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 for the

Western Hemisphere). This bill, a product of changing attitudes brought on by both the

Civil Rights movement

and American postwar internationalism, opened the door to new

immigrant groups. Images of a racially divided society of whites and blacks, noted in the

1968

Kerner Commission

report, were increasingly destabilized in the 1970s by the

arrival of large numbers of Hispanics from Central America and the

Caribbean

and new

Asian Americans

Overall ceilings rose sharply in 1986 and 1990, with attention increasingly focused on

controlling selection and illegal immigration. However, a commission headed by former

member of Congress Barbara Jordan recommended lower ceilings on legal immigration

as well. Debates have also surfaced about services (Social Security and Medicaid) for

legally resident non-citizens as a complex category.

Understanding immigration

Competing images have prevailed among postwar scholars of immigration. Those

working in the 1950s, clearly influenced by the

migration

out of cities into the suburbs

and their endorsement of ideas associated with modernization theory considered the

immigrants to be, in Oscar Handlin’s words, “uprooted” from their “old world”

traditions, and re-forged by their experiences in the United States into “Americans.” The

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 576

“melting-pot” (title of a 1907 play by Israel Zangwill) was often invoked to describe this

rocess. Indeed, by the 1950s, decades of restrictive quotas had disconnected many

immigrants from their origins. Ethnicity became submerged as school children were

asked where their grandparents were from rather than questioned about their own origins,

second languages were erased through public schooling and many cultural organizations

were “Americanized.”

The “uprooted” narrative, however, downplayed the actions of the immigrants

themselves. In effect, it made them look like victims. Authors sometimes even invoked

imagery from African American experience to describe the travails of immigrants

crossing the Atlantic. Some studies also betrayed nostalgia for worlds that had been

“lost.”

The 1960s renewed celebration of ethnic, immigrant culture. This was partly a result o

the countercultural revolt against bland

suburban

culture, and partly a by-

roduct of the

Civil Rights movement’s celebration of African American culture, which influenced

“ethnic” Americans. It also showed the effect of new immigrants who would revive

certain dormant cultural practices and lent renewed credence to the notion that the United

States is a multicultural society.

For many scholars since the 1960s, then, the story of immigration is one more o

“transplantation,” in which immigrants have used their cultural traditions to help them

adjust to modern industrial America. Immigrants stayed together, using

chain migration

to help them establish close-knit ethnic

neighborhoods

(or “urban villages”) within

impersonal cities. They remained closely tied to their churches, synagogues and clubs,

developed their own financial institutions, groceries and

radio

stations and used ethnic

ties to keep their unions strong.

In describing this “transplantation,” however, whole new “ethnic myths” were created,

with traditions invented and patterns of continuity imagined. Moreover, different

ethnicities and nationalities tended to be flattened (negative aspects of migration histories

central to the uprooted story fell out of the picture) so that they only revealed one

celebratory migration narrative. This simplification is clear in studies of gender, which

layed a critical part in the process of adapting to life in the United States. Many societies

from which immigrants came were sharply patriarchal, and the process of “uprooting”

involved in immigration often forced the male head of a household to rely on the work o

his wife and children on arrival in the United States. Moreover, women in the workforce

or among other women in their neighborhoods found that they had strong inducements to

e independent. This led to uncertainty and strife in the lives of immigrants, often not

sufficiently addressed in the scholarly studies of the subject. Yet it is a staple in the

literature by daughters of immigrant families, whether Anzia Yezierska’s stories about

Jewish families in

New York

City, Paule

Marshall’s

descriptions of West Indians in

Brooklyn or Maxine Hong

Kingston’s

stories of Chinese immigrants.

Another problem arising out of the transplanted story is its relationship to African

American history. Post-1880 immigration occurred in the aftermath of emancipation, and

African Americans became crucial, albeit negative, referents for the establishment o

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ethnic group identity and determining the “success” of a particular group. Looking for

ethnic continuities, ironically inspired in part by the work of African Americanists

delineating African survivals among slaves, ended up being a way of rewriting

immigration histories. These could be stripped of the pathologies and dysfunctional

characteristics (like violence and prostitution) that social theorists still attribute to

ghettoized black communities. Here, the conjuncture of Daniel P. Moynihan’s

contributions to

Beyond the Melting Pot

(1963), a work that began the process o

redefining ethnic histories, and the

Moynihan Report

on the “problem” of the black

family is instructive. In short, the success of immigrants in escaping the

ghetto,

largely a

product of the

GI Bill

giving affordable housing to white Americans, was attributed

instead to their cultural baggage. African Americans, who did not receive this leg up from

the government, were slowly moved from the category of “last of the immigrants” who

would succeed in the future to a population group mired in a “culture of poverty.” This

story is encompassed in the Statue of Liberty itself. An offering from French Republicans

to the United States to celebrate the emancipation of slaves, its origin was erased, and

Ronald

Reagan

would celebrate it as a monument to white immigration at the statue’s

centenary in 1986.

In the late 1990s, immigration debates have focused once again on control. A primary

target for both policy-makers and analysts has been the question of illegal immigration,

estimated at 300,000 annually with perhaps 5 million resident in the US. The 1986

Immigration Reform and Control Act offered a complicated amnesty to those who had

resided continually in the US for four years, while sanctioning employers who hired

illegal labor. Often, this illegality was associated with the Mexican border, although other

communities of Europeans and Asians emerged from “overstaying” tourist visas. The

narratives of control have stressed how these illegal immigrants use up scarce resources;

hence, California’s 1994 Proposition 187 cut off all health and social services to illegal

immigrants (actions held up by the court and politics). This debate, as well as federal

restrictions on welfare for illegal and legal citizens in 1996, has also questioned

children

of illegal immigrants born in the US who have been considered citizens by birth. This

question, while targeting a specific vision of clandestine border crossings, could mean a

fundamental change in American citizenship.

Meanwhile,

mass media

tend to focus on ethnic nostalgia and

assimilation

(Coppola’s

Godfather

trilogy) or success (Amy

Tan’s

Joy Luck Club

). Nevertheless, the centrality o

more complex questions is apparent in other recent films made in the US (for example,

lien Nation,

1988) and those that cross its borders (Gregory Nava’s

El Norte,

1984; Ang

Lee’s

The Wedding Banquet,

1993; or Barbash and Taylor’s documentary

In and Out o

frica,

1993). In all, experiences, policies and narratives about immigration, varying

among individuals, families and groups, are debates about America itself.

Further reading

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 578

Bodnar, J. (1985)

The Transplanted,

Bloomington: Indiana University.

Handlin, O. (1951)

The Uprooted,

New York: Little, Brown & Co.

Lowe, L. (1996)

Immigrant Acts,

Durham, Duke University.

Steinberg, S. (1981)

The Ethnic Myth,

Boston: Beacon.

Takaki, R. (1998)

Strangers From a Different Shore,

Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

GARY McDONOGH

ROBERT GREGG

CINDY WONG

impeachment

Impeachment is the ultimate power that

Congress

has over those in the federal judiciary

and executive branch whom members of Congress believe are abusing their offices.

Although it was a key element in the Constitution’s balance of powers,

Congress

has

only moved to impeach seventeen men (no women yet), seldom removing them from

office. The process begins in the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives,

which holds hearings on each particular case. If a majority of the committee believes

there is enough evidence to go forward, it takes the case to the House for debate and a

vote. Then, if a majority of representatives in the House agree, which constitutes the

impeachment, the House managers present the case before the Senate. The senators

(presided over by the chief justice of the

Supreme Court

) act as jurors in the case—

two-thirds majority being required for conviction.

Only two

presidents

have been impeached, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill

Clinton

in 1999, though a vote of the congressional committee to impeach Richard

Nixon,

because he “prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice” in relation

Watergate,

led to his resignation in 1974. In the Johnson and Clinton cases, the

charges were brought by politicians who fundamentally disagreed with the presidents

over major political and social issues. In the earlier instance, radical

Republicans

wanted

a more vigorous assault on racial injustices in the

South,

while in the recent case the

family-values right wing of a vastly different Republican Party endeavored to turn

Clinton’s sexual philandering into the sort of “crimes and misdemeanors” required to

remove a president.

But impeachment proceedings in American history have almost always been about

struggle over competing values. Like elections, most congressional impeachment

roceedings have been stridently political affairs, arising not randomly throughout

American history, but at critical junctures when ideological struggle has been especially

intense. While such proceedings concentrate attention on the actions of particular

individuals, they have arisen at moments of uncertainty and transition in American

culture. Personality and politics have been deeply entwined throughout American history.

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This was the case in 1868 amidst the struggle over the aims of Reconstruction; in the

early 1970s, at a time of intense struggle over the

Vietnam War

and domestic policies;

and again in the late 1990s. In each case, impeachment proceedings had serious

implications for political

party

realignment.

In their aftermath, the most important impeachment proceedings in American history

have directly affected the balance of ideological groups within major political parties. In

the recent case, the Republican Party, at every turn in Clinton’s impeachment

roceedings, sided with its most determined conservative wing. Beyond the issue o

Clinton’s conduct, this group had engaged in a crusade against both Clintons for several

years. While the

mass media

often focused on the personal attacks, basic differences on

ublic policies undergirded the conservative crusade. The House managers gambled that

more media attention would turn public opinion against Clinton, and that, if Monica

Lewinsky testified about her affair with Clinton, they would be able to reveal the

president’s alleged untruths. This gamble did not pay off; public opinion remained

steadfastly in favor of bringing the “embarrassment” to a speedy end. The salaciousness

of the information revealed in the hearings and trial turned the public against the

messengers rather than the accused. Some of the tensions arising out of this failure

carried over into the struggle over the Republican presidential nomination and the

campaign for the 2000 election. While the more moderate wing of the party wished to

turn attention away from the role it played in the impeachment process and has quickly

aligned itself behind George W.

Bush

(making his primary campaign coffers among the

largest ever), the radicals, led by men like Patrick

Buchanan

and Gary Bauer, continued

to focus on Clinton (Buchanan going so far as to suggest that were he to be elected

president the first thing he would do is read Clinton his rights).

In the aftermath of earlier impeachment efforts, political movements to alter the

olitical landscape gained ground, feeding off disaffection in the country Other factors

were important in each movement, but disillusionment with the state of American politics

was significant in each case. Recently disillusionment with the state of politics has

intensified. The Jesse Ventura election in Minnesota is an interesting manifestation o

such sentiment, and perhaps suggests that one consequence of the impeachment process

may be the growing success of a third-party movement.

The role of the media in covering the House and Senate proceedings was also

intriguing. As a result of its impeachment coverage,

CNN

emerged into a prominence on

domestic coverage equal to its leadership in covering the

Gulf War

. Assumptions that

ratings would be low led to surprisingly modest coverage by most

networks

. CNN’s

closest rival was

National Public Radio,

the former providing the most detailed

coverage and the latter providing extensive commentary. FOX and MSNBC decidedly

tilted to the right during the proceedings. The web-site adjuncts to these outlets (and the

major search engines) offered the public a new phenomenon: the ability to catch up and

explore aspects of the process in varying levels of detail via the

Internet

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 580

Further reading

http://www.stockton.edu/~gilmorew/0colhis/im-peach.htm

WILLIAM J.GILMORE-LEHNE

ROBERT GREGG

independent counsel

Archibald Cox, appointed special prosecutor in 1973 by Richard

Nixon’s Attorney-

General

to investigate White House involvement in the

Watergate

break-in, ordered the

resident to turn over Oval Office tapes and was fired for refusing to back down. After

Nixon’s resignation, therefore, Congress passed the Independent Counsel Act to

safeguard the investigative powers of the special prosecutor. Since 1973, twenty-three

independent counsels have been appointed to investigate alleged abuses of power by

presidents

and other government officials. The most significant of these was Ken Starr,

appointed by Attorney-General Janet

Reno

to investigate Bill

Clinton

and

Whitewater

Starr’s subsequent focus on the president’s affair with White House intern, Monica

Lewinsky, resulting in

impeachment

proceedings, led many to believe that the position

had been tainted by the special prosecutor’s partisan politics. After this investigation, the

law was allowed to lapse.

ROBERT GREGG

independent films/videos

It is hard to define independent films/videos—“indies”—in late twentieth-century

America. Indies can include training tapes made by a drugrehab center, orientation films

for new employees, Todd Hayes’

Poison

(1985) or the Oscar-winning big-budget

ances

with Wolves

(1990). Broadly speaking, independent films/videos are those not made by

major studios which are vertically integrated with their own production and distribution

arms. Film remains the primary medium for theatrical release, while videos gain

audiences through broadcasting. Industrials are shown within an organization, while

independent documentaries and lower-budget and shorter features seek exposure in

film

festivals, museums

or on

television

. While Oscar winners like

Platoon

(1986) and

Silence of the Lambs

(1991) are considered independent films, directors like Woody

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Allen,

Spike

Lee,

Oliver

Stone

and Quentin

Tarantino

blur the sense of independent as

divorced from big money and big distribution. This entry concentrates on films not made

Hollywood

stars and packagers.

The US offers little government subsidy for the promotion of independent works.

Limited funds come from both private and public

foundations,

like Ford, MacArthur and

the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which runs programs like ITVS (Independent

Television Service), and NAATA (National Asian American Telecommunications

Association). Independent film/videomakers also rely on private donors as well as

personal funds, including

credit cards,

to make their projects.

Once the indie is made, the film-maker needs to find a distributor. Some send their

works to the film-festival circuits, others will try to approach distributors directly. Public

cable

-access channels and the educational market are less remunerative; some

products simply are not shown much.

Many indies flaunt lower production values as badges of authenticity but some can

have budgets of up to millions. However, there is also a tendency for independent works

to challenge the formal styles of more mainstream works. Experimental and avant-garde

works range from works by Maya Duran or the video art by Bill Viola to shorter essays

and animation. Independent films have been strong showcases for minority and political

issues, especially through documentaries, which always find more space in the indie’s

world. Examples include Marlon Rigg’s

Tongue Untied

(1989) on gay issues in the

African American

community

Finding Christa

(1991) on motherhood and adoption and

The Women Outside

(1995) on Korean women who “serviced” American soldiers in

Korea.

On the other hand, other independent works starting at a very low budget eventually

acquire national distribution, acting as a stairway to Hollywood for

directors

Richard Rodriguez, whose

El Mariachi

(1992) cost only $7,000 to make.

The Blair Witch

rojec

(1999), made with a budget of $67,000, grossed more than $40 million in its first

four weeks of release. These, however, are the exceptions.

Besides film festivals, indies rely on distribution companies, like Third World

Newsreel, Latino Consortium and National Black Programming Consortium, for the non-

theatrical markets as well as for-

rofit distribution companies that cater primarily to the

education market, from Facet Videos to Churchill Films. Small associations like AIVF

(Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers) and New Days Film provide

relevant information and support to independent film/ video-makers, as does the

Sundance Institute, which began an Independents Archive in 1997.

ee also:

documentary

Further reading

Pierson, J. (1997)

Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes,

New York: Miramax.

CINDY WONG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 582

Indianapolis, IN

State capital and

Midwestern

commercial center, known for conservative

Republican

politics and top-flight

basketball

(

high school, college

tournaments and the professional

Pacers). While the 1990 population was 741,950, the city has grown through a notable

downtown revitalization as well as its strong foundations in agriculture, pharmaceuticals

and services; the metropolitan population for 2020 is projected at 1,770,525. In addition

to many

museums

and cultural institutions, it also hosts one of America’s most famous

automobile

races—the Indianapolis 500.

GARY McDONOGH

individualism

The concept of individualism is a relatively recent addition to political and social

hilosophy. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau in the seventeenth

and eighteenth century proposed influential interpretations of the role of the individual in

the social context. Out of such appraisals came two major concepts that were to drive the

evolution of Western society and help define the nature of individuals over the next 300

years. The Enlightenment focused on reason as the hard-and-fast guiding principal

romoting such developing institutions as science and democratic politics as the

mechanism of individual nourishment and progress. Romanticism, an almost instinctive

refutation of reason as the sole moderator of human conduct, dwelt instead on the

assions, emotions and internally derived principals of individuals coming to grips with

their temperament and position in nature as the divining force in humanity. These two

erspectives established and defined the core of the sometimes complementary

sometimes contradictory nature of American culture.

The American Revolution, driven by the enlightened principles of the “founding

fathers” such as Jefferson, Franklin and Madison, drew from rationally derived ideals o

olitical and social equality for all citizens with minimal governmental obstruction o

individual expression. This grand experiment left plenty of room for the popular,

“romantic” notion of cultural individuality (and for social differentiation). Beginning

with the founding fathers, and continuing through a litany of sometimes dubious

folklore

—Johnny Appleseed, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Wyatt Earp, George Custer,

etc.—and outright myths such as Paul Bunyan, the westward expansion of European

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culture in North America was accompanied and often driven by the poeticization of the

individual.

Despite the enlightened social perspectives of twenty-first-century America, the

dichotomy of the role of the American individual still commands the cultural stage, often

to conflicting messages. Political campaigns are marked by candidates striving to

distinguish themselves from their opponents as individuals and reformers, while being

financed by the largest, wealthiest and most homogeneous political system in history.

Sports and mass-media

celebrities

constitute the bulk of modern cultural heroes and role

models, whose claim on the American psyche derives from their fame and wealth, and

whose conduct often refutes systemic ideals of behavior. American competitiveness now

marks the political and sports industries to such a degree that victory at all costs,

demonizing the adversary to the point of exclusionary differentiation, and total defeat and

humiliation of the opponent are acceptable strategies. Meanwhile, the environmental

movement has elevated the argument that the discerning individual, in opposition to

lumbering bureaucracies and malignant industry will elaborate the new role of humanity

and be the last best defense against self-destruction, while free-market

consumerism

converges on the conceit of the individual to peddle mass-

roduced goods, essentially

promoting objects as markers of cultural acceptability and superiority.

In the middle of the greatest economic upturn in history such incongruities are prime

elements of modern domestic terrorism, fostering reactionary and combustible

individualism in the order of the

unabomber,

the Columbine

high-school

massacre in

Colorado and the

Oklahoma City

bombing.

JIM WATKINS

infertility

From a purely medical perspective, infertility is “the inability to conceive after a year o

unprotected intercourse or the inability to carry a pregnancy to term” (INCID 1997).

Infertility however, has also become a symbol of the lifestyle and social values adopted

by white

baby boomers

. While some theories suggest that the documented increase in

infertility may result from environmental toxins affecting both men and women,

infertility is often viewed popularly as the cost to women of choosing career over

family

By postponing childbirth until thirty-five years and older, women are placed at a

statistically higher risk of infertility The difficulty and expense of adopting white infants

has increased the demand for infertility treatment.

An array of fertility services such as infertility clinics, donor egg and surrogacy

services, legal services, sperm banks, newsgroups and support organizations, as well as

drug treatments, surgical procedures and assisted reproduction technologies (ART) have

emerged to satisfy the growing demand for

babies

from the affluent

middle class

. This

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 584

constellation of services and technologies embodies the modern paradox created by the

desire for a scientific, technological fix to satisfy what appear to be traditional American

family values. But this technological fix also touches upon the deeply felt dilemma that

advances in science pose as infertility treatments, procedures and ARTs appear to be

meddling with

“nature”

and “God’s work.”

Further reading

Franklin, S. (1997)

Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception,

London: Routledge.

Holmes, H. (ed.) (1992)

Issues in Reproductive Technology I: An Anthology,

New York:

Garland.

INCID (The InterNational Council on Infertility Information Dissemination) (1997)

Glossary of Terms:

http://www.inciid.org

Michie, H. and Cahn, N.R. (1997)

Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in

Contemporary Culture.

New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Stanworth, M. (1987)

Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood, and Medicine,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

STEVE FERZACCA

infomercials

Extended (30-minute)

advertising

that often masquerades in the more neutral formats o

talk show

news

program. Celebrity endorsements as well as testimonies from

“ordinary people” sell kitchen equipment, body-care products and self-help/get-rich

programs, especially on late night

cable

channels.

CINDY WONG

information

Popular accounts heralded the close of the twentieth century as the dawn of an

“information age.” In some utopian visions, technical and economic infrastructures o

communication and data exchange, such as the

Internet,

promise a society o

empowered, mobile and resourceful individuals. At the same time, information industries,

such as hardware and software manufacturers, data collectors and managers,

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