Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

destabilized by diplomacy and covert operations. Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua, perhaps,

est illustrate this pattern of intimate conflict, but the scenario extended as far south as

the Allende regime in Chile.

US individuals and corporations have also made investments in Latin America (again,

especially in nearby states), and have encouraged trade and “development.” Loans and

foreign aid have facilitated development programs, but have also insisted on neo-colonial

dependencies and have created crushing debts. Medical, religious, scientific, agricultural,

academic and even revolutionary assistance from the north each have created solutions

and problems. Controlling disease or bolstering production, for example, raises new

dilemmas if the US prevents population control or land reform.

Many US citizens, meanwhile, view Latin America through ignorance or stereotypes o

laziness, instability or carefree abandon—combining

Disney’s

Three Caballeros

(1945),

noir nostalgia (

Gilda,

1946;

Havana,

1990), Carmen Miranda and news of seemingly

endless war and poverty Despite serious Latin American voices in scholarship, the arts

and media (Univision, Telemundo), stereotypes remain strong.

Perhaps the most tragic dimension of this misunderstanding and pain has been the

experiences and interests that the United States and Latin America actually

—their

creation within patterns of global migration and exchange in the early modern period,

their experiences as post-colonial republics, links to Europe, Africa and Asia, pre-contact

American cultures and ongoing hybridization, even their landscapes. Latin Americans

have watched

Hollywood

movies (including condescending stereotypes); visited,

immigrated and even sought refuge in the US; competed in resources, production and

sports; shared art, food and literature; and faced common problems of environmental

degradation, the growth and distribution of drugs or the spread of

AIDS

. Exchanges

among Latin Americans and debates over the rainforest, efficient development or

referred media products provide alternative discourses the US often fails to hear.

Through all this, the powerfully ambivalent US position as insistent leader has often

betrayed the very freedom the US proclaims. The cry “Yankee go home,” from decade to

decade, nation to nation, reminds us that despite interventions that may resolve problems

locally for many intervention

itself

—and the presumption of a right to do so—remains

the problem.

Further reading

Black, G. (1988)

The Good Neighbor,

New York: Pantheon.

Bonilla, F. (ed.) (1998)

Borderless Borders,

Philadelphia: Temple.

Coever, D. and Hall, L. (1999)

Tangled Destinies,

Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico.

Falcoff, M. (1998)

A Culture of its Own: Taking Latin America Seriously,

New

Brunswick: Transaction.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 646

Latino/as

The term “Latino” was introduced to differentiate from the label

“Hispanic,”

which is

used in the United States to refer to individuals whose heritage is primarily from one or

more Spanish-speaking countries. According to the US Census Bureau, a person is

Hispanic if their ancestry is Mexican, Mexican American,

Chicano, Puerto Rican,

Dominican, or from other Spanish-speaking countries of the

Caribbean,

Central or South

America or Spain. Political and social groups have long criticized the term Hispanic,

claiming that it does not account for the varied socio-cultural experiences, as well as

political, economic and social histories of the groups that compose this population.

The term Latino is the newest in a 160-year-old conflict of terminology. The term

Latino is a condensed version of Latin America, which can be traced back to 1856. The

phrase “Latin America” was used to refer to what was known as Spanish America in an

effort to ignore the region’s connection to Spain, as well as its indigenous and African

heritages. Ironically today the term Latino is used to embody all of the legacies it was

first used to disregard. While Latinos still includes the groups identified by the Census

Bureau, it also embraces individuals from all Latin American nationalities, in addition to

second- and third-generation English dominant American citizens and various non-

Spanish speaking indigenous groups.

Latinos in the United States are a diverse sociocultural and demographic population.

Most Latinos in the United States are either immigrants or the

children

of immigrants,

with the exception of Puerto Ricans, who are the only group guaranteed US citizenship

from birth through the Jones Act of 1917. While Latinos reside all over the United States,

the majority live in

California, Texas,

New York

and

Florida,

with a disproportionately

high number living in urban areas. With the fastest population growth, it is estimated that

y the year 2000 Latinos will be the largest minority in the United States. In the United

States alone Latinos represent 11 percent of the population, an estimated 31 million,

including 3.5 million in

Puerto Rico

. Of all the groups, Mexicans (64 percent) account

for the largest number of Latinos in the United States, while Central and South

Americans (22 percent), Puerto Ricans (12 percent) and Cubans (5 percent) compose the

remaining Latino population.

Despite their divergent political, economic and social histories, Latinos found a way to

converge in the late 1960s and early 1970s through participation in such social-activist

groups like the Young Lords Party and the Brown Berets. Latinos fought against the

economic and social injustice in their communities. With the Latino agenda being much

more extensive today Latinos are a growing force in the formal political arena,

representing their communities at the local, state and federal levels to earn respect for

their people, culture and tongue.

Entries A-Z 647

Further reading

Fox, G. (1996)

Hispanic Nation,

Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Oboler, S. (1995)

Ethnic Labels Latino Lives,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press.

LORELEI ATALIE VARGAS

Latinos, as represented in media

Representations of

Latinos

in media vary significantly depending on whether they are

self-generated or created by non-Latinos. Latinos began representing themselves

positively and complexly in Spanish language

newspapers

in the mid-nineteenth century

to be joined in the early twentieth century by Spanish-language

radio

and literature. By

the mid-1960s, self-generated Latino images appeared in

film, television

and

Broadway

More frequently during this time frame, non-Latinos represented these same

experiences through commonly recognized stereotypes. Male and female images of the

dark-skinned bandit, revolutionary, peasant, Latin lover and the seemingly less offensive

Spanish aristocrat carried over from written to visual media at the beginning of the

twentieth century In the mid-twentieth century to these enduring stereotypes were added

the buffoon, the boxer, the gang member and the illegal alien.

Scholarly debates about the accuracy and impact of such images has continued since

the 1970s. A 1994 study by the National Council of La Raza indicated

mass media

continually underrepresented and misrepresented Latinos despite modest gains made by

other ethnic American groups after the

Civil Rights movement

. According to the same

study as Latinos and other Americans receive most of their information through mass

media, the control and generation of Latino images remains of paramount importance.

Further reading

Pettit, A. (1980)

Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film,

College Station,

TX: A and M U University

Rodriguez, C. (ed.) (1997)

Latin Looks: Images of

Latinas and Latinos in the US Media,

Boulder: Westview Press.

SUSAN MARIE GREEN

Latter Day Saints, Church of the

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 648

Mormons

law and order

crime, television; Nixon, Richard M.; Reagan, Ronald; violence

lawn/yard

A patch of well-tended and mown grass in front of the house became the ornament o

American homes after the Civil War—present even in

cities,

but reaching new

dimensions in

suburban

development. While they might evoke manor houses and their

meadows, lawns tend to be smaller, providing a setback from the street that shapes a

characteristic American urban geography. Lawns may be landscaped with trees, bushes

and ornaments, but are often left connected (in front) as a green plain along the street.

Backyards have been more private recreational and work areas, although they may

interconnect in suburban developments. The lawn has also demanded technological

responses ranging from lawnmowers—push, powered and riding—to chemicals and

irrigation which permit lawns in deserts and seashore areas, although at the expense o

environmental degradation.

Further reading

Jenkins, V.S. (1994)

The Lawn: A History of An American Obsession,

Washington, DC:

Smithsonian.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

lawyers

Professionals educated in graduate programs and licensed by state bar associations to

repare and plead cases in lower courts and appeals courts, as well as to provide legal

counsel to clients. The adversarial nature of the American common-law system provides

Entries A-Z 649

lawyers a broad and flexible role. This includes investigating facts, gathering evidence,

trying cases, negotiating settlements, formulating business transactions, drafting

legislation and urging courts to create new legal precedents. Competition, globalization

and the impossibility of thoroughly mastering multiple areas of the law have lead to

speeialization, and have rewarded the combining of legal specialists into ever-larger law

firms. Despite being authorized to perform a broader range of functions than colleagues

in most European systems, lawyers are professionally constrained by only a loose

construct of ethical standards, enforced by a largely self-regulating system administered

by state bar associations and judicial tribunals.

Lawyers saturate US society The

California

State Bar alone has close to 170,000

members. Although declining, the number of annual applications to law schools is

70,000. Roughly 40,000 enroll each year as first-year students at American Bar

Association approved law schools. Many of these view a legal education as a tool, a

method of critical thinking and problem-solving, and never practice law after becoming

licensed attorneys.

Lawyers are despised, scorned and vilified for their adversarial role and simultaneously

respected for their wealth, skill and power. More than 60 percent of the delegates at the

Constitutional Convention in 1787 which drafted the United States Constitution were

lawyers. At the beginning of the twenty-first century lawyers account for 43 percent o

the members of

Congress

and 16 percent of state legislators. Lawyers, such as Thurgood

Marshall,

were responsible for every watershed legal ruling of the

Civil Rights

movement

. The legal profession’s best face is represented by the

American Civil

Liberties Union’s

protection of civil liberties and the thousands of hours of

pro bono

service lawyers provide the poor.

awyer television shows

and films maintain enduring popularity despite having

moved in the past twenty years from largely favorable portrayals to current

characterizations, especially in films, of lawyers as cut-throat, often incompetent,

predators. These same

television

shows and films also fail to reflect the reality of the

profession’s lack of racial and ethnic diversity. While the number of women attorneys at

large firms has increased to 30 percent, only 7 percent of lawyers in the United States are

from minority groups. Three percent are

African Amer-icans,

2 percent are

Latinos

and

less than 1 per-cent are

Asian Americans

or Native Americans, a problem that the

decline in public affirmative-action admission programs will exacerbate.

The litigious nature of American society and the necessity of legal assistance in

making many crucial life decisions assure the continued number and power of lawyers,

despite the persistent public lack of confidence in the profession.

ee also:

affirmative action

Further reading

Abel, R. (1989)

American Lawyers,

New York: Oxford University Press.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 650

Glendon, M. (1994)

A Nation under Lawyers,

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

JAMES KRAUS

lawyers, television shows

America in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is known as an increasingly

litigious society in which trials and verdicts are covered in news and gossip and via books

by the participants, guilty or innocent. This coverage enshrines the

lawyer

celebrity who,

while present in films, has been a particular staple of

television

drama.

Dragnet

is the type specimen for

police

shows,

Perry Mason

(CBS, 1957–66) is the

type specimen for lawyers. Raymond Burr, who had appeared as a burly killer in

Hitchcock’s

Rear Window

(1954), became an invincible lawyer whose clients,

ersecuted by the police, were invariably innocent. In a weekly morality play that has

survived decades more in reruns, Perry, his sidekick private eye and love-struck secretary

skated on the edges of the law in order to find the truth, while others confessed to

adultery fraud, greed and ultimately the murder. Prosecutors lost although justice was

served.

Mason’s heroics questioned the efficiency if not the motives of police (although Burr

later played a wheelchair-bound cop in

Ironside

), setting the stage for important dramas

discussing major issues like

The Defenders

(

CBS,

1961–5) and many lesser shows. Yet, i

these could tap into 1960s suspicion of police and government, lawyers, too, were found

to be more human and more diverse than the white male heroes who created the genre.

.A.Law

(NBC, 1986–94), a widely watched ensemble show of the 1980s, for example,

umbled office politics, courtrooms and bedrooms. In the 1990s, David Kelley’s

The

ractice

(ABC, 1997–) makes ethical issues central to a sometimes shady firm and

beleaguered District Attorney’s office, while

Ally McBeal

(FOX, 1997–)—the first hit

show named after a female lawyer—treats law as a career/lifestyle rather than a crusade

for justice. Again, human vulnerability and moral ambiguity are seen as essences of the

law rather than as external hindrances: justice is one goal among many.

Law and Order

(NBC, 1990–) offers perhaps the most clear-cut moral universe, with its concentration on

prosecutors making deals and losing cases).

The fictional narratives of crime and punishment of the 1990s, however, intersect with

other media realities equally vulnerable and ambiguous. Extensive coverage of the

O.J.Simpson trial and presidential scandals, as well as wider access to C-Span and Court

TV, have made the uncertainties of real justice part of everyday life. “Courttainment” in

which “real” judges (Judge Wappner, former New York City

mayor

Ed Koch, Judge

“Judy”) decide real civil cases with

sitcom

spiels also blurring the structures of authority

and truth that seemed so clear decades before.

Just as crime and punishment have been crucibles of social change and cultural

Entries A-Z 651

meanings, whether on-screen or off-screen, the integration of women and minorities as

major characters in police and law dramas (judges, lawyers and detectives, as well as

criminals), the growing violence of stories and depictions, and the humanization o

lawyers have all reflected changing attitudes and prepared these changes.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Lear, Norman

b. 1922

Liberal

television

writer and producer and political activist. Lear’s shows, sometimes

adapted from British models, raised questions of

race,

class

and gender in ways that

transformed not only the

sitcom,

but American conversations that responded to these hit

shows. His first hit,

All in the Family

(CBS, 1971–9), put Carroll O’Connor’s Archie

Bunker, a working-class bigot from Queens, squarely at the center yet surrounded by

direct challenges from his leftist daughter and son-in-law (played by Rob Reiner), naive

questions from his wife Edith and increasingly diverse neighbors. Spin-offs followed,

such as

Maude

(CBS, 1972–8), which introduced controversial discussions of

feminism

and

abortion,

although at times undercutting the strident liberalism of its title character,

and spun off its own depiction of a black family in the projects,

Good Times

(CBS, 1972–

9).

The Jeffersons

(CBS, 1975–85) followed Bunker’s bigoted black neighbor (and

critical wife) to a Manhattan penthouse, forcing other issues of class, race and interracial

relationships. In

Sanford and Son

(NBC, 1972–6), Lear adapted the British

Steptoe an

Son

to showcase legendary black comedian Redd Foxx as a crotchety, conniving junk

dealer, transmuting some of the stereotypes and tricks that had condemned

Amos’n Andy

decades earlier. While Lear’s successes seem to capture the American dialogues

emerging from the 1960s, by the 1980s he devoted more time to political opposition with

his People for the American Way. He has had less success with return bids for television,

although his characters and plots live on through constant reruns and mass-mediated

“folklore.”

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Leary, Timothy

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 652

b. 1920; d. 1996

Psychologist and apostle of the hallucinogen LSD (d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide). As

a Harvard professor, influenced by Aldous Huxley, Leary tested LSD and psilocybin

among criminals, seminarians and other volunteers. Expelled from Harvard, he explored

altered consciousness and new social visions, becoming a 1960s guru to artists and

hippies

. After his 1967 drug arrest, the

Black Panthers

helped him flee to Algeria and

Afghanistan; he later served prison time. An amalgam of prophet and comedian, Leary

epitomized an

intellectual

drug culture crushed by conservative

Republican

dominance.

He died of

cancer,

after debating his

suicide

on the

Internet

GARY McDONOGH

Lebanon, troops in

The United States has sent troops into Lebanon on two occasions.

Eisenhower’s

plan to

resist any communist aggression in the Middle East (known as the “Eisenhower

Doctrine”), led to the sending of 14,000 troops there at the request of the Lebanese

government, even though the threat came not from communists but from internal

opposition. During

Reagan’s

administration, following conflict in Lebanon between

Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization backed by Syria,

Secretary of State

George Schultz brought about a peace agreement, which stipulated that the US would

commit 1,500 troops as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. In late 1983,

however, a Muslim terrorist drove a truck full of explosives into the unprotected US

Army barracks, killing 241 soldiers. Reagan at first kept the US force in Lebanon, not

wanting to surrender to terrorism, but because of the unpopularity of this decision

changed his mind. Eisenhower’s involvement in Lebanon highlighted one aspect of the

Cold War

—the way in which the mask of anti-communism embroiled Americans in

conflicts of a nationalist nature. The more recent case shaped later engagements o

troops, especially as peace keepers, requiring that the US role be clearly defined, that

peace actually be established and that American forces be sufficiently well-protected.

ROBERT GREGG

Lee, Bruce (Lee Yuen Kam)

b. 1940; d. 1973

Growing up in Hong Kong, Lee returned in 1959 to his birthplace,

San Francisco’s

Entries A-Z 653

Chinatown, and established the Jun Fan Kung-Fu Institute, teaching

martial arts

eople of any race (most Asian Martial Arts schools generally taught people of their own

nationality or race). Lee then began to develop Jeet Kune Do, a syncretic art that includes

techniques from all types of fighting—

boxing,

Thai kick-

oxing, Japanese karate, etc.

After playing the part of Kato in

The Green Hornet

(ABC, 1966–7), Batman and a Lone

Ranger clone, Lee was enticed to make several movies in Hong Kong that became

extremely popular in the United States. Lee died just prior to the release of

Enter the

ragon

(1973), which cemented his reputation and mystique.

ROBERT GREGG

Lee, Spike

b. 1957

Forerunner of a new generation of film-school trained black

directors,

Lee has

expanded his films about

race, class

and gender into a more complex and enduring career

with surprising tenderness as well as compelling questions both whites and blacks might

refer to forget. His films have spurred controversy and dislike from feminist critics o

his debut,

She’s Gotta Have It

(1986), to uneasy white and ethnic readings of

o the

ight Thing

(1989) or

Summer of Sam

(1999), which portray a divided

New York

City.

Controversy has also plagued his relations with and criticism of

Hollywood;

although

alcolm

(1992) took on many of the trappings of a Hollywood production,

award

nominations that have eluded him most.

CINDY WONG

Left, the

In the early twenty-first century there are a number of different American “Lefts” that are

united primarily by their commitment to achieving more social and economic equality in

American society Although these Lefts remain quite fragmented and marginal in an

organizational sense, each one has produced vehement and incisive critiques o

capitalism, liberal individualism and the commodification of social relations. They have,

for the most part, abandoned or deeply problematized the Marxist and “scientific-

socialist” approach of the pre-Second World War American “old” Left, and abhor the

Bolshevik or Leninist model of revolution and social transformation. It is only in these

senses that it is possible to speak of the American Left in the singular.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 654

The modern American Left can trace much of its origins to the so-called New Left that

emerged in the 1960s. This New Left was primarily university based, and, at least in its

beginnings, abandoned what C.Wright Mills called Marx’s “labor metaphysic” (which

considered the working class to be the primary vehicle for revolutionary consciousness).

For the New Left, alienation did not result primarily from an individual’s relation to the

means of production, but was instead created by a lack of democratic participation in the

central institutions of American culture: primarily universities, the state, corporations and

the military The New Left was deeply influenced by the

civil rights

revolution and the

feminist awakening of the 1960s and 1970s. These movements asserted that the

traditional Left was unable to offer convincing explanations of racism and the continued

subordination of women.

Broadly speaking, it is possible to trace two primary intellectual formations that

emerged out of the successes and failures of the New Left. What may be called a social-

democratic Left maintains that continuing problems of poverty and racism can begin to

e addressed primarily through statist economic reforms, political mobilization within the

existing framework of the American

party system

and the revival of an energetic labor-

union movement. This social-democratic Left recognizes the importance of

class

political and historical analysis, but is wedded to more-or-less traditional majoritarian and

“realist” methods to achieve incremental change.

The other, so-called “cultural Left” is a quite complex phenomenon. It has been

nurtured by several powerful philosophical critiques of modernism and Enlightenment

rationality that were first articulated in Europe during and following the Second World

War. For these critics and

hilosophers, including such diverse figures as Horkheimer,

Adorno, Foucault, Irigary and Kristeva, the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century

was the end result of a rationalist innerlogic of Western culture that first gained cultural

hegemony in the West in the seventeenth century. The “cultural Left” critical formation

scorns all forms of foundational metaphysics, Enlightenment universalism and economic

determinism. The cultural Left celebrates the autonomy of dissident cultures of

race,

gender and

ethnicity,

and relentlessly historicizes routine assumptions about hierarchy

and order. It is heterodox, particularist and perspectivist in orientation. It has been

unjustly criticized as mere “identity” politics that has little to say to the “majority o

Americans,” and, while it shares many of the objectives of the social democratic Left, its

analysis and methodology are obviously quite different.

In an era in which capitalism is more powerful than ever in world politics, it remains to

be seen whether the different American “lefts” can create a compelling vision of an

alternative social order.

ED JOHANNINGSMEIER

Lemmon, Jack

Entries A-Z 655