Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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MacArthur, Douglas

b. 1880; d. 1964

Scion of an Army family with experience of East Asia, General MacArthur made his

name in the assault on the Philippines during the Second World War. After losing the

islands in an ignominious defeat in 1942, he returned triumphant in 1944, staging his own

arrival on the island of Leyte for assembled journalists.

Later, in July 1950, MacArthur was named commander of the United Nations’

multinational force to aid South Korea. MacArthur orchestrated an amphibious landing at

Inchon, surprising the North Koreans, who then began their retreat back across the 38th

parallel. The general persuaded President Harry

Truman

to continue the assault to

reunify the country inciting the Chinese government to intervene. After MacArthur’s

forces had recovered from the onslaught of 300,000 Chinese, he still urged Truman to

continue, but the president decided against this. Owing to MacArthur’s public

ronouncements on the issue, Truman found it necessary to relieve MacArthur of his

command in April 1951. Returning home, the general was met with a hero’s welcome,

including ticker-tape parades and an address to

Congress

. But the military establishment

supported Truman, so MacArthur would go the way of the old soldier in the Army ballad

he recited for Congress: he would “just fade away”

ROBERT GREGG

Maclaine, Shirley

b. 1934

A dancer from childhood onwards, Maclaine has also received acclaim as a female

comedian and serious actor in four decades of Broadway and in movies. Her roles have

ranged from hookers to First Ladies, sensual but vulnerable ingénues to formidable

Southern matrons. After several nominations since the 1950s, she won an Oscar in 1983

for

Terms of Endearment

. A political activist in the 1960s, Maclaine has also become

deeply associated with

New Age

mysticism and has written extensively on reincarnation.

ee also:

actors

GARY McDONOGH

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 686

MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)

alcohol

Madison Avenue

Madison Avenue is a 5.5-mile stretch that bisects Manhattan Island,

New York

City.

Madison Avenue boasts glamorous

hotels

(Biltmore, Ritz-Carlton), fashionable shops

and upscale residences in the blocks just east of Central Park. It has an international

reputation as an

advertising

and public-relations hotspot. Ironically only a handful o

agencies (Young and Rubicam and BBDO) have headquarters here. Regardless, New

York City agencies boast $38 billion in annual advertising billings. The name was also

linked to the American satirical magazine

MAD,

as well as many films.

MARC BALCER

Madonna

b. 1958

Twenty-four-year-old

Detroit, MI

native, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone (aka

Madonna) burst onto the music scene in a

New York

City dance club in 1982. Soon after,

her second album earned her first no. 1 hit and gold single, and the nicknames “Material

Girl” and “Boy Toy.” All of her first eleven albums reached the top 15, selling over a

million copies each. Visible in many media, Madonna’s acting credits include a

Broadway

play and the films

Desperately Seeking Susan

(1985),

Evita

(1996) and

The

ext Best Thing

(1999).

MTV

plays her music videos more than any other artist’s. An

astute businesswoman, she created Maverick Entertainment, her own multimedia empire.

COURTNEY BENNETT

Entries A-Z 687

magazines

Americans have a love affair with magazines, creating thousands of periodical

ublications serving every taste and interest. Magazines communicate ideas, convey

opular tastes and persuade the people to think, vote, behave and appear in specific ways.

The average American reads almost ten different magazine issues each month. Sixty

percent of these readers are married and almost 80 percent live in a metropolitan area—

with income and tastes advertisers and publishers want to reach.

Magazines have a lively tradition in the United States of exposing corruption and

individual’s vices, chronicling American history, as well as informing, entertaining and

ersuading their readers. The power of the visual wedded to the printed word could

persuade Americans that Kennedy-Camelot years were perfect, while the faces of famine

in Africa aroused sympathy and paternalism. Magazines, however, like other

mass

media,

are also businesses, selling themselves and

advertising

goods and services to

targeted readers. With the merger climate of the 1990s, the most widely circulated

American magazines were owned by a few conglomerates, like

Time Warner

(TW),

Hearst and News Corporations (NC).

The top five US magazines in advertising revenue at the end of the century were

eople Weekly

(TW),

Sports Illustrated

(TW),

Time

(TW),

TV Guide

(NC) and

ewswee

(Washington Post Co.). In terms of circulation per issue, the top five include

odern Maturit

(for all

American Association of Retired Persons

members),

eader’s Digest, TV Guide, National Geographic

and

Better Homes and Gardens

(all

associated with older readers). Time Warner thus owns the three most profitable

magazines in the country Moreover, these are linked to its other media interests: TW ran

a thirty-two-page advertising insert to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Warner Brothers’

Bugs Bunny in its

Time, Life, People, Fortune

and

Entertainment Weekly,

reaching over

80 million readers.

Magazines have changed greatly over time. The first American magazines appeared in

1741– Andrew Bradford’s

The American Magazine

and Benjamin Franklin’s

The

General Magazine and Historical Chronicle

. Most early magazines lasted less than three

years. They lacked a large, literate population, cheap paper, technology for mass

rintings, means for easy distribution and a solid financial base. In the early 1800s,

education, transportation, population and printing technology changed rapidly and

magazines became instrumental in educating and entertaining the growing American

Republic. Cheap postal rates and the ability to deliver across a greater area increased

circulation. Magazines contained novels in serial form, social and political debate,

fashion, advice for the home, religious and philosophical advice and travel accounts.

Major titles included

The Literary Digest, Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post,

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 688

arper’s Weekly

and

Scribner’s Monthly

Until the end of the First World War, magazines also took an aggressive role in social

reform. Investigative reporters (muckrakers) exposed corruption in politics and industry

and took on causes such as birth control, child labor, sanitation and the meat-

acking

industry. Their dogged pursuit of records, interviews and the truth changed the way

ournalists investigated tough issues.

With postwar development, collegiate readers sought H.L.Mencken’s

American

ercury

and George Jean Nathan’s

Smart Set

during the Roaring Twenties. During the

1930s, photo-filled magazines such as

Look

and

Life

were born, providing a pictorial

chronicle of American culture. Along with

The Saturday Evening Post,

these large-

circulation reviews dominated the national market until the advent of

television

affected

the numbers of readers and advertisers. General-interest magazines that have maintained

their popularity through the decades include

Reader’s Digest, National Geographic

and

the postwar

TV Guide;

in 1947

Reader’s Digest

became the first magazine to have a

circulation of more than 9 million. News magazines such as

Time, Newsweek

and

U.S.

ews and World Repor

have also had large circulation figures, but must compete with

other information sources.

Magazines in the new millenium succeed when they attract the market niche for which

they are positioned. In addition to general consumer magazines and news, the largest

categories of magazines (with examples) are trade journals reflecting specific economic

niches; sponsored publications (

American Legion,

college alumni magazines); sports; sex

(Playboy, Penthouse);

intellectual/ opinion

(Commentary, The National Review, The

ation);

humor

(National Lampoon, MAD);

business

(Forbes, Business Week);

religion

(Christian Century, Focus on the Family);

teens; and city publications

(New York,

hiladelphid)

. Large markets are also gendered into “women’s” interest

(Goo

ousekeeping, McCal

’s)

and men’s interest

(Gentleman’s Quarterly, Argosy),

as well as

gay and lesbian interest. Magazines targeting blacks and

Hispanics

suggest the normative

readers of other magazines.

The Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media

(1998) includes 7,141 trade/technical/professional publications, 2,591 magazines o

general circulation, 459 religious, 391 agricultural, 208 college, 177 women’s, 154

foreign language, 61 fraternal, 56 Hispanic, 38 Jewish and 29 black publications. There

are also roughly 10,000 company and technical publications.

Various milestones in postwar American magazine publishing reflect changing market

demands and consumer trends. The satirical

MAD,

targeting advertising and media, was

founded in 1952.

Playboy

appeared in 1953 with Marilyn

Monroe

as its first centerfold.

eople

magazine—sold in

newspaper

checkout lines—appeared in 1974 with glitzy

pictures in the

Life

tradition, but more

celebrity

gossip.

Cosmopolitan

and

also

challenged “women’s” publications in the 1970s. Meanwhile,

Life, Look

and

Saturday

vening Pos

disappeared, victims of television and more media choices. By contrast,

Vanity Fair,

a magazine that had enjoyed decades of popularity before dying in 1936,

was revived in 1983; it continues to set trends for an affluent society

Other milestones refer to business. Advertising constitutes almost half of the economic

Entries A-Z 689

basis for most magazines. Key sources of advertisement revenue include

automobiles,

cosmetics, direct response, business,

food, pharmaceuticals,

fashion, tourism,

computers, alcohol

and

tobacco

. The Audit Bureau of Circulation provides circulation

information to advertisers, stockholders and the magazine industry itself.

Circulation and subscriptions account for the other half. The prices of magazines have

skyrocketed with increasing costs of printing, paper, delivery services and salaries.

However, the cost of actually producing the magazine has fallen with the advent o

desktop publishing methods and some other technological advancements.

Since the 1980s, niche marketing of magazines has sought to deliver the demographic

and psychographic audience publishers and advertisers want. Demographic information

such as age, educational and income level, geographic location and sex helps advertisers

and editorial directors plan content for readers. Information about readers’ values and

lifestyles (VALS and VALS 2) also helps deliver the audience to writers and advertisers.

Publications failing to respond to market demand cease, despite generations of tradition

The Saturday Evening Post,

whose Norman

Rockwell

covers once epitomized small-

town nostalgia. Magazines also target audiences and geographic regions through special

editions. Advertisements for local and regional clients as well as articles appropriate for a

target audience (e.g.

Latinos

) or region (e.g. tobacco farmers in the

South

) attempt to

increase circulation and revenues.

In the 1990s, electronic magazines began to appear. This development has increased

access to information and editorial content in

colleges, libraries

and among those with

electronic access. They also stretch form and expression within writing and illustration,

as well as intersecting with emergent commercialism on the Web.

Further reading

DeFleur, M. and Dennis, E. (1996)

Understanding Mass Communication,

Boston:

Houghton Mifflin.

Fisher, C. (ed.) (1998)

Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media,

131 st edn,

Detroit: Gale.

GAIL HENSON

Mailer, Norman

b. 1923

Rugged author, journalist, film-maker and critic whose work is marked by macho

ravado as well as liberal politics. Mailer came to fame with the passion and violence o

The Naked and the Dead

(1948), based on his Second World War service. He returned to

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 690

the spotlight with

The American Dream

(1965) and

Why are We in Vietnam

? (1967), as

well as his vivid, personalized journalistic accounts of peace marches (the Pulitzer and

NBA honoree

Armies of the Nïght,

1969) and the 1968 conventions (

Miami and the Siege

of Chicago,

1968). He also explored this non-fiction approach in

The Executioner Son

(1979). Mailer continues to act, talk and write, including the 1995

Oswald’s Tale,

about

John F.

Kennedy’s

assassin.

GARY McDONOGH

Main Street

Center for commercial, communal, civic and ceremonial space in nineteenth and early

twentieth-century small-town America. Although Sinclair Lewis’ unflattering depiction

of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota in his 1930 novel

Main Street

exposed negativity and

restlessness there, Main Street’s decline resulted from the popularity of the

automobile

and

suburban

expansion.

Disney

none theless championed it in the 1950s. Recent

movements to re-establish Main Street as a commercial and communal center include

New Urbanism

and

historic preservation

. New Urbanist projects focus on the

edestrian in designing new Main Streets, while historically preserved Main Streets

attempt to restructure the economy along shuttered, dilapidated corridors.

ISABEL KRIEGEL

Malamud, Bernard

b. 1914; d. 1986

Pulitzer-prize winning novelist and short-story author, born in Brooklyn, whose works

chronicle many facets of the Jewish experience in America, as well as themes of memory

ustice,

race

and

class

relations and

baseball

(

The Natural,

1942). Power-fully written in

elegant prose with poignant characters and encounters, these seminal works also include

The Fixer

(1966),

The Tenant

(1971),

Dubin’s Lives

(1979) and

God’s Grace

(1982). His

complete collected stories were published in 1983.

GARY McDONOGH

Malcolm X

Entries A-Z 691

b. 1925; d. 1965

Often seen as the counterpart to Martin Luther

King,

Jr., Malcolm X became the

inspiration for militant activists during the later stages of the

Civil Rights movement,

it moved away from non-violent protest to advocacy of

Black Power

. Born Malcolm

Little in Omaha, Nebraska, and brought up largely in a detention home in Mason,

Michigan, Malcolm X became a street hustler in

Boston, MA

and

New York

City, NY

before converting in 1947 to the

Nation of Islam

while in prison. Largely self-educated

and very intelligent, able to see through the hypocrisy of the way in which liberal white

Americans responded to the Civil Rights movement, he quickly became national

spokesman of the Black Muslims.

In opposition to King, Malcolm X proclaimed that the way for

African Americans

advance was through force, not by seeking aid from white America. Preaching “an eye

for an eye” and calling for fights against racism “by any means necessary” he

underscored the paramilitary strength of the Black Muslims as the response to racial

oppression and stressed self-help through black businesses.

Some commentators have argued that Malcolm X understood American society better

than civil-rights leaders who believed they could move it towards racial equality and

harmony He refused to accept the common notion of an “American Dilemma,” a tension

etween American ideals and the problems of caste and color. In this formulation,

Americans merely needed to be persuaded to live according to their highest ideals. For

Malcolm X, instead, American history was a record of

violence

against slaves, against

American Indians

and others; the great revolutionary documents had been formulated

deliberately to exclude African Americans. As such, the United States was fundamentally

violent; since power was the national obsession, African Americans needed to pursue

power. Such ideas found adherents among student militants, like H.Rap

Brown

and

Stokely

Carmichael

In the eyes of some supporters, Malcolm X was widely misunderstood at the time.

Partly this was because he had a penchant for shocking white America, and did so very

effectively Following President

Kennedy’s

assassination,

he announced that the event

was an instance of “chickens coming home to roost.” He was accused by his detractors o

preaching hate and being a racist in reverse. But, according to James

Baldwin,

he was

concerned less with whites than with building self-esteem among blacks and

“decolonizing” the black mind. Nevertheless, he did acknowledge later that he had been

wearing “a racist straight-jacket” while with the Black Muslims.

King and Malcolm X may have been opposites in a way but King depended upon

Malcolm X for some of his success. While in the Birmingham Jail, King argued that

white Americans needed to heed the call of moderate blacks like himself, lest they face

more radical and violent elements. In their famous meeting in 1965, the two commented

that in spite of obvious differences they both depended on each other.

Malcolm X broke with the Black Muslims in April 1964, following their reprimand for

his Kennedy assassination comments. A pilgrimage to Mecca caused him to question

much of Elijah Muhammad’s preaching. He returned to the United States as El-Hajj

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 692

Malik El-Shabbazz with the plan of building a more inclusive and internationalist

organization to oppose racial oppression (the Organization for Afro-American Unity). He

was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in

Harlem, NY

on February 21, 1965.

Debates continue over whether the assassins were under the direction of the leadership o

the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X’s influence arguably increased after his death with the posthumous

utobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

. In 1992 Spike

Lee

produced a film relying heavily

on the

Autobiography,

after many scripts by black intellectuals had gone unmade, debates

continuing about the manner in which his life and politics should be portrayed.

ROBERT GREGG

malls/shopping centers

Perhaps no other urbanist innovation of American society in the twentieth century has

gained such global interest—and critical opprobrium—as the “mall,” where the

automobile,

suburbanization and affluent

consumerism

converge. Yet, America’s

variegated shopping complexes have now been replicated globally even in American (and

other) urban centers. Malls, in addition, have become shapers of American

life cycles

Yet they remain simulacra—“Americas” in which the “other,” like bad

weather,

can be

excluded and

consumerism

exalted.

Shopping centers emerged nationwide in the 1920s, via planned developments near

Baltimore, MD, Cleveland, OH,

and Kansas City and

Northeastern

train-

ased centers

that also facilitated parking. Many were service-oriented, offering food stores,

harmacies, banks and perhaps a cinema or restaurant. This has remained the primary

role of many

“neighborhood”

shopping centers, large and small, mushrooming at major

intersections for drive-

y errands. Yet, suburban consumers also attracted larger

businesses, especially

department stores,

which established branches in automotive

centers as well. Soon, these subsidiaries competed with downtowns, offering longer

hours, convenience and

class

segregation of clienteles.

As suburbia grew, so did shopping centers. Victor Gruen Associates constructed the

first enclosed two-story pedestrian malls at Southdale, near

Minneapolis, MN,

in 1955.

Malls later became differentiated in terms of their draw—local, regional and mega-

regional (Greater

Philadelphia, PA’s

mammoth King of Prussia has eight magnet stores

in multiple buildings). As they grew, malls added attractions and services—food courts

(with franchised food), movie cineplexes, office parks, theme parks, civic services and

even

hotels

By the 1960s, downtowns not only competed with but imitated malls, as in

Detroit,

MI’s

Renaissance Center or

Chicago, IL’s

multi-story Water Tower Place. Cities later

found they could sell history or culture in festival marketplaces like Baltimore’s Inner

Entries A-Z 693

Harbor or add malls to train stations and

airports

. Less conscious “malling” expanded in

the 1980s as franchised stores and styles transformed older urban neighborhoods like

SoHo,

where

Eddie Bauer,

Prada and Pottery Barn occupy historic storefronts. The

latest urban innovations include multi-story amusement malls like

Disney

Quest and

high-tech centers by Sony and Nike.

Suburban shopping has also diversified. Giant outlet malls—anchored by

manufacturers, discount sales and department store remainders—compete with both

downtowns and upscale malls for a range of consumers. New immigrants, Asian and

Latino,

have constructed ethnic shopping centers/malls, especially in the

Sunbelt

. Yet

conspicuous omissions include the long-term absence of new shopping complexes in

Harlem, NY

and South Central

Los Angeles, CA

Meanwhile, malls have reshaped American behavior. For many they offer one-stop

anytime family outings, escaping bad weather outside. Malls cater to

children

with stores

and holiday events—showcasing Santa Claus (once the domain of downtown department

stores), and, in the 1990s, “safe” Halloween. In American

mass media,

mall life and

teenagers

are inseparable. Where 1950s movies featured teens at drive-in movies and

restaurants, by the 1990s cars would be parked (or kids dropped off) outside malls. Sales

of music, clothes,

food

and entertainment have recast suburban social life and dilemmas

like teen shoplifting. For elderly consumers, malls offer social outings and secure

exercise space (mallwalks).

Urbanist and media analyses of malls often prove harsh (Sorkin 1992;

Clueless,

1995),

elying the consumption that sustains ever more centers. Yet malls are not vital new

ublic spaces either; their managements limit free speech, political actions and entry

supported by federal courts. Malls also create problematic built environments in their

reliance on

automobiles

and

highways

(with mega-malls so large one can drive “within”

them), especially when, in local or national recession, one must ask what to do with a

dead mall. Ultimately,, the most serious problems arise when the mall, as a shrine to

consumerism,

becomes a metaphor for education, belief, politics or identity. Yet this is

not intrinsic to the mall itself, but to the society that finds its pleasures and reflections

there.