Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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Oates, Joyce Carol

b. 1938

Novelist. Oates combines strong naturalistic prose with elements of American Gothic.

Her works have also managed to combine literary quality with appeal to a wide audience.

Author of many novels, among her best-known works are the trilogy consisting o

Garden of Earthly Delights

(1967),

Expensive People

(1968) and

them

(1969), which

won the National Book Award. Others include

Because it is Bitter and Because it is my

ear

(1990) and

Will you always love me?

(1996).

GARY McDONOGH

obesity

body; diet; food

O’Connor, Sandra Day

b. 1930

First woman to serve as associate justice of the US

Supreme Court

. She was

nominated by President

Reagan

and sworn in as a justice on the nation’s highest court in

1981. Her influence on the court was most deeply felt in the area of 1st Amendment

urisprudence (she developed the court’s controlling standard for interpreting the

establishment clause). She became one of the court’s leaders in declaring the

unconstitutionality of government discrimination based on

race,

regardless of its goal. In

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 826

1991 she largely ended the court’s

abortion

debate by ruling: “the essential holding o

oe v. Wade

still stands.”

MARY-CHRISTINE SUNGAILA, ESQ.

ff-Broadway

see

theater

oil and gas

The United States has been addicted to cheap gas, influencing both domestic and

international policy. It has been one of the world’s largest producers of oil (after the

former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia) and natural gas, based on its holding of 3–4

ercent of world supplies of each. This has created intense localized development,

especially in

Texas,

Louisiana, Oklahoma and the West as well as

Alaska,

coupled with

federal strategies to expand and protect these resources. Petroleum also means major US

corporations such as Texaco, Sunoco, Exxon (Standard Oil), Hess and transnational

conglomerates like Shell and BP. It has fueled a postwar American lifestyle of extremely

high energy consumption.

Even when US production peaked at 9.64 million barrels per day in 1970, the

consumption of gasoline via

automobiles

and other energy uses since the Second World

War had made the US an oil-dependent nation (with imports outstripping domestic

production by the century’s end). Given cheap fuel from abroad, domestic drilling also

decreased dramatically Global economics and politics, therefore, have been shaped by

negotia-tions of an external supply of oil as a strategic resource. While oil companies

once maintained their control through a neo-colonial relationship, the emergence o

OPEC in the 1960s posed an alternative control on global supplies.

Crisis loomed in 1970 as world supplies tightened and OPEC began to raise prices. In

1973 Arab states shut off exports to the US in protest of American support of Israel in the

Yom Kippur War. Spiraling prices and generalized inflation, lines and rationing at gas

umps challenged American hegemony, although the government favored increasing

production rather than attacking demands due to sprawl, consumption, etc.

Iran’s

embargo in 1979 again raised this specter, although development of Alaskan fields and

increased production worldwide has allowed Americans to think and drive as if any crisis

has evaporated. Both controversial offshore drilling and the multi-

illion dollar

commitment of the Trans-Alaska pipeline reflect public interest in oil development even

at the expense of the

environment,

which is already contaminated by automotive wastes.

Critics also have accused the US of coddling dictatorial regimes (Nigeria) or even going

to war in the Gulf to protect strategic supplies and allies.

Within this framework, petroleum companies have become highly visible signs o

American life through the frequent gas stations of city streets and

highways,

as well as

massive impact on cities like Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Denver. Research

Entries A-Z 827

support and corporate sponsorship of programming like PBS’

Masterpiece Theater

(Mobil) or sporting events have been used to assuage concerns about profits and

environmental impacts. The names associated with the history of oil production—

Rockefeller,

Pew, etc.—also appear in monuments,

foundations

and other institutions o

American life. Yet

oil spills,

smog and petrochemical wastes spur continuing opposition

to the unchecked role of petroleum products and producers in American life.

Natural gas is sometimes touted as an alternative possibility especially for home and

roduction uses, and has led to major investment in delivery pipelines around the country

This resource, too, is concentrated in western states giving them special clout in energy

lanning and use, while deregulation has opened new competition among energy

commodities and suppliers.

Further reading

Bromley S. (1991)

American Hegemony and World Oil,

State College PA: Pennsylvania

State University Press.

Nye, D. (1998)

Consuming Power,

Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Yergin, D. (1991)

The Prize,

New York: Simon & Schuster.

GARY McDONOGH

oil crisis

automobiles; highways; oil and gas

oil spills

Oil spills can occur on land or in rivers and lakes, but the most serious spills tend to

involve tankers that travel the open seas. Spills represent a serious environmental risk as

they threaten a wide range of marine species that can die when they or the food they need

ecome coated with oil. The largest oil spill in US history occurred when the tanker

Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in

Alaska

in 1989, dumping about

260,000 barrels of oil, which eventually affected about 1,100 miles of Alaskan coastline.

In response to the spill,

Congress

passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which enabled

the federal government to issue new rules to prevent spills (such as ensuring that tanker

captains and crew are fully qualified and not operating under the influence of drugs or

alcohol,

and limiting where tankers can operate) and which established the liability and

financial responsibilities of any entity involved in an oil spill. Advances continue to be

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 828

made in the technology to clean up oil spills, including the use of bacteria that can break

down the oil into less harmful substances.

DAVID GOLDSTON

O’Keefe, Georgia

b. 1887; d. 1986

Pioneering American female artist, her bold oversized flowers and abstract still-life

representations of the

West

have made her one of the most popular figures of American

abstract art. Born in Wisconsin, O’Keefe moved to

New York,

where she married (1924–

46) photographer and galleryowner Alfred Steiglitz. After his death, O’Keefe settled in

New Mexico, where she vividly interpreted

Southwestern

landscapes,

nature

and skies.

Her colorful and intriguing images, incorporated into major

museum

collections, have

also shaped American style and design.

GARY McDONOGH

Oklahoma City bombing

The April 19, 1995

truck

bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P.Murrah Federal was the

deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history One hundred and sixty-eight

people, including nineteen

children,

were killed and hundreds more injured by an

ammonium-nitrate and fuel-oil (ANFO) bomb hidden in a rental truck parked outside the

building’s entrance. The attack precipitated the largest manhunt in US history Two US

army

veterans,

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were put on trial by federal

authorities for their role in the attack. In June 1997 McVeigh, the actual bomber, was

convicted and sentenced to

death

in the federal district court in Denver. Terry Nichols

was sentenced to life in

prison

for his role in the bombing. The attack was motivated by

intense hostility towards the federal government, generated by the fiery end to the Branch

Davidian/

Waco

stand-off on April 19, 1993.

BRIAN LEVIN

old age

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Since 1945, new medical techniques have extended active life for many Americans, while

the proportion of older people in the population has increased and earlier systems of elder

care have eroded. These changes have given older Americans new choices and powers,

but a continuing cultural privileging of youth still marginalizes and endangers the aging.

The 1950s and 1960s saw efforts to develop ethical and affordable ways of housing

and caring for seniors outside of families. With

Social Security

providing reliable

retirement

income, elders began moving away from established family

homes

into new

Sunbelt

apartment, retirement communities, some of which actively discouraged younger

families from locating nearby. Even without relocating, many elders still had fewer

family

members to care for them. Family size was shrinking, either by design as safe,

reliable birth control became available, or, especially among poorer or newer Americans,

through the exigencies of

mobility,

immigration

and high mortality. Moreover, more

frequent

divorce

and remarriage could multiply the size of the kin group, making young

families responsible for more elders than ever before.

Elders have increasingly used new political and cultural powers based on their

numbers in the population to claim care from the whole society. Since the 1970s, activist

organizations, like the

American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)

, the

American Society on Aging, and the Gray Panthers, eventually supported by the large

and aging postwar

baby-boom

generation, have lobbied successfully for Social Security

benefits, medical rights and legal protections for older Americans.

Wide-spread anxiety including feminist concern, about intrusive and expensive

healthcare,

the disproportion of poor women among the elderly unethical nursing-home

practices and indignities surrounding

death

in hospitals have spurred movements for

ublic regulation of care facilities, greater physical independence for elders and respect

for age itself, and hospice and homecare programs for the terminally ill. The 1990s

especially saw a revitalized Right-to-Die movement, dramatized by the assisted-suicide

campaign of Dr Jack Kevorkian.

Wealth and family background strongly shape the expectations of aging. Affluent,

especially

white,

elders seek “independence,” and plan their finances, activities and

choice of retirement home so as to avoid “burdening” their children. Their wealth and

leisure time has supported new consumer

markets

in special safety equipment, exercise

plans and machines, medical innovations and

plastic surgery

. By contrast, less affluent

seniors, including many non-whites, more often seek to avoid sundering

community

ties,

and tend to rely on their children, neighbors and church community to assist and protect

them. This preference varies less with wealth among non-white seniors than among

whites; Asians in particular are shocked by the isolation of the elderly.

Neither has offered a perfect solution. While independent seniors can suffer from

isolation or emptiness, seniors who stay rooted in their communities also sometimes

endure neglect, danger, or financial loss in securing needed care. The new opportunities

for American seniors have not erased the society’s persistent discomfort and impatience

with the late stages of human life.

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Further reading

Cole, T. (1992)

The Journey of Life,

New York: Cambridge.

Friedan, B. (1993)

The Fountain of Age,

New York: Simon & Schuster.

http://www.ncoa.org (National Council on Aging)

http://www.asaging.org (American Society on Aging)

SHARON ANN HOLT

“oldies

”

Vaguely nostalgic melange of rock from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and, sometimes, 1980s,

evoking feelgood memories of

teenage

life and possibilities for

baby boomers,

removed

from any context of political, economic and socio-cultural change. Popular as a

radio

format, these “greatest hits” also set the ambience for movies like

The Big Chill

(1983),

while fading into everyday backgrounds of offices, cars and elevator

muzak

. Oldies seem

to be creating a pseudo-nostalgia for the children of boomers as well, exemplified in the

renewed popularity of the 1978

Grease

with new generations in its twentieth-anniversary

release.

GARY McDONOGH

Olympians

In the US, the

Olympics

have been the most obvious site for the intersection of sports

and nationalism. Until recently, therefore, the major compensation that could be derived

from being an Olympian, given the strictures associated with maintaining status as an

amateur, came from the visibility afforded those who represented their country preferably

with distinction. When most Americans played

football

and

baseball,

games which had

only a limited international dimension, sporting outlets for nationalist and patriotic fervor

were confined to the Olympics. Television commentators were acutely aware of this and

their coverage of the Olympics focused fundamentally on highlighting American

successes. Moreover, nationalist intensity associated with the Olympics was exacerbated

Cold-War

rivalries. Americans as the leader of the “Free World” competed with East

Germany and the Soviet Union, the communist powerhouses.

African American

track

stars, boxers and college

basketball

players were able, at

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least in small measure, to reap the benefits of favorable attitudes deriving from their gold-

medal winning performances. Many of the athletes also celebrated their “Americanness,”

often taking victory laps or in some way wrapping themselves in the American flag.

Other black athletes, especially at the 1968 Mexico and 1972 Munich Olympics, used the

platform to make statements of protest against racial policies in the United States.

Many of the memorable moments in Olympic sports, then, have been those that could

be framed in reference to nationalism. The Soviet Union’s disputed victory at the 1972

Munich Olympics against a highly favored American basketball team (the game being

decided on a very controversial last-second play) was cause for dismay. Eight years later,

at the winter games in Lake Placid, New York, during the Iran hostage crisis, the success

of the US

hockey

team’s college players against the Soviet “machine” gave rise to

widespread euphoria. In gymnastics, the five-medal performance of Mary Lou Retton at

the 1984 Los Angeles games (clad in new flag-motif leotards) made her the darling o

games tainted by a Soviet boycott.

This identification between nationalism and the Olympics has diminished somewhat in

recent years. In part this is due to the end of Cold-War rivalries, but it is also a result o

the growing professionalism of the Olympics. The athletes no longer need to maintain

amateur status and so no longer pin all their hopes on their Olympic performances.

Moreover, some of the competitiveness has been undermined by the inclusion o

rofessionals in recent games. Instead of a team of American basketball players drawn

from the

NCAA,

the US now fields “dream teams” that pull in stars exclusively from the

BA. The winner of the gold medal is now a foregone conclusion and many of the games

in which the United States plays end up being humiliating for the other team. In other

Olympic sports, nationalist sentiment is on the rise. This is particularly so for women’s

soccer,

where Americans dominate but maintain strong rivalries with countries like

Brazil and China, and patriotic feelings feed on the other major arena of sporting

nationalism—soccer’s world cups.

ROBERT GREGG

Olympic Games

The first modern Olympics (Athens, 1896) were envisioned by their founder, Baron

Pierre de Coubertin, as a way to transcend international divisions of politics and

commerce through the celebration of amateur sport, based loosely on the games o

Ancient Greece. Despite these ideals, however, the modern Olympics have, from the

outset, been beset by shifting political rivalries and economic circumstances. For

Americans as hosts and participants, the Olympics crystallized the major global issues

and struggles of the twentieth century.

For their first three decades, the modern Olympics were linked to expositions,

world’s

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fairs

and other large-scale organized spectacles that emphasized the march o

humankind’s progress, as well as the qualitative differences between nations. Indeed, the

second and third Olympics took place in coordination with the 1900 Paris Universal

Exhibition and the 1904

St. Louis, MO

World’s Fair respectively. Like these

expositions, the Olympics celebrated the divide between the so-called civilized societies

of Europe and North America, which fielded teams, and the subject peoples of the

colonial world, which did not. (Loosely organized “popular” Olympics tried to overcome

this division as well as that which separated elite sports from more inclusive pastimes).

By contemporary standards, the first few Olympics were relatively modest, although

each Olympiad saw the inclusion of new sporting events and new national teams. While

winter sports were included since the 1900 Games, in 1920, separate Winter Olympic

Games were inaugurated. These events have been held in the US three times: in Lake

Placid (

New York)

in 1932 and 1980 and in Squaw Valley

(California)

in 1960. The

scandalridden 2002 games are scheduled for

Salt Lake City, UT

. Americans have not

gained as many medals as in the winter games, nor do the winter games promote

tourism

and imagery in the same way as summer games. Nonetheless, interest has been created

around political events symbolized by the US men’s hockey team’s 1980 gold medal or

y the dramas of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding in 1994. Still, the Summer

Olympics remain larger, more inclusive and more prestigious than the Winter Games.

The 1932

Los Angeles

Olympics were the first to link the Games to local economic

development, as well as civic pride on the part of the host-city and nation. They were also

marked by an unprecedented amount of international

mass media

coverage that served to

heighten the political importance of the Games. The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were

articularly noteworthy in this regard, as the Nazi regime envisioned a vehicle for

romoting the image not only of a resurgent Germany, but also of Aryan superiority.

These latter dreams were effectively dashed, however, by the stellar performance of Jesse

Owens and other

African American

athletes on the US team.

The Second World War led to the cancellation of both the 1940 Olympics (Tokyo) and

the 1944 Olympics (London, hosted in 1948). Following the entry of the first team from

the Soviet Union in 1952, the Games became a surrogate arena for the

Cold War

between the “Free West,” led by the United States, and the communist bloc, led by the

Soviet Union.

In the 1960s, the changing scale and nature of the Games challenged some basic

Olympic principles. Extensive state subsidies provided to athletes from Soviet-

loc

nations were seen to undermine the basic principles of amateurism. Meanwhile, the

advent of

television

coverage in 1960 intensified prospects for commercialization. For

much of the next two decades, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), under the

leadership of Avery

Brundage,

fought a successful rearguard action against both

professionalism and commercialization.

Still, the scale and international visibility of the Olympic Games intensified their

importance as symbolic arenas. Awarding of an Olympics bestowed international

recognition on former pariah nations (Tokyo, Japan 1964; Munich, Germany 1972; and

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erhaps Barcelona, Spain 1992) and on developing nations such as Mexico (1968) and

South Korea (1988). The Mexico City Games of 1968, however, became noteworthy for

the military’s brutal repression of student protestors. Meanwhile, at their medal ceremony

American sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists in the

Black

Power

salute, for which they were suspended from the US Olympic team and kicked out

of the Olympic Village.

Global politics intensified thereafter. The 1972 Munich Games were marred by the

murder of members of the Israeli Olympic team by Palestinian guerrillas. Many African

nations boycotted the 1976 Montreal Games to protest New Zealand’s participation (their

rugby team had played a tournament in South Africa). In 1980 the United States

boycotted the Moscow Games in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan,

which in turn provoked a Soviet-bloc boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

While the increasingly manifest politicization of the Games tarnished the luster of the

Olympic movement, their growing scale also placed extreme financial burdens on the

host-city and nation, notably Montreal’s more than $1 billion debt in 1976. Thus, Los

Angeles was the only city to bid on the 1984 Games.

The Los Angeles Olympics proved noteworthy for not only the triumph of US teams in

the absence of the Soviet bloc, but also for the manner in which they were staged. Prior to

1984, public entities mounted the Olympics. The Los Angeles Games were the first to use

only private funds. Organizers minimized costs, eschewing new construction in favor o

temporary venues and rehabilitated facilities from the 1932 Games. Raising capital

through corporate sponsorships and unprecedentedly expensive television rights, the Los

Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee generated a profit in excess of 1200 million.

The potential profit to be realized from the Olympics undermined the IOC’s historic

resistance to commercialism; ensuing Olympiads have been marked by ever-increasing

commercialism.

Both the Seoul Olympics of 1988 and the Barcelona Games of 1992 were accompanied

by massive, state-financed urban redevelopment projects in their host cities. The Atlanta

Olympics of 1996, however, manifested a return to extreme entrepreneurialism. Unlike

Los Angeles, however, Atlanta organizers planned for significant new construction o

Olympic venues, funded by private sources including the sale of television rights,

commercial sponsorships, tickets and merchandise. Lacking a publicly subsidized safety

net, Atlanta’s preparations were often on precarious financial footing. Atlanta’s problems

with fundraising, along with criticisms of management and overcommercialization, made

the IOC declare it would never again award the Olympics to a city without a significant

public-sector financial commitment.

With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, that particular political dimension o

the Olympics faded into history although American media coverage continues to stress

national triumphs (and American stories of

family,

individual dedication and

community

support). In many ways, the commercialism of the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics

already celebrated the triumph of capitalism over socialism. Beginning in the 1980s, the

IOC also began to retreat from its insistence on amateurism and allowed professional

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 834

athletes to compete—critical to American dominance in basketball, for example. Hence

y the end of the twentieth century, the spirit of Olympism was radically revised to

embrace both professionalism and commercialism, creating a vast hypermediated

spectacle exemplifying the global economy.