Pendergast T., Pendergast S. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Volume 1: A-D
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The AIDS epidemic, which claimed gay men as some of its
earliest victims, caused many public health officials and frightened
patrons to recommend the bathhouses be closed, though others feared
that such a move would only force sexual activity underground,
beyond the reach of counseling, besides erasing the gains of gay
liberation and leading to the repressive eradication of gay culture. The
owners of the baths fought the closures, but most of them were
shuttered by 1985. By the 1990s, gay baths had re-emerged in many
large cities. Some have returned in the guise of the shadowy venues of
pre-liberation days; others have re-opened as private sex clubs, taking
great precautions to educate customers and enforce rules of safe sex
by such means as installing video surveillance cameras and hiring
‘‘lifeguards’’ to monitor sexual activity.
—Tina Gianoulis
F
URTHER READING:
Bayer, Ronald. ‘‘AIDS and the Gay Community: Between the
Specter and the Promise of Medicine.’’ Social Research. Decem-
ber 1985.
Bolton, Ralph, John Zincke, and Rudolf Mak. ‘‘Gay Baths Revisited:
An Empirical Analysis.’’ GLQ. Vol. 1, 1994.
Holleran, Andrew. ‘‘Steam, Soap, and Sex.’’ The Advocate. Octo-
ber 6, 1992.
Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On. New York, Penguin, 1988.
Batman
Batman is one of the most popular and important characters
created for comic books. In the entire pantheon of comic-book
superheroes, only Superman and Spider-Man rival him in signifi-
cance. Among the handful of comic-book characters who have
transcended the market limitations of the comic-book medium, Batman
has truly become an American cultural icon and an international
marketing industry in and of himself.
Batman was born out of DC editor Vincent Sullivan’s desire to
create a costumed character to exploit the recent success of DC’s first
superhero, Superman. Taking inspiration from various Hollywood
adventure, horror, and gangster movies, cartoonist Bob Kane pre-
pared a design for a masked crime-fighter in the costume of a bat in
1939. He then consulted with writer Bill Finger, who contributed to
the vigilante concept ideas derived from pulp magazines. The result-
ing character was thus visually and thematically a synthesis of the
most lurid and bizarre representations of popular culture available to a
1930s mass audience. It was a concept seemingly destined for either
the trashcan or comic-book immortality.
Like Superman, Batman wore a costume, maintained a secret
identity, and battled the scourge of crime and injustice. But to anyone
who read the comic books, the differences between the two leading
superheroes were more striking than the similarities. Unlike Super-
man, Batman possessed no superhuman powers, relying instead upon
his own wits, technical skills, and fighting prowess. Batman’s mo-
tives were initially obscure, but after a half-dozen issues readers
learned the disturbing origins of his crime-fighting crusade. As a
child, Bruce Wayne had witnessed the brutal murder of his mother
Adam West as Batman.
and father. Traumatized but determined to avenge his parents’ death,
Wayne used the fortune inherited from his father to assemble an
arsenal of crime-fighting gadgets while training his body and mind to
the pinnacle of human perfection. One night when Wayne sits
contemplating an appropriate persona that will strike fear into the
heats of criminals, a bat flies through the window. He takes it as an
omen and declares, ‘‘I shall become a bat!’’
Kane and Finger originally cast Batman as a vigilante pursued by
the police even as he preyed upon criminals. Prowling the night,
lurking in the shadows, and wearing a frightening costume with a
hooded cowl and a flowing Dracula-like cape, Batman often looked
more like a villain than a hero. In his earliest episodes, he even carried
a gun and sometimes killed his opponents. The immediate popularity
of his comic books testified to the recurring appeal of a crime-fighter
who appropriates the tactics of criminals and operates free of legal
constraints. As Batman himself once put it, ‘‘If you can’t beat
[criminals] ‘inside’ the law, you must beat them ‘outside’ it—and
that’s where I come in!’’
Batman’s early adventures were among the most genuinely
atmospheric in comic-book history. He waged a grim war against
crime in a netherworld of gloomy castles, fog-bound wharves, and the
dimly lit alleys of Gotham City—an urban landscape that seemed
perpetually enshrouded in night. Bob Kane was one of the first comic-
book artists to experiment—however crudely—with unusual angle
shots, distorted perspectives, and heavy shadows to create a disturb-
ing mood of claustrophobia and madness. These early classic issues
also rank among the most graphically violent of their time. Murder,
brutality, and bloodshed were commonplace therein until 1941, when
BATMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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DC responded to public criticism by instituting a new code of
standards to ‘‘clean up’’ its comic books. As a result Batman’s
adventures gradually moved out of the shadows and became more
conventional superhero adventure stories.
The addition of Batman’s teenage sidekick Robin also served to
lighten the mood of the series. Kane and Finger introduced Robin,
who, according to Kane, was named after Robin Hood, in the April
1940 issue of Detective Comic. They hoped that the character would
open up more creative possibilities (by giving Batman someone to
talk to) and provide a point of identification for young readers. Like
Bruce Wayne, who adopts the orphaned youth and trains him in the
ways of crime fighting, young Dick Grayson witnessed the murder of
his parents.
Robin has been a figure of some controversy. Many believed that
the brightly-colored costumed teenager was obnoxious and detracted
too much from the premise of Batman as an obsessed and solitary
avenger. Oftentimes it seemed that Robin’s principle role was to be
captured and await rescue by Batman. In his influential 1954 polemic
against comic books, Seduction of the Innocent, Dr. Frederick Wertham
even charged that the strange relationship between Batman and Robin
was rife with homosexual implications. Nevertheless, the longevity
and consistent commercial success of the Batman and Robin team
from the 1940s to the 1960s suggested that the concept of the
‘‘Dynamic Duo’’ was popular with most readers.
Much of Batman’s popularity over the decades must be attribut-
ed to his supporting cast of villains—arguably the cleverest and most
memorable rogues gallery in comic books. Ludicrous caricatures
based upon single motifs, villains like Cat Woman, Two-Face, the
Penguin, and the Riddler were perfect adversaries for the equally
ludicrous Batman. Without question, however, the most inspired and
most popular of Batman’s villains has always been the Joker. With his
white face, green hair, purple suit, and perpetual leering grin, the
homicidal Joker is the personification of sheer lunacy, at once
delightful and horrifying. The laughing Joker was also the ideal
archenemy for the stoic and rather humorless Batman, often upstag-
ing the hero in his own comic book.
After years of strong sales, Batman’s share of the comic-book
market began to decline in the early 1960s. Facing stiff competition
from the hip new antihero superheroes of Marvel Comics (Spider-
Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four), Batman and his peers at DC
epitomized the comic-book ‘‘Establishment’’ at a time when anti-
establishment trends were predominating throughout youth culture.
In 1966, however, Batman’s sales received a strong boost from a
new source—television. That year the ABC television network launched
the prime-time live-action series Batman. The campy program was
part of a widespread trend whereby American popular culture made
fun of itself. The Batman show ridiculed every aspect of the comic-
book series from the impossible nobility of Batman and Robin
(portrayed respectively by actors Adam West and Burt Ward, who
both overacted—one would hope—deliberately) to the bewildering
array of improbable gadgets (bat-shark repellent), to comic-book
sound effects (Pow! Bam! Zowie!?). For a couple of years the show
was a phenomenal hit. Film and television celebrities like César
Romero (the Joker), Burgess Meredith (the Penguin), and Julie
Newmar (Cat Woman) clamored to appear on the show, which
sparked a boom in sales of toys, t-shirts, and other licensed bat-
merchandise. Sales of Batman’s comic book also increased dramati-
cally for several years. But the show’s lasting impact on the comic
book was arguably a harmful one. For by making the entire Batman
concept out to be a big joke, the show’s producers seemed to be
making fun of the hero’s many fans who took his adventures
seriously. At a time when ambitious young comic-book creators were
trying to tap into an older audience, the Batman show firmly rein-
forced the popular perception that comic books were strictly for
children and morons.
New generations of writers and artists understood this dilemma
and worked to rescue Batman from the perils of his own multi-media
success. Writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams produced a
series of stylish and very serious stories that did much to restore
Batman to his original conception as a nocturnal avenger. These
efforts did not reverse Batman’s declining sales throughout the
1970s—a bad time for comic-book sales generally—but they gave the
comic book a grittier and more mature tone that subsequent creators
would expand upon.
In the 1980s and 1990s writers have explored the darker implica-
tions of Batman as a vigilante seemingly on the brink of insanity. In a
1986 ‘‘graphic novel’’ (the trendy term given to ‘‘serious’’ comic
books—with serious prices) titled Bat Man: The Dark Knight Re-
turns, writer Frank Miller cast the hero as a slightly mad middle-aged
fascist out to violently purge a dystopian future Gotham City gutted
by moral decay. The success of The Dark Knight Returns sparked a
major revival in the character’s popularity. A series of graphic novels
and comic-book limited-series, including Batman: Year One (1987),
Batman: the Killing Joke (1988), and Batman: Arkham Asylum
(1989), delved into the most gothic, violent, and disturbing qualities
of the Batman mythos and proved especially popular with contempo-
rary comic-book fans.
More importantly in terms of public exposure and profits were
the much-hyped series of major motion picture releases produced by
DC Comics’ parent company Warner Brothers featuring characters
from the Batman comic book. Director Tim Burton’s Batman with
Michael Keaton in the title role and Jack Nicholson as the Joker was
the most successful both commercially and critically. But three
sequels to date have all generated impressive box office receipts,
video sales, and licensing revenue while introducing DC’s superhero
to new generations of comic-book readers. Also in the 1990s, a
syndicated Batman animated series produced by the Fox network has
managed the delicate task—never really achieved by the live-action
films—of broadening the character’s media exposure while remain-
ing true to the qualities of the Batman comic books.
Batman is one of the few original comic-book characters to have
generated more popular interest and revenue from exposure in media
other than comic books. But Batman is first and foremost a product of
comic books, and it is in this medium where he has been most
influential. The whole multitude of costumed avengers driven to
strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers owe much to Bob Kane and Bill
Finger’s Batman—the original comic-book caped crusader.
—Bradford Wright
F
URTHER READING:
Daniels, Les. DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic
Book Heroes. Boston, Little Brown, 1995.
The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. New York, Warner
Books, 1988.
Kane, Bob, with Tom Andrae. Batman and Me: An Autobiography of
Bob Kane. Forestville, California, Eclipse Books, 1989.
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Pearson, Robert E., and William Uricchio, ed. The Many Lives of the
Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media. New
York, Routledge, 1991.
Vaz, Mark Cotta. Tales of the Dark Knight: Batman’s First Fifty
Years, 1939-1989. New York, Ballantine, 1989.
Baum, L. Frank (1856-1919)
With The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), L. Frank Baum
created a new kind of plain-language fairy tale, purely American,
modern, industrial, and for the most part non-violent. He said in his
introduction that the book ‘‘was written solely to please children of
today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the
wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares
are left out.’’ The Wizard of Oz—‘‘Wonderful’’ was dropped in later
printings—became an institution for generations of children. Rein-
forced by the 1939 MGM film, the story and its messages quickly
became a part of American culture. The belief that the power to fulfill
your deepest desires lie within yourself, that good friends can help
you get where you are going, and that not all Wizards are for real has
offered many comfort through turbulent times.
The hero of the story—young Dorothy of Kansas, an orphan who
lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry—is a plucky and resourceful
American girl. Yanked by a cyclone into Oz, she accidentally kills the
Wicked Witch of the East and is given the witch’s silver (changed to
ruby in the 1939 movie) shoes. In hope of getting home again,
Dorothy, with her little dog Toto, sets off down the Yellow Brick
Road—to the Emerald City, of course—to ask the Wizard for help.
Along the way, she meets the Scarecrow in search of a brain, the Tin
Woodman who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion who is after
courage. Following the storyline of most mythical quests, the friends
encounter numerous adventures and must overcome great obstacles
before realizing their destiny. The Wizard turns out to be a humbug,
but after Dorothy destroys the Wicked Witch of the West by melting
her with a bucket of water, he provides her friends with symbols of
what they already have proven they possess. The book ends with
Dorothy clicking her silver shoes together and being magically
transported home, where her aunt and uncle have been awaiting
her return.
In the Wizard of Oz series, Baum left out the dark, scary
underbelly of the original Grimm fairy tales and created a world
where people do not die and everyone is happy. He also incorporated
twentieth-century technology into the books, and used recognizable
characters and objects from American life such as axle grease,
chinaware, scarecrows, and patchwork quilts. Although Baum poked
gentle fun at some aspects of American life—such as the ‘‘humbug’’
nature of government—The Wizard of Oz goes directly to biting
satire. Dorothy is a girl from the midwest (typical American) who
meets up with a brainless scarecrow (farmers), a tin man with no heart
(industry), a cowardly lion (politicians), and a flashy but ultimately
powerless wizard (technology). It presents an American Utopia
where no one dies, people work half the day and play half the day, and
is a place where everyone is kind to one another. Ray Bradbury
referred to the story as ‘‘what we hope to be.’’
Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856 in Chittenango,
New York. His childhood, by all accounts, was happy, marred only by
a minor heart condition. For his fourteenth birthday, his father gave
him a printing press, with which young Frank published a neighbor-
hood newspaper. His 1882 marriage to Maud Gage, daughter of
women’s rights leader Matilda Joslyn Gage, was also a happy one;
Frank played the role of jovial optimist, and Maud was the discipli-
narian of their four sons.
Baum worked as an actor, store owner, newspaper editor,
reporter, and traveling salesman. In 1897, he found a publisher for his
children’s book Mother Goose in Prose, and from then on was a full-
time writer. Baum teamed up with illustrator W. W. Denslow to
produce Father Goose, His Book in 1899 and then The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz in 1900. The book, splashed with color on almost every
page, sold out its first edition of 10,000 copies in two weeks. Over
four million copies were sold before 1956, when the copyright
expired. Since then, millions more copies have been sold in regular,
abridged, Golden, pop-up, and supermarket versions.
In 1902, Baum helped produce a hit musical version of his book,
which ran until 1911, at which point the Baums moved to a new
Hollywood home, ‘‘Ozcot.’’ In spite of failing health, he continued to
write children’s books, producing nearly 70 titles under his own name
and seven pseudonyms including, as Edith Van Dyne, the popular
Aunt Jane’s Nieces series. Inundated with letters from children asking
for more about Dorothy and Oz, Baum authored 14 Oz books
altogether, each appearing annually in December. After Baum’s
death, the series was taken over by Ruth Plumly Thompson; others
have since continued the series.
The books spawned a one-reel film version in 1910, a feature-
length black and white film in 1925, a radio show in the 1930s
sponsored by Jell-O, and, in 1939, the classic MGM movie starring
Judy Garland, which guaranteed The Wizard of Oz’s immortality.
Beginning in 1956, the film was shown on television each year,
bringing the story to generations of children and permanently ingraining
it into American culture.
—Jessy Randall
F
URTHER READING:
Baum, Frank Joslyn, and Russell P. Macfall. To Please A Child: A
Biography of L. Frank Baum, Royal Historian of Oz. Chicago,
Reilly & Lee, 1961.
Gardner, Martin, and Russel B. Nye. The Wizard of Oz & Who He
Was. East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 1957.
Hearn, Michael Patrick. The Annotated Wizard of Oz. New York,
Clarkson Potter, 1973.
Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a
New American Culture. New York, Pantheon Books, 1993.
Riley, Michael O. Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank
Baum. Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Bay, Mel (1913-1997)
Founder of Mel Bay Publications, Melbourne E. Bay was the
most successful author and publisher of guitar method books in the
late twentieth century. Born in Missouri, Bay became a popular self-
taught guitarist and banjo player in the region. He established himself
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as a music teacher in St. Louis, and in 1947 began to write and publish
guitar method materials; eventually he added instructions for playing
other instruments, and by the 1990s his corporation also produced
instructional videos.
Bay’s books sold by the millions, and their quality earned Bay
many awards and honors. Among others, Bay received the Lifetime
Achievement Awards from the American Federation of Musicians
and the Guitar Foundation of America, as well as a Certificate of
Merit from the St. Louis Music Educators Association. St. Louis also
celebrated Mel Bay Day on October 25, 1996. He died on May 14,
1997, at the age of 84.
—David Lonergan
F
URTHER READING:
‘‘Melbourne Bay.’’ American Music Teacher. Vol. 47, No. 1, Au-
gust 1997, 6.
‘‘Passages: Melbourne E. Bay.’’ Clavier. Vol. 36, No. 6, July
1997, 33.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
President John F. Kennedy’s sanctioning of the Bay of Pigs
operation had a significant impact on contemporary popular percep-
tions of his administration. For the majority, Kennedy’s actions
proved that he was willing to actively confront the perceived ‘‘com-
munist threat’’ in Central and South America. However, his action
also disillusioned student radicals who had supported Kennedy
during his election campaign and accelerated the politicization of
student protest in the United States.
In the early hours of April 17, 1961, a force consisting of 1400
Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, in an attempt to
overthrow the revolutionary government headed by Fidel Castro.
From the beginning, this ‘‘invasion’’ was marred by poor planning
and poor execution. The force, which had been secretly trained and
armed in Guatemala by the United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), was too large to engage in effective covert operations, yet too
small to realistically challenge Castro in a military confrontation
without additional support from the United States. Most significantly,
the popular uprising upon which the invasion plan had been predicat-
ed did not occur. After three days of fighting, the insurgent force,
which was running short of ammunition and other supplies, had been
effectively subdued by Castro’s forces. In a futile effort to avoid
capture, the insurgents dispersed into the Zapata swamp and along the
coast. Cuban forces quickly rounded up 1,189 prisoners, while a few
escaped to waiting U.S. ships; 114 were killed.
Although the Bay of Pigs operation had initially been intended to
be carried out in a manner that would allow America to deny
involvement, it was readily apparent that the United States govern-
ment was largely responsible for the invasion. Months before the Bay
of Pigs operation commenced, American newspapers ran stories
which revealed the supposedly covert training operations both in
Miami and Guatemala. Consequently, when the invasion began, the
official cover story that it was a spontaneous insurrection led by
defecting Cuban forces was quickly discredited. Revelations con-
cerning the United States’ role in the attack served to weaken its
stature in Latin America and significantly undermined its foreign
policy position. After the collapse of the operation, a New York Times
columnist commented that the invasion made the United States look
like ‘‘fools to our friends, rascals to our enemies, and incompetents to
the rest.’’ However, domestic political protest was allayed by Presi-
dent John F. Kennedy who, although he had been in office for less
than one hundred days, assumed full responsibility for the fiasco.
According to Kennedy biographer Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy’s
decisive action avoided uncontrolled leaks and eliminated the possi-
bility of partisan investigations.
The operation which resulted in the Bay of Pigs disaster had
initially been conceived in January 1960 under the Eisenhower
Administration. Originally, this operation was envisioned as consti-
tuting the covert landing of a small, highly-trained force that would
engage in guerrilla activities in order to facilitate a popular uprising.
Over the ensuing fifteen months, the CIA systematically increased the
scale of the proposed operation. According to both Sorensen and
biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Kennedy, upon assuming office,
had little choice but to approve the continuance of the operation. Its
importance had been stressed by former president Dwight D. Eisen-
hower, it was supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by influential
advisors such as John Foster Dulles. Further, as noted historian
John L. Gaddis argued in Now We Know: Rethinking Cold War
History (1997), Kennedy believed that ‘‘underlying historical forces
gave Marxism-Leninism the advantage in the ’third world’’’ and
viewed Cuba as a clear example of the threat that Communism posed
in Latin America. As a result, Kennedy was predisposed to take action
against Castro. Unfortunately, due to inaccurate and ineffective
communication between planning and operational personnel, the
significant changes that had been instituted within the operation were
not sufficiently emphasized to Kennedy. Consequently, according to
Sorensen, Kennedy ‘‘had in fact approved a plan bearing little
resemblance to what he thought he had approved.’’ Leaders of the
Cuban exiles were given the impression that they would receive direct
military support once they had established a beach head, and an
underlying assumption of CIA planning was that the United States
would inevitably intervene. However, Kennedy steadfastly refused to
sanction overt military involvement.
The impact of the Bay of Pigs invasion on American public
opinion was sharply divided. According to Thomas C. Reeves,
Kennedy’s public support of and sympathy for the Cuban exiles
rallied the public in support of their ‘‘firm, courageous, self-critical,
and compassionate chief executive.’’ A poll conducted in early May
indicated sixty-five percent support for Kennedy and his actions.
Conversely, the Bay of Pigs invasion also served to spark student
protests. Initially, students had been enchanted by Kennedy’s vision
of a transformed American society and by the idealism embodied by
programs such as the Peace Corps. However, students, particularly
those within the New Left, were disillusioned by Kennedy’s involve-
ment with the invasion. On the day of the landings, 1,000 students held
a protest rally at Berkeley, and on April 22, 2,000 students demonstrat-
ed in San Francisco’s Union Square. This disillusionment spawned a
distrust of the Kennedy Administration and undoubtedly accelerated
the political divisions that developed within American society during
the 1960s.
Internationally, the Bay of Pigs invasion provided Castro with
evidence of what he characterized as American imperialism, and this
enabled him to consolidate his position within Cuba. Ultimately, the
invasion drove Castro toward a closer alliance with the Soviet Union
BAYWATCHENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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and significantly increased both regional and global political ten-
sions. The failure of the invasion also convinced Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev that Kennedy was weak and indecisive. This impression
undoubtedly contributed to Khrushchev’s decision to place nuclear
missiles in Cuba and to the confrontation that developed during the
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). However, sympathetic biographers have
argued that ‘‘failure in Cuba in 1961 contributed to success in Cuba in
1962,’’ because the experience forced Kennedy to break with his
military advisors and, consequently, enabled him to avoid a military
clash with the Soviet Union.
—Christopher D. O’Shea
F
URTHER READING:
Bates, Stephen, and Joshua L. Rosenbloom. Kennedy and the Bay of
Pigs. Boston, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, 1983.
Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History.
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997.
Higgins, Trumbull. The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and
the CIA at the Bay of Pigs. New York, W.W. Norton, 1987.
Lader, Lawrence. Power on the Left: American Radical Movements
Since 1946. New York, W.W. Norton, 1979.
Reeves, Thomas C. A Question of Character: A Life of John F.
Kennedy. Rocklin, California, Prima Publishing, 1992.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the
White House. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. New York, Harper & Row, 1965.
Vickers, George R. The Formation of the New Left: The Early Years.
Lexington, Lexington Books, 1975.
Wyden, Petre. Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story. London, Jonathan
Cape, 1979.
Baywatch
Though dismissed by its critics with such disparagements as
‘‘Body watch’’ and ‘‘Babe watch,’’ David Hasselhoff’s Baywatch
became the most popular television show in the world during the mid-
1990s. Notorious for its risque bathing suits, the show depicted the
Los Angeles County Beach Patrol as it braved dangerous surf and
emotional riptides to save lives and loves. The show ran briefly on
NBC during 1989-1990 before being canceled but became, in its new
incarnation, one of the few shows in TV history not only to exonerate
itself in a post-network afterlife but to actually become a mega-hit.
Baywatch began with David Hasselhoff as Mitch Buchannon, a
veteran career lifeguard recently promoted to lieutenant; Parker
Stevenson as Craig Pomeroy, a successful lawyer who continued to
moonlight as a lifeguard; and a supporting cast of sun-bronzed
characters who adopted life at the beach for reasons of their own. In its
original incarnation, Baywatch finished in seventy-fourth place in the
Neilsen ratings among 111 series to air on the three major networks.
At the same time, it ranked as the number-one U.S. import in both
Germany and Great Britain, where viewers perceived it to be a
glimpse of what America was all about in a format that was at once
wordless and instantly translatable to any culture in the world—
beautiful people in a beautiful environment.
In 1990, after being canceled by the network, Baywatch star
Hasselhoff and three of the show’s other producers recognized its
international potential and decided to invest their own money in the
show. They cut production costs from $1.3 million per episode to
$850,000, and marketed it to independent stations. In syndication, the
show generated more than one billion viewers between 1994 and
1996 in more than one hundred countries around the world.
‘‘We wanted to create a dramatic series that allows our lead
characters to become involved with interesting and unusual people
and situations,’’ said executive producer Michael Berk. ‘‘Lifeguards
are frequently involved in life and death situations and, as a part of
their daily routine, come into contact with thousands of people from
diverse walks of life.’’ This format allows the lifeguards to interact
with an amazing number of robbers, murderers, international drug
runners, runaway teens, and rapists who seemingly stalk L.A.’s
beaches between daring rescues, shark attacks, and boat sinkings. All
of this is blended with the predictable love stories and plenty of
exposed skin. Indeed, the show’s opening, depicting the physically
perfect male and female lifeguards running on the beach, has become
one of the most satirized motifs on television.
Surprisingly, however, the soap-opera-type stories have allowed
the characters to grow from episode to episode and have created some
interesting dimensions for the show’s regulars. Hasselhoff’s charac-
ter, Mitch, comes off a nasty divorce and custody battle for his son and
begins to date again. ‘‘He’s a guy about my age,’’ says Hasselhoff
(forty), ‘‘divorced, with a kid. With many years as a lifeguard under
his belt, he’s promoted to lieutenant and must take on a more
supervisory role. But, he has mixed emotions. He is no longer one of
the guys and must assume the role of an authority figure, while at
home, as a newly divorced parent, he has to learn to cope with the
responsibilities of a single father.’’
The other characters on the show have been significantly young-
er, with the average cast member being in his or her twenties. Each
succeeding season has brought new cast members to the series as
older characters drifted off, died in accidents, married, and otherwise
moved on as the stars who played them became famous enough to
move into other acting ventures. Pamela Anderson Lee, the former
‘‘Tool Time’’ girl’’ on Home Improvement, left Baywatch after
becoming an international sex symbol and garnered a movie contract,
only to be replaced by a succession of similarly endowed sun-
drenched California blondes.
The reasons for the show’s phenomenal success are varied.
Many critics have argued that the sex appeal of the lifeguards in their
scanty beach attire has been the primary reason for viewers (particu-
larly young males) to tune in. Baywatch has, in fact, created its share
of sex symbols with Hasselhoff, Lee, and, more recently, Yasmine
Bleeth and Carmen Electra achieving international celebrity on
tabloid covers and calendars. There is also the appeal of the beach
itself and the California lifestyle—a sun-and-surf image that offers an
escape from the grim reality of people’s daily existence. Some say
there is a more fundamental appeal that is as old as television itself:
Baywatch is a family ensemble no less than The Waltons, Little House
on the Prairie or Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Hasselhoff’s Mitch is
the father figure for the group of lifeguards, while his female
counterpart, Lt. Stephanie Holden (Alexandra Paul), serves as a
surrogate mother for the beach people who wander in and out of each
BAZOOKA JOE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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The women of Baywatch.
episode (until the Holden character’s death during the seventh sea-
son). The supporting cast of lifeguards are the quirky and quarreling
siblings who ultimately must be rescued from their various escapades
by Hasselhoff’s character. Then there is Mitch’s own son, Hobie, a
thirteen-year-old who gets into his own adventures and who is just
beginning to get to know his father. The two-part ending of the
1997-98 season featured Mitch’s marriage to Neely Capshaw (Gena
Lee Nolen).
In an effort to attract the whole family rather than its earlier self-
professed teenager demographic, Baywatch gradually escalated the
level of its story lines to include depictions of social ills, acceptance of
aging and death, and a number of ethical and moral dilemmas. ‘‘What
has happened,’’ said Hasselhoff, ‘‘is that while people were making
so many jokes about us, we became a real show.’’
—Steve Hanson
F
URTHER READING:
Baber, Brendan, and Eric Spitznagel. Planet Baywatch. New York,
St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996.
Hollywood Reporter Baywatch Salute. January 17, 1995, 99.
McDougal, Dennis. ‘‘TV’s Guilty Pleasures: Baywatch.’’ TV Guide.
August 13, 1994, 12.
Shapiro, Marc. Baywatch: The Official Scrapbook. New York, Boule-
vard Books, 1996.
Bazooka Joe
Gum manufacturers commonly used gimmicks, like sports trad-
ing cards, to help boost sales. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., which began
producing Bazooka bubble gum in 1947, included comics with its
small chunk of pink bubble gum. The gum took its name from the
unplayable musical instrument, which American comedian Bob Burns
made from two gas pipes and a whiskey funnel, called a ‘‘bazooka.’’
The comic, featuring Joe, a blonde kid with an eye patch, and his
gang, debuted in 1953. In the crowded chewing gum market of the
1950s, Topps used the comic to distinguish Bazooka from other
brands. The jokes produced more groaning than laughter, and includ-
ed a fortune. Collectors of the comics redeemed them for prizes, such
as bracelets, harmonicas, and sunglasses. In the 1990s, Joe’s populari-
ty fell, and the strip was modernized in response to market studies in
which kids said they wanted characters who were ‘‘more hip.’’
—Daryl Umberger
BEACH BOYSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
195
FURTHER READING:
Wardlaw, Lee. Bubblemania: A Chewy History of Bubble Gum. New
York, Aladdin, 1997.
The Beach Boys
As long as bleach-blond beach bums ride the waves and lonely
geeks fantasize of romance, the Beach Boys will blare from car radios
into America’s psyche. Emerging from Southern California in the
early 1960s, the Beach Boys became the quintessential American teen
band, their innocent songs of youthful longing, lust, and liberation
coming to define the very essence of white, suburban teenage life. At
the same time, they mythologized that life through the sun-kissed
prism of Southern California’s palm trees, beaches, and hot rods,
much like the civic boosters and Hollywood moguls who preceded
them. From 1962 to 1966, the Beach Boys joined Phil Spector and
Berry Gordy as the most influential shapers of the American Top 40.
But like the California myth itself, the Beach Boys’ sunny dreams
were tempered by an underlying darkness, born of their tempestuous
personal and professional lives. That darkness sometimes fueled the
group’s greatest work. It also produced tragedy for the band’s
The Beach Boys
members, especially resident genius Brian Wilson, and by the 1980s
the band collapsed into self-parody.
The nucleus of the Beach Boys was the Wilson family, which
lived in a simple bungalow in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne.
At home, brothers Brian (1942—), Dennis (1944-1983), and Carl
(1946-1998) were introduced to music by their temperamental father,
Murry Wilson, whose rare displays of affection were usually accom-
panied by the purchase of musical instruments, records, or lessons.
Although each son adopted his father’s love of music, it was the
eldest, Brian Wilson, who embraced it with passion. His two earliest
childhood memories were central to his musical evolution and future
career. As a toddler, Brian remembered requesting George Gersh-
win’s ‘‘Rhapsody in Blue’’ whenever he visited his grandmother’s
home. He also remembered his father slapping him at the age of three;
he blamed the loss of hearing in his right ear in grade school on the
incident. Brian was left unable to hear music in stereo for the rest of
his life.
As the Wilsons entered high school, they absorbed the music and
culture which would later fuel the Beach Boys. In addition to his
classical training at school, Brian loved vocal groups (especially the
close-harmony style of the Four Freshmen) and the complex ballads
of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. But the Wilsons—even the reclusive
Brian—were also immersed in the teenage culture of suburban
BEACH BOYS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
196
America: hot rods, go-karts, drive-ins, and, most importantly, rock ’n’
roll. They listened to Bill Haley and Elvis Presley and above all
Chuck Berry, whom guitarist Carl Wilson idolized. By high school
the boys were playing and writing songs together.
In 1961, the group expanded beyond Carl’s improving guitar,
Brian’s accomplished bass, and Dennis’ primitive drums. The Wilsons’
cousin Mike Love (1941—), a star high school athlete with an
excellent voice, joined on vocals. Brian’s friend from school, Al
Jardine (1942—), rounded out the band after aborting a folk-singing
career. With that, America’s most famous suburban garage band was
born, at first hardly able to play but hungry for the money and fame
that might follow a hit record.
Their sound came first, mixing the guitar of Chuck Berry and
backbeat of rhythm and blues with Brian’s beloved vocal harmonies.
But they knew they lacked an angle, some theme to define the band’s
image. They found that angle one day when Dennis Wilson, sitting on
the beach, got the idea to do a song about surfing. By the early 1960s,
the surf craze in Southern California had already spawned the ‘‘surf
music’’ of artists like Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, based around the
crashing guitar sounds intended to mimic the sound of waves. Surf
music, however, was just beginning to enter the national conscious-
ness. With prodding, Dennis convinced Brian that there was lyrical
and musical potential in the surf scene, and in September of 1961 they
recorded ‘‘Surfin’’’ as the Pendeltones, a play on the name of Dale’s
band and in honor of the Pendleton shirts favored by beach bums. By
December, the single had climbed the national charts, and the band
renamed itself the Beach Boys.
In 1962 Capitol Records signed them, and over the next three
years the Beach Boys became a hit machine, churning out nine Top 40
albums and 15 Top 40 singles, ten of which entered the top ten. In
songs like ‘‘Surfin’ U.S.A.,’’ ‘‘Little Deuce Coupe,’’ and ‘‘Fun, Fun,
Fun’’ the group turned Southern California’s youthful subculture into
a teenage fantasy for the rest of America and the world. A baby boom
generation hitting adolescence found exuberant symbols of their
cultural independence from adults in the band’s hot rods and surfboards.
The songs, however, articulated a tempered rebellion in acts like
driving too fast or staying out too late, while avoiding the stronger
sexual and racial suggestiveness of predecessors like Presley or
successors like the Rolling Stones. In their all-American slacks and
short-sleeve striped shirts, the Beach Boys were equally welcome in
teen hangouts and suburban America’s living rooms.
By 1963, the Beach Boys emerged as international stars and
established their place in America’s cultural life. But tensions be-
tween the band’s chief songwriter, Brian Wilson, and the band’s fan-
base emerged just as quickly. Wilson was uninterested in his audi-
ence, driven instead to compete obsessively for pop preeminence
against his competitors, especially Phil Spector and later the Beatles.
To make matters worse, Wilson was a shy introvert, more interested
in songwriting and record production than the limelight and the stage.
He retreated into the studio, abandoning the proven style of his
earliest hits for Spector’s wall-of-sound sophistication on songs like
‘‘Don’t Worry Baby’’ and ‘‘I Get Around.’’ At the same time,
Wilson’s personal melancholia increasingly entered his songwriting,
most notably on the monumental ballad ‘‘In My Room.’’ Together,
these changes altered the Beach Boys’ public persona. ‘‘I Get
Around’’ was a number one single in 1964, but ‘‘Don’t Worry
Baby,’’ arguably the most creative song Wilson had yet written,
stalled ominously at number 24. And ‘‘In My Room,’’ while unques-
tionably about teenagers, deserted innocent fun for painful longing. It
also topped out at number 23. The Beach Boys were growing up, and
so was their audience. Unlike Wilson, however, the post-teen boomers
already longed nostalgically for the past and struggled to engage the
band’s changes.
The audience was also turning elsewhere. The emergence of the
Beatles in 1964 shook the foundations of the Beach Boys camp.
Suddenly supplanted at the top of the pop charts, the rest of the band
pushed Brian Wilson toward more recognizably ‘‘Beach Boys’’
songs, which he wisely rebuffed considering rock ’n’ roll’s rapid
evolution during the mid-1960s. In addition, the entire band began
living out the adolescent fantasies they had heretofore only sung
about. Only now, as rich young adults, those fantasies meshed with
the emerging counter-culture, mysticism, and heavy drug use of the
late-1960s Southern Californian music scene. With the rest of the
band tuning out, Wilson’s Beatles obsession and drug abuse acceler-
ated, Beach Boys albums grew more experimental, and Wilson
suffered a nervous breakdown.
For two years after Wilson’s breakdown, the Beach Boys’ music
miraculously remained as strong as ever. ‘‘Help Me, Rhonda’’ and
‘‘California Girls’’ (both 1965) were smash hits, and the live album
The Beach Boys Party! proved the band retained some of its boyish
charm. But no Beach Boys fan—or even the Beach Boys them-
selves—could have been prepared for Brian Wilson’s unveiling of
Pet Sounds (1966), a tremendous album with a legacy that far
outshines its initial success. Completed by Brian Wilson and lyricist
Tony Asher, with only vocal help from the other Beach Boys, Pet
Sounds was Brian Wilson’s most ambitious work, a dispiriting album
about a young man facing adulthood and the pain of failed relation-
ships. It also reflected the transformation of Southern California’s
youth culture from innocence to introspection—and excess—as the
baby boomers got older. Moreover, Pet Sounds’ lush pastiche pushed
the boundaries of rock so far that no less than Paul McCartney hailed
it as his favorite album ever and claimed it inspired the Beatles to
produce Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In subsequent
decades, some critics would hail Pet Sounds as the greatest rock
album ever made, and it cemented the Beach Boys’ place in the
pantheon of popular music. At the time, however, critics in the United
States had already dismissed the band, and their fans, accustomed to
beach-party ditties, failed to understand the album. Although two
singles—‘‘Sloop John B’’ and ‘‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’’— entered the
top ten, sales of the album fell below expectations.
Disappointed and increasingly disoriented, Wilson was deter-
mined to top himself again, and set to work on what would become the
most famous still-born in rock history, Smile (1967). Intended to
supplant Pet Sounds in grandeur, the Smile sessions instead collapsed
as Wilson, fried on LSD, delusional, and abandoned by the rest of the
group, was unable to finish the album. Fragments emerged over the
years, on other albums and bootlegs, that suggested the germ of a
great album. All that survived in completed form at the time,
however, was one single, the brilliant number one hit ‘‘Good
Vibrations,’’ which Smile engineer Chuck Britz said took three
months to produce and ‘‘was [Brian Wilson’s] whole life’s perform-
ance in one track.’’
If Britz was right then Wilson’s timing could not have been
better, for short on the heels of the failed Smile sessions came the
release of Sgt. Pepper. As if he knew that his time had passed, Wilson,
like his idol Spector, withdrew except for occasional Beach Boys
collaborations, lost in a world of bad drugs and worse friends until
the 1990s.
The Beach Boys carried on, occasionally producing decent
albums like Wild Honey (1967), at least one more classic song,
BEACHENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
197
Brian’s 1971 ‘‘’Til I Die,’’ but their days as a cultural and commercial
powerhouse were behind them. In 1974, with the release of the
greatest-hits package Endless Summer, the band finally succumbed to
the wishes of its fans (and at least some of its members), who
preferred celebrating their mythic land of teenage innocence the
Beach Boys had so fabulously fabricated in their early years. The
album shot to number one, spending 155 weeks on Billboard’s Hot
100, and the quintessential American teen band now remade itself as
the quintessential American oldies act. They traveled the country well
into the 1990s with beach party-styled concerts, performing their
standards thousands of times. In 1983, Interior Secretary James Watt
denied them permission to play their annual July 4 concert in
Washington, D.C. to maintain a more ‘‘family-oriented’’ show.
Miraculously, they scored one more number one single with
‘‘Kokomo,’’ a kitschy 1988 track intended to play on their nostalgic
image. Along the way, they endured countless drug addictions, staff
changes, inter-group lawsuits over song credits, and two deaths—
Dennis Wilson in a 1981 drowning and Carl Wilson of cancer in 1998.
That some of the Beach Boys’ early music perhaps sounds
ordinary 30 years later owes something to the group’s descent into
self-parody. But it also reflects the degree to which their music
infiltrated American culture. No artists better articulated California’s
mythic allure or adolescence’s tortured energy. And when that allure
and energy was lost, their music paved the road for the journeys later
musicians—from the Doors to the Eagles and Hole—would take into
the dark side of the Californian, and American, dream.
—Alexander Shashko
F
URTHER READING:
Hoskyns, Barney. Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes,
and the Sound of Los Angeles. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
White, Timothy. The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the
Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience. New York,
Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1994.
Wilson, Brian, with Todd Gold. Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story.
New York, Bloomsbury Press, 1986.
Beach, Rex (1877-1949)
‘‘Big hairy stories about big hairy men’’ is how one critic
described the work of one of the early twentieth century’s most
prolific and successful popular writers, Rex Beach. He developed
a devoted following among the reading public which remained
loyal to his works into the mid-1930s. In addition, he led the way
for later authors to reap greater profits by exploiting other me-
dia outlets for their works, thus defining what the twentieth-cen-
tury author of popular literature became by mid-century—an
independent entrepreneur.
Rex Ellingwood Beach was born in Atwater, Michigan, in 1877.
At age twelve his family packed their belongings and sailed by raft
down the Mississippi and across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, where
they took up residence on homesteaded land. Beach attended Rollins
College at Winter Park but left shortly before graduation to move to
Chicago. He read law in an older brother’s law office and took one or
two law courses, but he never finished a law program. Afflicted with
gold fever after reading of the vast gold discoveries in the far north,
Beach headed for Alaska in 1897 to seek his fortune. He found little
gold. Instead he discovered wealth of a different kind, a mine of
stories and colorful characters and situations that he developed into
best selling popular literature.
In the summer of 1900, Beach witnessed a bold attempt by North
Dakota political boss Alexander McKenzie to steal gold from the
placer mines at Nome, Alaska. When the scheme failed, McKenzie
and his cronies were arrested. Beach transformed the events into a
series of muckraking articles, ‘‘The Looting of Alaska,’’ for Apple-
ton’s Century magazine in 1905. From this series came his first novel,
The Spoilers. He added some fictional characters to the events at
Nome, and the resulting novel, published in 1905, made the best-
seller list in 1906. Later that year he transformed the novel into a play,
which ran for two-week runs in Chicago and New York before it was
sent out on the road for several years. In 1914 Beach contracted with
the Selig Corporation to release the film version of The Spoilers for 25
percent of the gross profits, a unique arrangement for its time. On four
subsequent occasions, in 1923, 1930, 1942, and 1955, Beach or his
estate leased the rights to The Spoilers to film companies for the same
financial arrangement. Beach published a total of twenty novels and
seventy short stories and novelettes. He authorized thirty-two film
adaptations of his work. In addition to The Spoilers, The Barrier was
filmed three times; five of his novels were filmed twice; and fourteeen
of his novels and stories were each filmed once.
Writing in the school of realism, his novels and stories were
works of romantic, frontier adventure aimed at young men. Plots
involved ordinary hard-working citizens forced to confront the forces
of nature and corruption. They overcame their adversaries by means
of violence, loyalty to the cause and to each other, and heroic action.
Rarely did these citizens rely on government agencies for assistance,
in keeping with Beach’s philosophy of rugged individualism.
From 1911 to 1918 Beach was president of the Author’s League.
In this capacity he constantly exhorted authors to put film clauses into
their publishing contracts and to transform their writings into drama
and screenplays. Most refused, believing that the cinema was a low art
form that degraded their artistic endeavors. The only exception was
Edna Ferber, who also demanded a percentage of the profits for
filming her works. On the occasions that novels and short stories were
adapted, the one-time payments that authors received to film their
works were small, varying greatly from film company to film
company. In frustration, Beach resigned the position in 1918 and
concentrated on writing until the mid-1930s.
From his wandering search for gold and stories in Alaska to his
unique film clause in his contract with Harper Brothers to his
pioneering lease arrangement with film corporations, he established
precedents that others would follow years later and that define
popular authors after mid-century. He not only had an innate sense of
what people would read, but also, ever alert to other potential media
markets, he knew what people would pay to see as thrilling entertain-
ment on stage and on film. Above all, Beach had a formidable passion
for financial success. He viewed his mind as a creative factory
producing a marketable product. Writing involved raw material,
production, and sales. The end result was profit.
Not content with his literary and entertainment achievements,
Beach used his profits to buy a seven-thousand-acre estate in Florida
where he became a successful cattle rancher in the 1930s. He wrote
articles about the nutritional value of growing crops in mineral-rich
BEANIE BABIES ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
198
Rex Beach
soils. He bought an additional two thousand acres at Avon Park and
grew gladioli and Easter lilies at substantial profit. In the 1940s he
developed and wrote more than forty episodes of an unproduced radio
series based on his autobiography, Personal Exposures.
Beach sold everything he wrote, except for the radio series and
an unfinished novel that he was writing at the time of his death. He
and his wife, Edith Greta Crater, divided their time between a New
York penthouse and their 250-acre estate in Sebring, Florida. His
wife, whom he had met in Alaska and married in 1907, died in 1947
after a lengthy illness. On the morning of December 7, 1949,
saddened by his wife’s death, nearly blind, and devastated by the pain
and other effects of throat cancer, Rex Beach ended his life with a
pistol shot to the head. He was seventy-two.
—James R. Belpedio
F
URTHER READING:
Beach, Rex. Personal Exposures. New York, Harper & Broth-
ers, 1940.
———. The Spoilers. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1905.
Belpedio, James R. ‘‘Fact, Fiction, Film: Rex Beach and The Spoil-
ers.’’ Ph.D. diss., University of North Dakota, 1995.
Beanie Babies
In 1993 Ty Corporation released Flash the Dolphin, Patti the
Platypus, Splash the Orca, Spot the Dog, Legs the Frog, Squealer the
Pig, Cubbie the Bear, Chocolate the Moose, and Pinchers the Lobster.
These small plush beanbag toys called Beanie Babies retailed for
about five dollars. By 1997, there were over 181 varieties of Beanie
Babies, and most of the original nine were worth more than $50.
The interest Beanie Babies sparked in so many kids, parents, and
collectors stems from their reflection of the consumer aesthetic of the
1990s. Ty Corporation built a cachet for each Beanie Baby by
portraying itself as one of the ‘‘little guys’’ in the toy industry. It
limited stores to only 36 of each Beanie Baby per month and initially
refused to sell to chain or outlet toy stores. Ty Corporation guarded its
strategy fiercely, cutting off future supplies to stores that sold the
plush animals at a mark-up. The company’s efforts kept Beanie
Babies affordable to almost all, but increased their aftermarket value.
The result of Ty’s strategy strengthened Beanie Babies’ celebration of
the individual. Each baby is assigned a name, a birthday, and an
accompanying poem, all found on the small heart-shaped Ty tag, the
sign of an authentic Beanie Baby.
Some regard the market frenzy around Beanie Babies as ridicu-
lous, but others see it as a benign introduction to capitalism for many