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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
A religion with origins in West Africa, practiced in the Americas due to the large-scale displacement of Africans during the slave trade. Voudou thus combines elements of Roman Catholicism and native West Indian practices with traditional African rituals. It is characterized by worship of the spirit world of ancestors, and ritual practices include prayers, ecstatic trances, drumming, dancing, feasts and “fits of possession.” A priest or priestess acts as a medium, works charms and curses, and recalls zombies, otherwise known as the “living dead.” Despite both social and legal repression, Voudou has continued to thrive, particularly in among Haitian American immigrants.
Industry:Culture
A riot which broke out at Attica prison, near Buffalo, New York, on September 9, 1971.
The immediate cause was a rumor that inmates had been beaten, but the underlying unrest was caused by the horrendous conditions, including over-crowding, bad food and harsh punishments. The uprising was quashed by a brutal, indiscriminate police assault that killed forty-three men. Once order had been restored, prison officials set about systematic reprisals, for which the state was found liable in 2000 and forced to pay $8 million to the torture victims. The governor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, gained national attention and popularity from his decision to launch the assault at Attica, underpinning his appointment as President Gerald Ford’s vice-president in 1974.
Industry:Culture
A slogan popularized, though not created, by Stokely Carmichael during the James Meredith march through Mississippi in 1966. Black Power became the dominant ideology of the black movement throughout the second half of the 1960s, promoted by SNCC under Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, as well as by the Black Panthers. Black Power raised dread in the eyes of many whites, from southern reactionaries to liberal civilrights activists, who saw it as the death knell of an interracial movement.
Its most visible symbol, the clenched right fist, is most often recalled in association with the Mexico Olympics of 1968, at which sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos made the salute in protest on the medal podium. It was also associated in the minds of many with Malcolm X’s Autobiography (1965), Muhammad Ali’s rhetorical flourishes and with phrases like “Black is beautiful” which had widespread currency through the early 1970s, especially in music.
Industry:Culture
A small group of Americans organized the John Birch Society in 1958 to fight what they considered to be the growing influence of communism in the American government.
Thought too radical by many the society went as far as to accuse President Dwight Eisenhower of being an agent of the “communist conspiracy” Its growth in the 1950s and 1960s paralleled that of the political right in America generally This new political right became a vocal critic of the Democratic Party, as well as of the liberal consensus that had dominated American policy since the New Deal. The society continues to agitate for economic and moral issues.
Industry:Culture
A staple of American media whose format has extended to classrooms and social events.
Mass media contests with celebrities, average citizens, or both, have offered rewards ranging from charity donations to $1 million. Drawing on radio, television games as prime-time events reached their apogee in the 1950s. Since then, they have been daytime staples and syndicated products that fill out local schedules. These games are distinguishable on the basis of contest rules, participation and vulgarity as well as rewards.
Early quiz shows like The $64,000 Question (1955–9), Twenty-One (NBC, 1956–8) or Tic Tac Dough (NBC, 1957–8) were immensely popular weekly evening shows, turning “ordinary” citizens with extraordinary knowledge into stars. Questions could be complex, but the visible struggle suited American beliefs and hopes. This popularity waned when congressional hearings revealed that contestants, including Columbia instructor Charles Van Doren, had been coached in their answers (as depicted in Quiz Show, 1994). As Steven Spark notes, this collapse opened evenings to other series and drew lines between news and entertainment for decades.
Yet these big-stakes shows were not the only option of the 1950s. Other prime-time shows included long-running celebrity matches created by Mike Goodson and Bill Todman, who dominated the genre for decades. Their What’s My Line? (CBS, 1950–67) highlighted repartee among actors and columnists guessing the occupations of ordinary and star contestants. I’ve Got a Secret (CBS, 1952–67), To Tell the Truth (CBS, 1956– 67), The Price is Right (NBC, 1956–63; ABC, 1963–5) and Beat the Clock (CBS, 1950– 8; later ABC and syndication) also focused on distinguishing the truth—whether stumping celebrities or demonstrating physical and economic acuity Meanwhile, these shows emphasized the jovial, male, white announcer who might have other serious roles: newsman Hugh Downs hosted Concentration (NBC, 1958–73); Walter Cronkite led Its News to Me (CBS, 1951–4). Comedian, Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life (NBC, 1950– 61) displayed Groucho’s wit more than contestants’ prowess.
These shows and their successors found addi tional lives as board and party games.
Indeed, television enshrined live competition as deeply American—in television sports, show business (Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, various networks, 1948–70; Star Search, syndicated, 1983–97), beauty pageants or media awards. This model extended to College Bowl (NBC, 1953–70) (pitting university teams against erudite questions) and high-school imitators nationwide. Even Sesame Street (PBS, 1969–) invented the unctuous Guy Smiley to host educational games.
Goodson and Todman’s hegemony ended in the 1970s with Family Feud (ABC and syndication, 1976–94) and the New Price is Right (various networks, 1957–, with a total run of roughly four decades). A subsequent entrepreneur, Chuck Barris, created hits like Dating Game (ABC, 1965–73; syndication) and Newlywed Game (ABC, 1966–74; syndication), more notable for vulgarity in their sexually loaded questions and answers.
Barris also created the Gong Show (NBC, 1976–78; syndication)—a talentless talent show that effectively ridiculed hapless contestants.
In the 1990s, game shows found new life through syndication. Merv Griffin, a 1960s talkshows host, produced global game shows like Wheel of Fortune (NBC and syndicated, 1975–) and Jeopardy (ABC and syndication, 1990–) (the latter famed for knowledge rather than luck). A European import of 1999, Do You Want to Be a Millionaire?, has also raised stakes and moved towards prime-time, spawning a succession of new titles like Greed (FOX, 1999–), Twenty-One (NBC, 1999–) (again!) and survival contests based on European hits. Meanwhile, cable’s game-show channel reruns earlier (post-scandal) shows, while other channels have created contests about music, state history and sports. Kid’s game shows also mix education and family values with physical competition and green slime.
Obviously Americans share game-show elements with other nations. Yet these remain American in their sense of individual heroism, the production of instant celebrities and a belief in the equality of luck that underpins lotteries as well as politics.
Industry:Culture
A technical device that supposedly allows parents to control their children’s TVwatching activities by screening out undesirable programs. The 1996 Telecommunication Act mandated that all TVs manufactured after January 1, 2000 need to be equipped with the V-chip (V stands for either violence or veto). This goes hand-in-hand with the requirement that broadcasters (not cable operators) establish a rating system for objectionable programming. This allows the conservatives to claim victory over the decaying media culture, and put the burden of TV censorship into the hands of the parents, i.e. the public/consumer, not the producers.
Industry:Culture
A television network is a central organization that distributes its programming to local stations. Usually a network sends its programs via satellite or cable, and programs are aired at the same time nationwide, through what is called the network’s program feed.
The four major broadcasting networks are American Broadcasting Company (ABC), National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and FOX. All are advertising driven as opposed to the Public Broadcasting System, which is listener, corporate/foundation and government-funded. Of the four major commercial networks, three were originally radio networks. ABC emerged after the FCC broke up the NBC monopoly NBC, owned by David Sarnoff and CBS, run by William Paley, moved onto television in 1948. With them, came the Nielsen Ratings which monitored the viewing habits of the American people.
The three main networks were in fact four when the FCC started to issue television licenses—until 1956 the Dumont Network also existed. Later, in 1986, ABC, NBC and CBS were joined by the FOX Network. Owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, FOX now has stations in most of the 211 markets around the country The Big Four in recent years have been joined by two smaller networks, the Warner Brothers Network (the WB, owned by Time Warner) and the United Paramount Network (UPN, owned by Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon and MTV). Stations that are part of the WB or UPN networks are considered independents by many in the industry because only a few hours of broadcasting time originate from the network.
Stations that use network programming generally fall within three categories. First are those called network O&Os, owned and operated by the network. Stations not owned by the network that transmit their signal are called network affiliates; stations can also be part of station groups, which means a chain of stations are owned by an entity other than the network—for example Gannett (newspaper chain) owns a station group.
While networks are vertically integrated (they produce and sell all formats of shows and often own stations), three of the Big Four also form part of larger media conglomerates that are horizontally integrated. ABC is owned by Disney, CBS is owned by Westinghouse/GE and FOX is owned by the News Corporation. Although NBC is owned by NBC Enterprises rather than a conglomerate, it has entered into joint ventures with Microsoft in order to gain a foothold in cable with the news station MSNBC.
Since Ted Turner’s foray into cable, viewership has gone down for network broadcasting. Cable has seen the success of networks owned by Viacom (MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1), USA Broadcasting (Scifi Channel, USA Network), Time Warner (HBO, Showtime, CNN), TCI (Discovery Channel, Court TV) and Cablevision (American Movie Classics, Bravo, Independent Film Channel). The Big Four, in order to maintain dominance, have launched synergistic cable stations such as ESPN, owned by FOX and TCI, or NBC/Microsoft’s MSNBC. Until the opening up of the new format of digital television, viewers can expect to see more joint ventures into the limited marketplace.
Industry:Culture
A term introduced by Time magazine in 1977 which describes what some saw as a new class of poor people, not cursed simply with a lack of money, but with a whole host of social pathologies, from single parenthood, to drug addiction, to high rates of participation in crime, and low willingness to pursue legitimate work. The members of the “underclass” had allegedly fallen out of society’s traditional structures of work and family. They would, it was argued and feared, reproduce a class of dependent poor. The term is best written in quotation marks as it reveals as much about a cultural moment in the history of attitudes towards the poor and a community’s obligation to them as it does an actual group of people.
New, troublesome phenomena facing the United States and its cities gave rise to a series of books and endless articles about a “new” poverty. It is no accident, for example, that the term came out of an era of declining economic fortunes for the United States, as well as a wrenching transformation of cities and the larger economy which left many cities destitute in ways they had not seen before. With a rapidly declining industrial base, consequent growth of suburban area, a retrenchment of “Great Society” welfare and urban development goals, many urban areas had been left devoid of an industrial base.
Most gravely affected were “newer” immigrants, African Americans and Hispanics, in major urban areas. Poverty among these groups in urban centers did worsen as economic opportunities fled once-flourishing neighborhoods, ever more so as industry and new service-sector jobs moved out to suburbs and exurbs. A new American apartheid, as Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton called it, was taking over, not through southern segregation law, but by northern economic change and political decisions. The impact of economic desolation—“when work disappears” in William J. Wilson’s phrase—was a breakdown in a whole host of social structures and mores that maintain a community.
So, there were indeed new, troubling aspects of poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. But behind an apparently descriptive term of new problems, lay a century or more of attitudes and policies towards the poor and a more recent intense battle over poverty economic change and government’s role in social welfare. With the apparent failure of the “Great Society,” many conservative commentators looked for answers not in lack of opportunities or income but in a “culture of poverty.” This was in many ways old wine in new bottles—the notion of the “undeserving” and irredeemable poor from the nineteenth century recast for the late twentieth century. The term has been largely rejected by liberal scholars of American cities and social policy as at the very least useless—it offers no new insight into the new problems of poverty—and, at the worst, disastrous for the effort— once a real goal, now a starry-eyed dream—of eradicating poverty. For, by focusing on the behaviors of the poor and the “dysfunctional” life of poor, usually minority, communities, it turns attention away from structural changes in the economy which have created new, and in some ways, unprecedented problems of inequality.
Industry:Culture
A term labeling two refugee populations. After 1975, many Vietnamese braved pirates, storms and starvation in the South China Sea to reach refugee camps in Hong Kong and other areas from which they might seek haven in the US or other Western nations. In the Caribbean, overloaded rafts and small crafts from Cuba and Haiti sought to cross choppy shark-infested waters to reach asylum in Florida. Here, coast-guard patrols were charged to intercept and turn back the refugees (or take them to the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba), leading to chilling televisual images of American forces denying the American dream to desperate families.
Industry:Culture
A term often associated with the rebellion, lifestyles and attitudes formed around marijuana and psychedelic drugs in the 1960s. In fact, there have been many drug cultures in postwar America, including those deeply divided by class (cocaine for the rich and powerful, crack or heroin in the ghetto) and in severity of punishment. Moreover, the widespread use of alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals suggests that the term “drug culture” might effectively characterize much of the nation, as well as those people and practices identified as antithetical to American health and morality As an official cultural construct, the ongoing War on Drugs since the 1980s represents a concerted effort to delegitimize any use of illegal drugs. Yet drugs still pour into poor areas in the cities and other sites without strong government commitment to halt the importation of drugs from abroad.
Industry:Culture
