Search Results

This chapter examines the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) during the 1980s. While Ronald Reagan's attacks on unions were ideologically satisfying, by this time NAM's principal battle was no longer against labor, which had lost its bargaining power. Indeed, the NAM of the 1980s had much in common with its historical enemy as both sought to shore up “old” industries against new import-dependent retailers (like Wal-Mart) and non-unionized high-tech industries. NAM and labor still skirmished, of course. But it is worth considering their common plight in the Reagan Era. Both had been losing both members and politicel clout. Both were part of the old “smokestack” industrial economy. And both were slowly being abandoned by the parties that had once fought their battles in Washington. Just as a new breed of Democrats were ignoring the demands of a shrinking union constituency, so too were Reagan Republicans less than thrilled about saving manufacturing. Once at the forefront of shaping industrial capitalism, NAM and its union foes were now struggling to survive in a post-industrial economy.

This chapter introduces the social, historical, and political elements of 1980s immigration debates in both policy-making and popular culture. Drawing on scholarship in American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, Critical Legal Studies, and Media Studies, it outlines the two central tropes in 1980s immigration debates that culminated with the passing of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the “nation of immigrants” and “immigration emergency” tropes. It argues that in response to the civil rights and second-wave feminist movements, gendered Reagan-era discourse about Latin American, Asian, and white ethnic immigration was a crucial ingredient in the forming of the neoliberal idea of democracy. The history of immigration and popular culture is outlined, as is the book’s methodology, which blends feminist media studies with critical legal analysis to dialectally examine significant moments in immigration policymaking and contemporary popular culture.

This chapter develops leftist feminist scholarship on welfare: it shows that that Reagan-era immigration discourse was crucial to the establishment of a neoliberal welfare regime. Welfare cuts under the Immigration Reform and Control Act and later laws minimized the social and economic costs of Latin American and especially Mexican-origin immigrants’ reproduction and family formation while exploiting their labor. Meanwhile, American popular culture delineated a hierarchy of maternity that featured condemnatory portrayals of Latina mothering while blatantly imperfect white ethnic immigrant mothers were idealized. Exoticized Asian mothers were placed between white ethnic and Latin American immigrant and Latina mothers, engaging the “model minority” and “nation of immigrants” tropes and thereby rationalizing the erosion of the welfare state. This chapter argues that language and policy about welfare inaugurated in immigration debates and in racially coded media representations of immigrant mothers created the paradigm for neoliberal welfare discourse.

This introduction sets the agenda for a sustained analysis of the functions of Fifties nostalgia in Hollywood film and popular music in the United States from 1973 to 1988. Perhaps most importantly, the introduction defines the key terms that are utilized throughout the book: “Reagan Era,” “the Fifties,” “the Re-Generation,” and “pop nostalgia.” A key distinction is drawn between retro, a representational practice, and nostalgia, an affective response to historical conditions. In addition, the introduction articulates a rationale for the project’s scope, provides a brief history of nostalgia, and discusses the industrial cooperation between Hollywood film and American popular music in the late twentieth century. The introduction concludes by laying out the book’s structure and organization.

This chapter examines the legacy of Reaganite immigration discourse in policy and popular culture. With consideration of more recent discourse about immigrants in policy debate and media, it is shown that the gender and racial issues underscoring Reagan-era immigration debate have not been resolved, nor have the “immigration emergency” and “nation of immigrants” tropes been abandoned, even after the “War on Terror” following 9/11 altered immigration discourse. Identifying continuities in legislation and media, it argues that nation-based rights are worthless under neoliberalism, given that the system and immigration itself is by definition transnational and unequal, and makes a case for queering immigrant rights in policy and culture to obviate the lingering hegemony of de/valuing immigrants on the basis of personal responsibility, hard work, race, and adherence to conventional gender and sex roles.

This chapter introduces the concept of “star legacies” to describe the way that figures from film and music in the Re-Generation referenced the star texts of Fifties icons like James Dean and Sandra Dee. The “rebellion” or “conformity” that these stars respectively represented to the Re-Generation is a transformation of their screen images in the 1950s. Considering claims on Dean’s star legacy in music and videos from John Cougar Mellencamp and Morrissey, as well as in Re-Generation teen films like Reckless (1983), Footloose (1984), and Heathers (1988), this chapter reveals how Dean served in the Reagan Era as a symbol for various kinds of masculine eroticism, authenticity, and “cool.” While Dean’s star text was continually lauded, Sandra Dee’s legacy was almost universally rejected, as the song “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” illustrates.

The epilogue considers the persistence of the Re-Generation's Fifties fantasies in contemporary America. Considering a new wave of Eighties nostalgia in film, television, popular music, video games and online fan communities, the epilogue argues for the continued relevance of pop nostalgia visions of the Fifties in American consciousness. The comedy Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) and the online mash-up video “Brokeback to the Future” serve as evidence for the contemporary impulse to both enthusiastically re-live and critically re-examine the cultural attitudes of the Reagan Era. The film and the viral video open up new potential readings for Back to the Future, and encourage viewers to engage with pop nostalgia’s construction of history with skepticism.

This conclusion offers a brief overview of the National Council of Negro women (NCNW) from 1980 to the present, looking especially at its changes during the Regan era. After Ronald Regan's election, the NCNW lost a significant proportion of its federal grant funding. NCNW then began to build connections with private businesses through its network of professional black women. One example of this was that in 1986 the NCNW created the Black Family Reunion with significant support from Procter and Gamble. As government funding dried up, NCNW turned inward and began to focus again on broadening opportunities for professional and elite women. Today, NCNW continues to ensure that black women be given educational, political, and economic opportunities and serve in leadership positions in mainstream America.