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Peter Sellers (left) as President Mufﬂey in a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Martin, Patricia Stone. Dr. Seuss: We Love You. Vero Beach, Florida,

Rourke Enterprises, 1987.

Morgan, Judith, and Neil Morgan. Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel. New

York, Random House, 1995.

Wheeler, Jill C. Dr. Seuss. Edina, Minnesota, Abdo & Daugh-

ters, 1992.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to

Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, this dark satire on

Cold War relations paints a searing portrait of a world accidentally

plunged into nuclear warfare. Intermingling sex, love, and war in

unexpected ways (for example, its characters’ names often suggest

‘‘strange loves’’ of various types), Dr. Strangelove (1964) is a rich,

provocative ﬁlm that stands up well to repeat viewings.

Dr. Strangelove tells the story of an insane Air Force general

named Jack D. Ripper who orders a bomber wing to drop a nuclear

bomb on the Soviet Union. Ripper, who favors rainwater as a drink

mixer, believes the Soviets are poisoning ‘‘our precious bodily

ﬂuids,’’ an allusion to an actual Cold War belief that the ﬂuoridation

of America’s water supply was a Communist plot. As the bomber unit

headed by Major T. J. ‘‘King’’ Kong relentlessly approaches its

primary target—a missile complex called Lapuda, a reference to a

place in Jonathan Swift’s satiric 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels—

Soviet Ambassador de Sadesky confronts the president of the United

States in the latter’s ‘‘War Room’’ and tells him that a nuclear strike

will detonate a Doomsday Device that will annihilate all living things

on the surface of the planet. The wheelchair-using Dr. Strangelove, a

presidential advisor on international political affairs and weapons

development, explains the ramiﬁcations of the Doomsday Device

while attempting to keep his bionic arm under control; during tense

moments, the prosthesis has a tendency to choke its owner or give

Nazi salutes. While making plans with others in the War Room for

living underground in the post-Armageddon world, Strangelove

unexpectedly rises out of his wheelchair and takes a few steps. ‘‘Mein

Führer, I can walk!’’ he exclaims to the president, but his excitement

is short-lived; Major Kong’s bomber wing completes its grim mission

at that moment, and a series of thermonuclear bomb blasts accompa-

nied by the strains of the schmaltzy Vera Lynn tune ‘‘We’ll Meet

Again’’ concludes the ﬁlm.

Kubrick began developing Dr. Strangelove in 1961 after reading

Red Alert (also known as Two Hours to Doom), a 1958 Cold War

novel written by ex-Royal Air Force ofﬁcer Peter George. Kubrick

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purchased the novel’s screen rights and began working with George

on the script with the hope of maintaining the book’s solemn tone. His

plans changed, though, as the screenplay took shape. As Kubrick told

New York Times reporter Eugene Archer, ‘‘I was fascinated by the

book—Red Alert, a serious suspense novel about what happens when

one of the great powers pushes the wrong button. The ﬁlm keeps the

same suspense frame. But the more I worked on it, the more I was

intrigued by the comic aspects—the facade of conventional reality

being pierced.’’ Shortly before ﬁlming started in early 1963, Kubrick

brought in Terry Southern, a writer known for his sardonic humor, to

play up the script’s sense of absurdity.

Kubrick assembled an eclectic group of actors for his ﬁlm,

including Sterling Hayden as General Ripper, Slim Pickens as Major

Kong, Keenan Wynn as Colonel ‘‘Bat’’ Guano, George C. Scott as

General Buck Turgidson, Peter Bull as Ambassador de Sadesky, and

James Earl Jones as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg. Heading the cast was

Peter Sellers, a highly versatile actor at the peak of his powers. Sellers

played three roles: British Col. Lionel Mandrake; American president

Merkin Mufﬂey; and Dr. Strangelove, a German presidential advi-

sor—Kubrick wanted him to play a fourth character, Major Kong, but

eventually assigned the role to Slim Pickens after Sellers begged off.

Kubrick, who shot the movie in Great Britain mainly to accommodate

Sellers, allowed the actor to improvise much of the Strangelove

character, including the dramatic rise from the wheelchair. Sellers

greatly appreciated the artistic license given him. ‘‘I especially

enjoyed doing the mad scientist in Dr. Strangelove because Stanley

Kubrick likes free improvisation that can be so stimulating,’’ he told

New York Times writer Howard Thompson. ‘‘Given a free hand, you

can build, construct into the characterization. It’s all any actor could

ask for.’’ His improvisation, in turn, helped Kubrick develop a strong

ﬁnish for the ﬁlm (he had originally ﬁlmed a monumental pie ﬁght in

the War Room but abandoned it, believing its slapstick tone would

conﬂict with the rest of ﬁlm).

Though its power has diminished somewhat during the post-

Cold War era, Dr. Strangelove and its nightmarish visions of a world

gone mad remains an important milestone in screen satire.

—Martin F. Norden

URTHER READING:

Archer, Eugene. ‘‘How to Learn to Love World Destruction.’’ New

York Times. January 26, 1964, B-13.

Falsetto, Mario. Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis.

Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1994.

Kagan, Norman. The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick. New York, Holt

Rinehart and Winston, 1972.

Nelson, Thomas A. Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze. Blooming-

ton, Indiana University Press, 1982.

Thompson, Howard. ‘‘Pause for Reﬂection with Peter Sellers.’’ New

York Times. October 25, 1964, B-7.

Dracula

Cursed to an endless life, Count Dracula is eternally resurrected

in ﬁlm and ﬁction, as well as in the vampire myth. Bela Lugosi’s

Dracula has become an indelible ﬁgure haunting the popular imagina-

tion since the release of Dracula in 1931. The deﬁnitive vampire,

Bela Lugosi as ‘‘Dracula.’’

Lugosi’s well-groomed Count has spawned a diverse group of

vampires, including Sesame Street’s Count, Grandpa Munster,

Blackula, Duckula, and Count Chockula. The only vampire most

people know by name, Dracula has sold innumerable books, plays,

movies, costumes, toys, consumer products, and even tours of Romania.

Tod Browning’s 1931 ﬁlm Dracula is probably the most famous

version of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. Often criticized for its over

resemblance to the drawing-room melodrama from which it was

derived, the ﬁlm has nevertheless had a tremendous and lasting

impact on both ﬁlm and popular culture. The ﬁlm follows the journey

of Renﬁeld, a British businessman, who is visiting Count Dracula in

Transylvania in order to sell the Count some London property.

Slowly, Renﬁeld realizes that he is a prisoner and that the Count is a

vampire. Once in London, the Count must battle Professor Van

Helsing, a doctor who specializes in ferreting out and eradicating the

undead. Van Helsing and Count Dracula ﬁght over the soul of the

innocent Mina, and ﬁnally Van Helsing kills the Count by plunging a

wooden stake through the vampire’s heart.

Dracula was so successful that, almost single-handedly, it

rescued Universal Studios from folding, giving the studio its ﬁrst

proﬁt in two years. More importantly, it established talking horror

movies as a popular and proﬁtable genre. Lugosi’s quintessential

Dracula set the stage for the ﬁlmic and ﬁctional vampires that

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followed. Certainly Lugosi’s sartorial elegance has become a trade-

mark of Count Dracula—as George Hamilton complains in Love at

First Bite (1979), ‘‘How would you like to spend 400 years dressed

like a head waiter?’’ From the 1950s forward, Lugosi’s image graced

a staggering number of incongruous consumer goods, including

swizzle sticks, jewelry, card games, decals, transfers, tattoos, clean-

ing products, Halloween costumes, albums, pencil sharpeners, greet-

ing cards, plastic and wax ﬁgurines, clothing, puzzles, wind-up toys,

candy, comic books, and bath products. By the 1960s, Dracula had

become such a marketable image that he could be co-opted to sell just

about anything.

The late 1950s and 1960s saw a resurgence of interest in monster

culture centered around television showings of classic horror movies

by hosts including Vampira and Ghoulardi, the proliferation of

magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland, and the development

of popular television series like The Munsters and The Addams

Family, which parodied the American nuclear family. Lugosi’s

disdainful Count (barely even interested in his female victims) was

recreated by Christopher Lee in ﬁve ﬁlms, beginning with Horror of

Dracula (1958); by Jack Palance in a prime-time version of Dracula

(1973); and by Louis Jordan in a BBC miniseries, Count Dracula

(1978). While the kitsch market bearing Dracula’s image continues to

spread seemingly unabated, like vampirism itself, a new vampire has

emerged who bears a resemblance to Lugosi’s elegant, aristocratic

Dracula, and yet who is markedly sympathetic as well as erotic.

Beginning with Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, published in

1976, novels and movies told from the vampire’s point of view have

become increasingly popular, as have vampire stories and ﬁlms

created by and for women (e.g., the ﬁlms Lust for a Vampire and The

Hunger, and the novels The Vampire Tapestry (1983) and A Taste of

Blood Wine (1992).

The repeated adaptation of a text can serve as a guide to changes

in popular understandings of psychological and social issues.

Vampirism has been read as a metaphor for gender and racial

‘‘otherness’’; for the simultaneous desire and fear of female sexuali-

ty, male sexuality, and/or homosexuality; for contagion of all sorts;

and for the relationship between the ‘‘new’’ worlds of Western

Europe and North America and the ‘‘old’’ world of Eastern Europe.

Dracula itself has been variously interpreted as a parable of the

oppression and resistance of marginalized groups, the power and

alienation resulting from technological reproduction, the repression

of sexuality and desire, the effects of industrial capitalism on the

working class, and the complex interdependencies of colonialism. Of

course, on one level, Dracula’s popularity lies in its face-value: the

fear of (and possible desire for belief in) the notion that the dead are

not really dead. Like much horror and monster culture, Dracula deals

in the (linked) questions of sex and death. And like most horror ﬁlms,

Dracula tells the story of a contest between good and evil, between

the normal and the abnormal or pathological.

Dracula also follows generic conventions by installing normal-

cy at the end of its story, reinstating and reafﬁrming the good and the

true after an anxious yet enjoyable period of peril. And yet, Dracula

plays with the boundary between good and evil, between the normal

and the pathological, in a way that goes a long way in explaining the

story’s popularity. Dracula blurs and transgresses the distinctions

between living and dead, East and West, male and female, hetero-

sexual and homosexual, aristocratic and professional, healthy and

diseased, and British and foreign before ﬁnally reinstating those

terms as pairs of ﬁxed opposites with the (apparent) death of the

Count. It is Dracula’s ability to appear normal, after all, to pass in the

nighttime streets of London, which make him both so dangerous and

fascinating. Dracula does not look like a monster—in fact, he looks

like an upscale version of his victims. It is, in the end, Dracula’s very

adaptability, his ability to confuse epistemological and social catego-

ries, which ensures his everlasting capacity to both frighten and

entertain us.

—Austin Booth

URTHER READING:

Glut, Donald F. The Dracula Book. Metuchen, New Jersey, Scare-

crow Press, 1975.

Gordon, Joan, and Veronica Hollinger, editors. Blood Read: The

Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture. Philadelphia,

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Skal, David J. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from

Novel to Stage to Screen. New York, Norton, 1990.

The Draft

From America’s founding through the twentieth century, the

draft has been a familiar way to ensure the country’s safety in terms of

the numbers of soldiers it can mobilize to ﬁght in wars. In the

tewntieth century, the draft has been used—in one way or another—

during all of our major wars, from World War I to the Vietnam War.

Naturally, then, draft-dodging has also played a part in American war

history. From the famous to the infamous, numerous Americans—for

one reason or another—have used whatever means they could to

change their lot in the military during times of war or to avoid

participation in war altogether.

The draft existed before American independence. In the colo-

nies, young and middle aged (white) men were declared by law to

constitute the militia of the colony, and such men were subject to

compulsory militia training. After the adoption of the federal Consti-

tution, Congress left militia matters largely to the judgment of

the states.

In response to the Civil War, a federal draft law was passed in

1863 (and modiﬁed in 1864). The Civil War draft was not particularly

effective: The draft law brought 46,000 draftees and 118,000 substi-

tutes into the Union Army, which was eight percent of the federal

army’s total strength.

Congress passed a draft law in May, 1917 which lasted during

America’s participation in World War I. A majority of American

troops who went to France during this war were draftees. The draft

was administered by a decentralized civilian agency, the Selective

Service System, whose power was largely exercised by local draft

boards (the Civil War draft had been administered by the military).

In 1940, Congress again passed a draft law. Except for a draft-

free period in 1947 and 1948, this law was renewed at four-year

intervals until 1971, when it was renewed for two years. The draft

then expired in 1973 when Congress failed to renew it. A Selective

Service System, similar to that of World War I, supervised the draft.

During both world wars, the government eventually chose to

rely solely on the draft for its military manpower needs, and volun-

teering for the military was forbidden. After World War II, however,

the bans were lifted but by 1953 (the last year of the Korean War), still

over half of enlisted men were draftees. After Korea, the military

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increasingly came to rely on volunteers (some of them motivated by

the desire to avoid the draft), and the proportion of draftees in the

armed forces was further reduced. There was an upsurge in the use of

draftees during the Vietnam period, but the majority of enlisted men

remained volunteers.

Some young men were able to ﬁnd various techniques of

dodging the draft. Draft-dodging was a widespread practice whenever

the United States had a draft. Draft-dodging means deliberately

modifying one’s behavior—legally or illegally—for the purpose of

avoiding the draft. Draft-dodging is different from draft resistance,

which involves the open deﬁance of the draft law.

One popular method of draft-dodging was to volunteer for

military service before the draft caught up with you. To enter military

service voluntarily had certain advantages over the draft. A volunteer

had some control over which branch of the service he entered,

whereas draftees tended to end up in the Army rather than the Navy or

Air Force. A volunteer could choose a branch of the armed services,

or a specialty, where there was less of a danger of doing infantry

combat duty. For those who volunteered for the National Guard, one’s

tour of duty would be done in the United States. A Vietnam-era study

of those who had volunteered for the armed forces found that 40

percent of the respondents indicated that the draft led them to enlist.

The number of draft-dodgers in the Vietnam-era National Guard and

reserves was even higher—70.7 percent, according to a 1964 Defense

Department survey.

Another method of dodging the draft was simply ignoring the

law. According to one estimate, 160,000 men on the side of the Union

failed to appear when summoned by their draft boards during the

Civil War. During the World War I draft, between 2,400,000 and

3,600,000 men failed to register for the draft as required. The federal

government held ‘‘slacker raids’’ during World War I in which

federal authorities (civil and military), with help from vigilantes,

would stop and detain draft-age men and ﬁnd out if they were

properly registered. In other periods, the draft laws were enforced by

more conventional law enforcement techniques.

Married men were more likely to get deferments, a fact which

did not escape draft-dodgers. The draft law of 1940 seems to have

prompted some marriages: While in 1939 there was a total of

1,404,000 marriages, there were over 5,000,000 marriages in 1940 in

the 18 to 29-year-old group alone. The Selective Service was aware

that some men were using marriage and fatherhood to avoid their

military responsibilities, and tightened the regulations in response. By

the Vietnam-era, marriage and having children were not particularly

effective ways of dodging the draft.

Fleeing abroad was another method of avoiding the draft.

Mexico was a destination for some draft-dodgers during World War I,

while Canada was a destination during the Civil War and the Vietnam

War—Sweden was also a popular destination for some Vietnam-era

draft-dodgers.

Under the old militia laws in the various states, a man who had

enough money could avoid militia duty by paying someone to go in

his place. This method of hiring substitutes was included in the

federal draft law in the Civil War. Until June 1864, those who could

not afford substitutes could avoid the draft by paying a commutation

fee of $300.00. Many local and state governments gave ﬁnancial

assistance so that draftees could hire substitutes.

After World War II, attending a post-secondary school could

also be a method of draft-dodging. If a college student satisﬁed the

Selective Service that he had a good academic record, he could stave

off the draft at least until graduation (in 1967, Congress made

deferments available to all undergraduates, regardless of their

academic standing).

Draft-dodgers (and draft resisters) have sometimes beneﬁtted

from Presidential amnesties, including Franklin Roosevelt’s limited

amnesty for World War I offenders in 1933, Harry Truman’s limited

amnesty for World War II offenders in 1947, and Jimmy Carter’s

complete amnesty for non-violent Vietnam-era offenders in 1977.

Eminent draft-dodgers include future President Grover Cleve-

land, who hired a substitute so as to avoid the Civil War draft, future

President William Clinton, who made use of student exemptions and

the ROTC program to avoid the Vietnam War, and future Vice-

President Dan Quayle, who joined the Indiana National Guard.

—Eric Longley

URTHER READING:

Chambers, John Whiteclay II. To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to

Modern America. New York, Free Press, 1987.

Curry, G. David. Sunshine Patriots: Punishment and the Vietnam

Offender. Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame

Press, 1985.

Flynn, George Q. The Draft, 1940-1973. Lawrence, Kansas, Univer-

sity Press of Kansas, 1993.

Haig-Brown, Alan. Hell No, We Won’t Go: Vietnam Draft Resisters

in Canada. Vancouver, Raincoast Books, 1996.

Polner, Murray, editor. When Can I Come Home? A Debate on

Amnesty for Exiles, Anti-war Prisoner, and Others. Garden City,

New York, Anchor Books, 1972.

Drag

‘‘Drag’’ was originally a theatrical term used to describe the

women’s clothing a man wore on stage. It came into use in the 1870s

at the same time that cross-dressing, or dressing as the opposite sex,

became popular in vaudeville variety shows. Men would dress in

‘‘drag’’ and women would ‘‘wear breeches,’’ each one poking fun at

the foibles and anxieties of the opposite sex. By the 1940s, drag had

come to describe professional female impersonators and had begun to

take on meanings associated with male homosexuality. Gay men who

wore women’s clothes off-stage started to be characterized as men in

‘‘drag’’ by mid-century.

Since the 1950s, the term ‘‘drag’’ has come to describe a form of

cross-dressing for both men and women that intends to expose itself

as false. In other words, men and women in drag broadcast the fact

that they are dressed up as one sex or the other. Unlike some cross-

dressers, they are not interested in wearing costumes that disguise

who they ‘‘really’’ are underneath. Instead, they make costumes that

are clearly costumes, putting on clothes that are stereotypically men’s

or women’s, like ﬂoor length evening gowns, high heels, bow ties, or

three-piece suits. Men and women in drag work to exaggerate

masculine and feminine gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice,

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A man in ‘‘drag’’ applies lipstick before a photo shoot in Philadelphia, 1995.

and scenarios in order to simultaneously enhance their performance

and underline the fact that they are performing. Drag is most com-

monly associated with ‘‘drag queens,’’ or male performers who dress

up as women. But, it can still describe women dressed as men, or even

women dressed as women or men dressed as men as long as their

outﬁts are designed to produce the sense that the gender they are

performing is self-consciously acted out.

Gay male nightclubs often host ‘‘drag shows’’ as part of their

nightly or weekly ritual, especially in urban areas with large gay

populations like San Francisco or New York. These variety shows

usually feature a line-up of drag queens who ‘‘lip-sync’’ to popular

songs by female artists—moving their lips and performing along with

previously recorded music. These numbers are often outrageously

dramatic, extremely sentimental, or bitingly satirical. Each one is

treated as an opportunity to experiment with the meanings of gender

on stage. Sometimes performers make fun of mainstream gender

relations, while at other times they take the insights of the songs they

sing very seriously. Drag shows are usually emceed by a drag

performer, who often presents a comedy routine on topics ranging

from gay sex to contemporary politics. Some clubs only hire profes-

sional performers, while others are strictly amateur.

There are many fewer drag kings then drag queens and they are

far less visible. However, some lesbian clubs do sponsor drag shows

that provide a forum for drag king performances. These shows often

feature women dressed up in female drag as well as male drag. In

other words, women dress in ‘‘campy’’ or exaggerated female clothes

that draw attention to the ways that they must perform their femininity

as they interact with other women who are dressed as men and who

are drawing attention to their self-conscious decision to dress as their

chosen gender.

Ultimately, drag performers explain, drag exposes the ways that

everyone ‘‘performs’’ their gender, even when they are ‘‘wearing’’

the socially appropriate role. If gender can be successfully understood

through sex-role behavior that is outrageous and clearly fake, then

logically it follows that those traits and characteristics that we

uncritically associate with one sex or the other are being put on or

taken off by everyone. Rather than naturally coming out of biological

sex, sex-role behavior is learned, performed, and always unreal.

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764

Drag has become more mainstream in the last decade, both

within the gay community and in American culture more generally.

RuPaul was a crossover sensation in the early 1990s, and was,

according to People magazine ‘‘the ﬁrst drag queen ever to land on

the pop charts.’’ Her album, Supermodel of the World, brought her

into the limelight in 1993 and her perfectly accessorized seven foot

frame has kept her in the public eye. Like other drag performers,

RuPaul often openly reﬂects on the meanings of drag. ‘‘Drag queens,’’

she once explained, ‘‘are like the shamans of our society, reminding

people of what’s funny and what’s a stereotype.’’

Wigstock, an annual day-long drag show held on Labor Day in

New York City, is another example of the mainstreaming of drag. It

has attracted thousands of spectators and hundreds of local and

national performers throughout the mid to late 1990s. A number of

movies have also caught the national eye. The popularity of the

Australian ﬁlm The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in

the United States as well as the success of To Wong Foo, Thanks for

Everything, Julie Newmar attest to the American cultural interest in

drag and particularly drag queens in the 1990s. Both of them feature a

group of drag queens travelling across their respective countries and

ultimately ﬁnding themselves stranded in backward small towns. To

Wong Foo, especially, captures the bland moral most commonly

associated with drag queens in popular culture. By ﬁrst experiencing

discrimination and then ‘‘educating’’ the provincial residents with

whom they come into contact, the three drag queens represent

American cultural fantasies about victimized people. Confronting

and overcoming their oppression by drawing on the drag queen

‘‘spirit,’’ the queens of To Wong Foo tell Americans what they

already think they know: that a good attitude on the part of oppressed

people is the best way to overcome injustice.

While mainstream movies make these simple connections, drag

queens and kings themselves discuss the disruptive potential of drag.

Rather then reinforcing American’s comfort with oppression and

their resolve not to take responsibility for victimization, drag under-

lines American cultural anxieties about difference and forces men and

women to think critically about how cultural ideas structure their

identities and their sense of possibility.

—Karen Miller

URTHER READING:

Brown, Susan, Persona. New York, Rizzoli, 1997.

Bullough, Vern L. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. Philadelphia,

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

Chermayeff, Catherine, Jonathan David, and Nan Richardson. Drag

Diaries. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1995.

Ekins, Richard, and Dave King, eds. Blending Genders: Social

Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. New York,

Routledge, 1996.

Ferris, Lesley, ed. Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-

Dressing. New York, Routledge, 1993.

Garber, Marjorie B. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing & Cultural

Anxiety. New York, Routledge, 1992.

Pettiway, Leon E. Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and

on the Streets. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1996.

Drag Racing

Drag racing, an acceleration contest from a standing start be-

tween two vehicles covering a measured distance, is probably as old

as the automobile itself. As a legal and commercially organized sport,

however, it began on Sunday, June 19, 1950. On that day at an airstrip

near Santa Ana, California, C. J. Hart, originally of Findlay, Ohio,

hosted with two partners the Santa Ana Drags. A year before that, in

Goleta, California, a drag race was held on a closed-off section of road

with approval of the police, but it was only a one-time event. The

surge of returning veterans at the end of World War II, many of whom

could afford an automobile and had a sense of adventure as well as a

desire to test the performance of their machines, gave rise to street

racing or ‘‘hot rodding.’’ It was street racing, illegal and dangerous,

which led to the need for safely organized events. Today drag meets

take place all across the United States with some contests attracting

upwards of 50,000 spectators.

Although drag racing has become more professional and com-

mercialized than in the beginning, many hobbyists still have the

opportunity to participate. There are a multiplicity of race classes,

each held to certain rules regarding the weight of the vehicle, engine

size and modiﬁcation, and body conﬁguration. In any major drag-race

event there will be dozens of class winners. Drag meets in the United

States are sanctioned by the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA),

the American Hot Rod Association (AHRA), or the International Hot

Rod Association (IHRA). These associations establish and enforce

contest and safety rules. The NHRA, founded in 1951 by Wally Parks,

remains the most inﬂuential drag-racing entity. The ﬁrst NHRA

national championship meet was held in Great Bend, Kansas, in 1951.

The measured course for most races is a quarter-mile, although

some competitions are limited to one-eighth of a mile. The track is a

straight strip made of asphalt or concrete. Race events usually begin

with each class conducting trials; the 16 drivers with the lowest times

are allowed starting positions in the ofﬁcial competition. After the 16

compete, eight winners advance to the semi-ﬁnals until the two

remaining victors drag for the championship. The format and rituals

of the race are generally the same for all race classes. In the ‘‘burnout

box’’ behind the starting line, drivers will spin their rear tires to

generate heat for better traction. Then on signal by the Christmas tree,

the electronic starting pole, they will advance to the staging area and

then to the starting line. The race will begin when three amber lights,

mounted in a vertical row for each driving lane, ﬂash in quick

secession from top to bottom, followed by the green light. Should a

racer start too soon, a red light at the very bottom of the Christmas tree

will turn on, meaning automatic disqualiﬁcation for the driver at fault.

Most races, which last from ﬁve to ten seconds, are won and lost at the

starting line for either ‘‘red lighting’’ or for not ‘‘attacking the

green,’’ respectively.

Broadly, the main professional categories of racers are pro stock,

top fuel, and funny cars. The pro stockers consist of production cars in

which the engine is made by the same manufacturer as the body with

the wheel base remaining unaltered. Otherwise, many performance

modiﬁcations are allowed, including rebuilt engines, hood scoops,

and header exhaust systems. While pro stockers must run only on

gasoline, top fuel dragsters burn nitro, an explosive mixture of

nitromethane and alcohol, commonly known as rocket fuel. The V-

shaped racers—known as dragsters, rails, stilettos, or slingshots—are

DRAG RACINGENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE

765

Shirley Muldowney during a typical race.

25 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet high, and can clock speeds in

excess of 300 miles per hour. Funny cars, sometimes called ﬂoppers,

also run on nitro, but they have a body made of one piece of

lightweight ﬁberglass or carbon ﬁber, not metal, and it is mounted

over top of the driver and hooked to the chassis, or frame, of the

vehicle. Both top fuelers and funny cars must use parachutes to aid in

braking at the end of the race.

Three legendary top-fuel competitors are Don ‘‘Big Daddy’’

Garlits of Tampa, Florida; Don ‘‘The Snake’’ Prudhomme of South-

ern California; and Shilrey Muldowney of Mount Clemens, Michi-

gan. In 1964 Garlits was the ﬁrst to break the barrier of 200 miles-per-

hour. Later, Prudhomme would clock a speed of 300 miles-per-hour.

During the 1980s Muldowney won the top-fueler championship three

times. Both Prudhomme and Muldowney had started out racing funny

cars. Muldowney’s life story was dramatized in the Hollywood movie

Heart Like a Wheel (1983), starring Bonnie Bedalia. In 1984 Garlits

opened his Museum of Drag Racing and International Drag Racing

Hall of Fame in Ocala, Florida.

The culture of drag racing has been represented in various

media, from a plethora of specialized magazines—including Hot Rod

Magazine—and novels such as Henry Gregor Felsen’s Street Rod

(1953), to recording group Tommy Dugan and the Hot Rodders. In

the early 1960s, Charlie Ryan recorded several songs on car racing,

including the popular ‘‘Hot Rod Lincoln.’’ During the 1960s and

1970s, the California rock band the Beach Boys further glamorized

hot rodding with the hits ‘‘Little Deuce Coup,’’ ‘‘409,’’ ‘‘Shut

Down,’’ and ‘‘Fun, Fun, Fun.’’ Mattel, one of the ﬁrst toy manufac-

turers to recognize the appeal of drag racing to young people,

introduced Hot Wheels, a line of miniature die-cast cars, which

included replicas of funny cars raced by Don ‘‘The Snake’’ Prudhomme

and Tom ‘‘Mongoose’’ McEwen. In 1992, the NHRA established the

Junior Drag Racing League, where drivers between the ages of eight

and 17 could race half-sized copies of top fuelers, funny cars, and

pro stockers.

—Roger Chapman

URTHER READING:

Engel, Lyle Kenyon. The Complete Book of Stock-Bodied Drag

Racing. New York, Four Winds Press, 1970.

Post, Robert C. High Performance: The Culture and Technology of

Drag Racing, 1950-1990. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Univer-

sity Press, 1994.

Redlauer, Edward. Drag Racing: Quarter Mile Thunder. New York,

Abelard-Schuman, 1966.

DRAGNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE

766

Wallace, Dave, Jr. Petersen’s History of Drag Racing. Los Angeles,

Petersen Publishing Company, 1981.

Dragnet

Within two years of its 1952 small-screen debut, the eight-year

long (1949-1957) radio series Dragnet had become television’s

number-one rated program. Created by actor Jack Webb, the series

broke new ground from the outset, offering radio listeners rare

authenticity of experience as they ‘‘accompanied’’ the police in

following a case from beginning to ﬁnal sentencing. Each episode

unfolded at a measured pace, as detectives Friday and Smith followed

clues, interviewed witnesses both friendly and hostile, and checked

with various branches of law enforcement for information. Documen-

tary realism was a key element of the show’s appeal, with Jack

Webb’s own deadpan delivery and opening gambit, ‘‘This is the city.

Los Angeles, California,’’ making the mundane routine seem hip

and cool.

The idea for Dragnet came to Webb after he had played a police

lab technician in Anthony Mann’s He Walked by Night (1948). He

shared a belief with that ﬁlm’s technical adviser, Sgt. Marty Wynn of

the LAPD, that pure investigative procedure was dramatic enough

without introducing the traditional melodrama of the ﬁctional hard-

boiled private eye. In early 1949, Webb secured the cooperation of the

LAPD and Chief William H. Parker. As long as Webb didn’t

compromise conﬁdentiality, or portray the police in any ‘‘unﬂattering

entanglements,’’ Parker granted him access to all actual case ﬁles.

Early in 1949, thus armed, Webb approached NBC with his radio pilot

for Dragnet.

Webb’s radio style was to underplay. He stood way back from

the microphones and potted everything up high so that all of the

ambient sounds could be heard. He told Time magazine that

‘‘underplaying is still acting .... We try to make it as real as a guy

pouring a cup of coffee.’’ And the series was realistic. When Webb

and his partner walked up the steps to headquarters, listeners heard the

exact number of steps it took. With his tremendous success on radio,

Webb took Dragnet to television.

On television, Dragnet was extraordinarily conservative. Webb

put the hard-boiled edge of nonconformist heroes like Sam Spade and

Philip Marlowe into the conformist mouth of a downtown cop: ‘‘My

name’s Friday. I carry a badge.’’ The character of Friday had no

tolerance or sympathy for anyone outside the system. Los Angeles

lawbreakers had to be punished, and Friday’s investigations were

carried out with a terse, no-nonsense approach. ‘‘Just the facts,

ma’am,’’ he often said to witnesses who digressed from the point. He

had no interest in witnesses as personalities, nor did he have any

interests in life outside of police work. His whole duty was to ‘‘serve

and protect.’’ By contrast, his partner Frank Smith, played by former

child star Ben Alexander, was much more human, and often fretted

over his health or his wife, Fay. Friday’s diligence, however, ﬁt well

within a 1950s Cold War context of conformity. During a time in

which Americans feared the spread of Communism and atomic

weaponry, Friday was a ﬁgure of dependability and stability. During

Dragnet’s seven-year run, so pervasive was his image that, despite the

rise in the national crime rate, the public came to believe that crime

had diminished and that their city streets were safer than ever before.

The conservative tenor adopted by Webb can be detected in

several episodes that border on a hysterical and paranoid vision. In

‘‘The Big Producer,’’ a bunch of ‘‘dirty’’ joke books and nude

photographs make their way into a high school, but Friday and Smith

can’t bring themselves to label the materials pornography. Instead, a

series of ellipses between the two convey their fear over this ‘‘ﬁlth.’’

In ‘‘The Big Seventeen,’’ the duo cracks down on drugs, ‘‘H’’ for

heroin, in the schools, but they are too late to save a 17-year old

boy from overdosing. The endings of this, and several other epi-

sodes, were downbeat, and in a 1950s context, the hysteria and

paranoia worked. When Dragnet was revived for the ‘‘Go-Go’’

years, 1967-1970, the hysterical mood was far too judgmental for

later audiences.

Stylistically, Dragnet generated a unique syntax on the Ameri-

can landscape in its use of abbreviations and numerical codes. MO

(modus operandi), DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), and APB

(All Points Bulletin) became part of everyday speech, along with 212

(robbery), 459 (burglary), and 311 (lewd conduct). Walter Schu-

mann’s four-note theme musical theme, ‘‘Dum-de-dum-dum,’’ was a

motif evoking justice and retribution, but also a mood of agitation.

The motif was taken up in popular culture as a metonym for trouble.

In ‘‘Better Living Through TV,’’ an episode of The Honeymooners,

for example, Norton hums Schumann’s Dragnet motif when Alice

catches wind of another one of Ralph’s ‘‘hare-brained schemes.’’

And in the 1980s, a series of Tums ads that attacked antacid modiﬁed

Schumann’s theme to ‘‘Tum-te-tum-tum.’’

The series was immensely popular. Parodies of it abounded in

the 1950s. Mad Magazine attacked its conformity and shilling for

Chesterﬁeld cigarettes. Radio comedians such as Stan Freberg and

Bob and Ray had fun with its narrative excesses while, in a classic

Chuck Jones cartoon, Rocket Squad (1954), featuring Daffy Duck and

Porky Pig in the Friday and Smith parts, the two intrepid heroes

become the villains. Moreover, the look of Dragnet, its reliance on

shot/reverse shots and eyeline matches to connote judgment—a

witness says something; Friday shakes his head and looks at an

offscreen Smith; Smith shakes his head and looks in return at the

offscreen Friday—became an industry standard in shooting such

scenes with effective economy of style.

No doubt the success of Dragnet, and its chief ratings rival, I

Love Lucy, in the early 1950s helped shape the direction of televi-

sion’s cop shows and sitcoms for years to come. The series also

contributed to the positive portrayal of law enforcement that prevailed

until the shocking images of Rodney King’s beating in the early 1990s

shook enlightened Americans’ faith in the police. When loyal cop

supporter Jack Webb died of a heart attack on December 23, 1982, the

LAPD ﬂew its ﬂags at half-staff.

—Grant Tracey

URTHER READING:

Dunning, John. On the Air: An Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New

York, Oxford University Press, 1998.

‘‘Jack, Be Nimble!’’ Time. March 15, 1954, 47-50.

Marc, David. Demographic Vistas: Television in American Culture.

Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Stark, Steven D. ‘‘Dragnet and the Policeman as Hero.’’ In Glued to

the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events that Made Us Who

We Are Today. New York, The Free Press, 1997, 31-36.

DREAM TEAMENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE

767

Dragon Lady

In movies and comic strips, the Dragon Lady epitomized a

mythic female legend; the seductive, ‘‘exotic,’’ yet deadly Asian

black widow. Although there is no evidence that a real Dragon Lady

ever existed, her character was treated as real and was embodied by

Anna May Wong in the 1931 Fu Manchu thriller, Daughter of the

Dragon. The Dragon Lady persona gained additional popularity in

Milton Caniff’s 1930s comic strip Terry and the Pirates. In this

comic, the Dragon Lady ‘‘captivates men with her beauty then

tramples them like insects when they cross her.’’ During World War

II, the Dragon Lady persona became associated with an English-

speaking radio announcer for Radio Tokyo, whose voice was broad-

cast to American soldiers. The American media dubbed her Tokyo

Rose, and portrayed her as an Asian Mata Hari. Rose turned out to be a

naive Japanese American girl named Iva Ikuko Toguri.

—Midori Takagi

URTHER READING:

Cao, Lan, and Himilce Novas. Everything You Need to Know About

Asian American History. New York, Plume, 1996.

Kutler, Stanley I. ‘‘Forging a Legend: The Treason of ’Tokyo

Rose.’’’ Wisconsin Law Review. 1980, 1341-1382.

Dream Team

The United States’ vaunted Dream Team—unquestionably the

greatest collection of basketball talent ever assembled—rolled to a

gold medal in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. Com-

prised of eleven National Basketball Association members and one

collegian, the Dream Team’s very existence was made possible by a

1989 agreement with the International Amateur Basketball Federa-

tion to allow professionals to participate in the Olympic Games.

While the American team was greatest beneﬁciary of the rule change,

its international organization, USA Basketball, had voted against the

inclusion of NBA players. As David Wallechinsky noted, concerns

were expressed that ﬁnancial support for women’s and junior basket-

ball programs would diminish and that one-sided games would

markedly reduce the television audience.

The American team, averaging 117 ¼ points per game, swept to

eight consecutive wins in Barcelona, while holding its opponents to

73 ½ points a game; the actual margin of victory could have been even

greater had not various ailments afﬂicted several of the U.S. players,

while others held back through fear of injury. The American roster

nevertheless was star-studded. The Dream Team boasted the presence

of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Karl

Malone, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, Clyde

Drexler, and John Stockton, all to be inducted into the Hall of Fame

later. Also on the team were NBA star Christopher Mullin and Duke

University’s Christian Laettner, while the coaches included Detroit’s

Chuck Daly, Atlanta’s Lenny Wilkens, Portland’s P. J. Carlesimo,

and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.

With the United States having lost the 1972 and 1988 Olympic

Games, as well as a series of subsequent international events, Chicago

Bull Michael Jordan, who had recently led his team to its second

consecutive NBA championship, asserted, “We’ve got to regain our

Dream Team member Magic Johnson (center) watches as Michael Jordan

(right) and David Robinson (left) go for a rebound.

sense of pride, our dignity. Some way—even if it’s just basketball.

We can at least show the world that we can take control of some-

thing.” But it was the possibility of a ﬁnancial windfall that undoubt-

edly led the NBA to support the sending of its greatest players to

Barcelona, with Commissioner David Stern envisioning the possibili-

ty of a transoceanic league. NBA teams had recently added Lithuania’s

Sarunas Marciulionis, Croatia’s Drazen Petrovic, Germany’s Detlef

Schrempf, and Yugoslavia’s Vlade Divac to their rosters, and looked

expectantly to the likes of Toni Kukoc, Arvidas Sabonis, and

Dino Radja.

With its opponents already thoroughly intimidated before the

ﬁrst jump ball, the Dream Team, whose members received the public

adulation generally reserved for pop stars, had to contend with the fact

that the competition often seemed thrilled just to occupy the same

basketball court. While the U.S. team was crushing defending cham-

pions Argentina 128-87 at the Tournament of the Americas, Jordan

dunked the ball, resulting in wild cheering from the Argentine bench.

Center Hernan Montenegro declared, “I played with great happiness

against the monsters.” Guard Marcelo Milanesio stated, “When we

met at the center of the court, I was very excited that it was Magic

Johnson shaking my hand.” After a 136-57 shellacking, Cuban coach

Miguel Gomez philosophized, “One ﬁnger cannot cover the sun.”

American observers, such as Princeton coach Pete Carril, also waxing

eloquent about the American players, said, “This is not a great team.

This is the greatest team ever.”

During the Barcelona Olympics, the Americans, despite playing

under international rules—two 20 minute halves, a shorter three-point

DREISER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE

768

line, and zone defenses—scored better than 100 points each time out.

The two closest games involved Croatia, featuring Petrovic and

Kukoc, but the margins of victory were each better than 30 points. In

their meeting, Chicago’s Pippen shut down Kukoc, who had been

offered more money by Bulls’ general manager Jerry Krause than

Jordan’s teammate had been. The greatest notoriety involved Barkley’s

elbowing of an Angolan player in the midst of an opening-game rout

(116-48). Jordan remarked, “Charles is Charles. He’s not crazy. He

just likes to push his behavior to the edge.” Angolan coach Victorino

Cunha dismissed the concerns: “We know Charles Barkley. No

problem. He does this ten times a year in the NBA.”

Following the Dream Team’s gold medal win over Croatia,

117-85, Mullin mused about “everybody willing to throw egos,

individual statistics and all that other stuff out the window to prepare

to be the best team ever. Nope, it won’t happen again.” Johnson,

speaking rhetorically, asked reporters, “When will there be another

Olympic team as good as this one? Well, you guys won’t be around,

and neither will we.” While Barkley led the team in scoring with an

18.0 point average, Jordan contributed 14.9 points per game and

provided a tournament-high 37 steals. The most perceptive analyst of

the Dream Team, Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum, insisted that

“on the most star-studded team in history, Jordan was, simply, the star

stud. When Magic was on the ﬂoor ﬁnishing the fast break, Jordan

was his ﬁnisher. When Jordan was called upon to run the offense, he

did so with control and a few dazzling no-look passes. When Daly

gave the ball to Scottie Pippen, Jordan acted as a decoy. When the

[team] needed a defensive stopper, Jordan got the call. And when the

team need a scoring jolt, Jordan went out early and kick-started the

offense.” The Dream Team was, indeed, as Coach Daly described it,

“a majestic team.”

—Robert C. Cottrell

URTHER READING:

Bradley, Michael. “It’s in the Bag for Now: The Future of American

Basketball in Olympic Competition.” Sport. Vol. 83, August

1992, 56, 58, 60, 62.

Daly, Chuck and Alex Sachare. America’s Dream Team: The 1992

USA Basketball Team. Atlanta, Turner Publications, 1992.

Deford, Frank. “Team of Dreams.” Newsweek. Vol. 120, July 6,

1992, 26-8.

McCallum, Jack. “Barcelona Dreamin.’” Sports Illustrated. Vol. 77,

August 3, 1992, 22.

———. The Dream Team: The Inside Story of the 1992 U.S. Olympic

Basketball Team. New York, Little, Brown, 1992.

Stauth, Cameron. The Golden Boys: The Unauthorized Inside Look at

the U.S. Olympic

Basketball Team. New York, Pocket Books, 1992.

Witteman, Paul A. “Are They Kidding?” Time. Vol. 140, July 27,

1992, 60-1.

Dreiser, Theodore (1871-1945)

A journalist turned novelist, Dreiser was at the forefront of the

battle for social fact and sexual candor in the early twentieth-century

novel, treating popular sentimental and realist subjects with a refresh-

ing lack of moralizing. Dreiser produced a number of dense, uneven,

and controversial novels about the attempts of men and women to

adapt themselves to the new urban, secular order of industrial

capitalism. An American Tragedy (1925), Dreiser’s great public

success, is one of the ﬁrst serious psychological studies of an

American murderer.

Dreiser escaped a very poor and deeply religious upbringing

through a successful career in journalism in the 1890s, writing his ﬁrst

novel, Sister Carrie, in 1900. Though the book had been recommend-

ed by rising author Frank Norris, publisher Doubleday’s management

was unhappy with what it considered the immorality of the story and

published it without publicity. This, coupled with reviews uneasy

with both its moral tone and scrappy prose, saw the book achieve

initial sales of a mere nine hundred. This ﬁasco and Dreiser’s failing

marriage brought on a nervous breakdown, and he returned to

journalism, not publishing another novel for a decade. His second

novel, Jennie Gerhardt, (1911), began an increasingly fruitful ﬁction-

al output (though his sexual frankness and social criticism continued

to hamper his success) during the next fourteen years, including The

Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), The Genius (1915), and most

favorably, An American Tragedy. This last was based on a number of

real-life murder cases and told the story of Clyde Grifﬁths: his youth,

the murder of his pregnant girlfriend, and the court case that followed.

The novel became a play and was ﬁlmed twice: in 1931 by Joseph von

Sternberg and in 1951 under the title A Place in the Sun. Dreiser’s

output reduced once more as he involved himself with various left-

wing causes.

Dreiser grew out of the newspaper and magazine revolution of

the 1880s and 1890s, and though his novels reﬂect many of the

themes of the sentimental tradition (marked by the love of the rags-to-

riches story), he handles them in a way inﬂected by issues that came to

the fore in the best journalism of his day (crime, disease, prostitution,

vagrancy, and the violence and double-dealing behind huge wealth).

Dreiser’s subject matter also appears journalistic in its use of personal

experience (Sister Carrie was based on one of his sisters) and real-life

stories (The Financier is the ﬁrst of a trilogy of novels based on

Chicago ﬁnancier Charles T. Yerkes, and An American Tragedy was

based, centrally, on the murder trial of Chester Gillette). Dreiser’s

books, though berated for their style—their circumlocution, inver-

sion, uncertain vocabulary, and overburdened syntax—are marked by

a singular level of excited detail and documented fact. This reliance

on facts and details reﬂects a contemporary scientiﬁc methodology

pursued eagerly by Dreiser (he read widely on the subjects of biology,

psychology, and sociology). Although Balzac, Zola, Tolstoy, and

Hardy were all important literary models for him, literary allusions

appear much less prevalent than scientiﬁc ones: his interest in every

minute detail of biological and sociological inﬂuences on his charac-

ters pushes the literary into the background.

The characterization of his central ﬁgures is Dreiser’s main

achievement. His interest in what drives Carrie Meeber or Clyde

Grifﬁths makes the ﬁgures around them appear little more than

phenomena affecting them, while these major characters themselves

become little more than the drives and desires brought on by econom-

ic, genetic, and psychological circumstances. These desires were not

necessarily beautiful, imaginative, or morally right, and it was this,

coupled with Dreiser’s unﬂinching candor, that made his books so