The movie "Lansky" presents a version of the memoirs of Meyer Lansky, a central figure in the origin and management of the national crime syndicate. The development of the Syndicate accompanies the story of Lansky's life and career. The evolution from a traditional to a modern organization is discussed as an example of the use by…

Movies have designated dance as a positive way for marginal and groups assigned a low status to cope with the enduring pain of inequality. A brief history of dance movies reveals the sentimental appeal of stories of coping with inequality by adopting dancer identities. The recent movie "Tango Shalom" offers an example of the use of…

Subcultures can appear in multicultural societies not only by the contact of existing cultures but also by cultures that remain constant while the larger society changes. A recent movie, "Dark Waters," is an example of this process. "Parasite" and "Joker," two other recent movies, both Academy Award winners, differ…

The disruption of ordinary life by a deadly pandemic, an outrageous display of police violence, and a tumbling economy have left Americans isolated, frozen, and terrified. For many, the television screen has become the only contact with the outside world and the only source of entertainment. In recent years, cable television networks have drawn…

"The Undoing," a miniseries on the cable channel HBO, is a crime melodrama that presents unannounced background content reflecting the changing multicultural situation in the United States. A dominant white Euro-American group is becoming merely another group in a crowded field of American subcultures. Although multicultural issues are…

Modern educational institutions were associated with the separation of children from ordinary people and of the schoolhouse from the ordinary world, creating an educational subculture and a minority population of schoolchildren. Passage through this subculture became a universal shared experience. Higher education grew at the same time into an…

America is identified as a nation of immigrants. These immigrants are thought to be the source of its subcultures. It is also a nation of individual explorers and inventors. Their activities are also a source of diverse subcultures. Many notable movies have made heroes of such innovators in different fields of endeavor. Michael Moore's movie…

The decline of the soap opera as a major form of popular culture highlights the importance of that form in creating and maintaining a shared subculture for women. Soap operas are contrasted with recent television and film works that present the struggles of women in a different way, highlighting the distinctive features of soap operas as women's…

The movie "Fair Game" (Butterworth et al., 2010) is a fact-based political thriller that calls attention to a process of turning respectable members of established institutions, who are performing their roles properly, into excluded deviants. The result of this transformation may be the creation of a new group initiating its own subculture. The…

Two recent movies, "Invictus" and "The Infidel," concern finding ways to negotiate coexistence between intensely opposed subcultures and are used to expand the meaning of multiculturalism. New, emergent cultures that are universalistic, practical, and accommodative are among the many cultures that are given place amid the diversity of modern…

Cultural diversity is often attributed to groups in a society from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Assimilation then blends subcultures into a mainstream culture. However, history and circumstance give rise to new groups whose experiences and activities produce new diversity. Big events and big changes give rise to important differences between…

The challenge of maintaining a national identity as a subculture in America is most evident in connection with special occasions, like transition rites. Coming of age is such an event. The continuity and transformation of the subculture is at stake. In American cities, as exemplified by Los Angeles, the ethnic neighborhood becomes a New Old…

Two of the subcultures involved in an intranational struggle are those who take politics and the civic arrangements seriously on the one hand and those who scorn and revile the political process on the other. Although people do not usually think of politics as a minority subculture, it is clear that it belongs to a category of organized activities…

All life begins in the sea, people are taught, and a great transformation extends it to new places on land. The sea has always echoed this transformation in images of human aspiration in myths and metaphors. In the summer of 2003, this powerful image appeared again in the movies. In three very different films, "Seabiscuit," "Whale Rider," and…

Culture offers people suggestions for dealing with life's vicissitudes, and people find different suggestions in different cultures. In a multicultural society, they have a variety of alternatives to choose among: ethnicities, regionalisms, lifestyles, religious movements, occupations, hobbies, and more. In American society, the groups that are…