The Cowboy Hero and Its Audience: Popular Culture As Market Derived Art

by Walle, Alf H.

• ISBN13: 9780879728120
• ISBN10: 0879728124
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

Elements of popular culture, such as literature and films, are major industries. If scholars are to fully understand how popular culture evolves and functions, techniques for dealing with the impact of business need to be factored into the analysis. Using the history of the cowboy story from 1820 to 1970 as an extended example, Alf H. Walle combines popular culture scholarship with marketing theory to provide a hybrid analysis. Wall examines major authors and genres of Western American literature and film; he also explores why certain respected authors were unable to significantly impact the cowboy story even though their innovations were embraced by later generations. Finally Wall provides a hybrid analysis combining business and popular culture theory in an overarching analysis.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	1	(8)
THEORY AND METHOD	9	(62)
The Cowboy Hero: A Suggestive Overview	11	(10)
Consumer Response, Qualitative Methods, and Critical Analysis	21	(20)
Criticism, Collective Response, and Popular Culture	41	(14)
Relevant Tools from Marketing and Consumer Research	55	(16)
LITERARY/FILM TRADITIONS	71	(136)
James Fenimore Cooper and His Innovation: A Noble But Vulnerable Product of the Frontier	73	(18)
Owen Wister's All-Conquering Hero: The Turner Thesis Restarts the Life Cycle	91	(22)
Zane Grey and the Defeat of the Hero	113	(18)
Walter Clark and the Emergence of the Antihero	131	(16)
The Fatalistic Western: Alienation and Cultural Evolution	147	(16)
The Modern Antiheroic Cowboy: Survivor in an Amoral Desert	163	(16)
The Cowboy Story, 1820-1970: A Composite Analysis	179	(28)
Index	207