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

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. The business disciplines, in turn, can benefit from merging popular culture theory with marketing theories and methods.Using the history of the cowboy story from 1820 until 1970 as an extended example, Alf H. Walle combines popular culture scholarship with marketing theory to provide a hybrid analysis of great explanatory value. After a theoretical introduction sets the stage for the analysis, individual chapters examine major authors/genres of Western American literature and film. Additional chapters explore why certain respected authors were unable to significantly impact the cowboy story even though their Innovations were embraced by later generations. The book culminates with a truly hybrid analysis that combines business and popular culture theory in an overarching analysis bridging 150 years of Western American literature.Demonstrating how the methods of popular culture scholarship can be merged with those of marketing and consumer research, a robust and mutually beneficial strategy of analysis is showcased.Alf H. Walle is the author of 'The Cowboy Hero & Its Audience: Popular Culture As Market Derived Art', published 2000 under ISBN 9780879728113 and ISBN 0879728116.