The Cowboy Hero and 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.

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.