1st Edition

Imagining the American West through Film and Tourism

By Warwick Frost, Jennifer Laing Copyright 2015
    284 Pages 79 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    282 Pages 79 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The West is one of the strongest and most enduring place images in the world and its myth is firmly rooted in popular culture – whether novels, film, television, music, clothing and even video games. The West combines myth and history, rugged natural scenery and wide open spaces, popular culture and promises of transformation. These imagined places draw in tourists, attracted by a cultural heritage that is part fictional and mediatised. In turn, tourism operators and destination marketing organisations refashion what they present to fit these imagined images.
    This book explores this imagining of a mythic West through three key themes, travel, film and frontiers to offer new insight into how the imagination of the West and popular culture has influenced the construction of tourism. In doing so, it examines the series of paradoxes that underlie the basic appeal of the West: evocative frontier, a boundary zone between civilisation and wilderness and between order and lawlessness. It draws on a range of films and literature as well as varying places from festivals to national parks to showcase different aspects of the nexus between travel, film and frontiers in this fascinating region.  Interdisciplinary in character, it includes perspectives from cultural studies, American studies, tourism and film studies.
    Written by leading academics, this title will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics in the fields of cultural studies, tourism, film studies and media studies and all those interested in film tourism.

    1. Go West  2 . Monument  Valley  3. Tragic and Vulnerable Heroes: Chuck and the Duke  4. Route 66  5. Tombstone  6. Fort Sumner  7. The Good Outlaw  8. Lone Pine  9. Yellowstone  10. Grand Canyon  11. Ghost Ranch  12. Little Bighorn  13. Stetsons and Daisy Dukes  14. Travelling the Jurassic West  15. Las Cruces Spaceport  16. Once Upon a Time

    Biography

    Warwick Frost is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing, Tourism and Hospitality at La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia.

    Jennifer Laing is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing, Tourism and Hospitality at La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia.