Question

Respond to the following based on your reading. As you should have read in the lesson materials, the reality of cowboy life was different from the image portrayed in popular culture. In popular culture, the cowboy is mostly depicted as a solitary, strapping white male who happens to be good with a gun and will resort to violence when needed. The reality was that cowboys worked in groups, weren’t all white (or big), and weren’t required to have gun skills to work the job. If this is the case, why did/does popular culture portray cowboys the way they’re shown? Please provide two to three possible answers.

Answer 1

The gun play can make for more entertaining stories.

Maybe the writers of stories are trying to match the potential audience (white Americans).

Portraying a lone person makes the character seem more heroic—it fits into the American ideal of rugged individualism.

(this is not my answer i just got this from someone else)