Cowboy Culture
I'm asking this question becuase of this clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb-rHnkcwZI) which shows a bunch of Welsh people line dancing, albeit in a comedic situation.
Has Britain picked up on cowboy culture at all? Or perhaps just the line dancing since that was an 80's fad? Somehow, I have a very hard time picturing it and there are costuming detail in this clip that are way off base. Although, cowboy couture is actually quite a complicated issue that I won't get into unless anyone's interested (and I'm sure Uriel has a few things to say on that topic as well).
Anyway, just curious. Has it caught on? If so, to what extent? Can someone offer me a brief description of the British Cowboy if there is such a thing?
Thanks
Well, while I have no clue about Cowboy Culture in Britain, I do have a first hand knowledge of it here at home. I would venture to guess that Cowboy Culture has not caught on to a large extent in Europe, as it is largely an element of colonial societies such as that in the U.S. South America, and Australia.
Of course, the Cowboy Culture of today is far different from that of the 19th century. today it represents the conservativism and traditionalism of rural American culture. This is far different from what its original romantic representation held. The cowboy figure of the 19th century represented the an undomesticated, transitory freedom which refused to adhere to social norms of behavior. This is a derivative of the earlier explorer and sailor characters that dominated the colonial and early national periods. In the twentieth century, there was a resurrection of this "free" persona in the trucker and the biker.
To some extent the cowboy retains the untaimed characteristic it's early incarnation held. An example of this archetype can be seen in the 70's song "Desperado":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyAJqWyKPzE
It is worth noting that in popular fiction of the 19th century, the cowboy's riding off into the sunset represented his unwillingness or inability to settle into the domestic, social world. This type of ending in Western novels remained the norm until Owen wister's "The Virginian" was written in 1900. as Wister himself indicates, the change represents the taming of the American West.
"It is worth noting that in popular fiction of the 19th century, the cowboy's riding off into the sunset represented his unwillingness or inability to settle into the domestic, social world."
Actually, it represented the cowboy riding off seeking orgasmic adventures. The sun represents a butt, the fact that it is golden represent that a butt is valued above all else for the cowboy-for him, the gold that the conquistadors cherished is butt sex-and the his riding towards it represent his yearning for butt.
I'd say.
Of course, LINE DANCING represents the pinnacle of orgasmic wishes to be one with your fellow man, hidden homosexual tendency that every man possesses (Freud).
I have at home experience with cowboys too. My parents owned a feed store out in the middle of nowhere when I was growing up, so I was pretty exposed to the psuedo-western ideas.
For the most part I find our modern cowboys pretty pleasant. They're certainly easy prey: walk into a feed store in a skirt (not even a short one, knee length) with your long hair let down and you can break up a poker game, get one man to lift the oh-so-heavy 10 pound sack of bird food, and another to open your car door.
To be honest, this is one of the reasons I have such a hard time imagining this culture in a British setting. Machismo seems to have a much larger place in American society and runs a even a little stronger with the cowboys, to the point where it's almost offensive to them to allow a woman to lift a bag of feed or buck a bale of hay. And trust me, I've done both. Suit and ties don't seem to care as much what a woman does.
Here in the UK the word "cowboy" has an extremely negative meaning, and has nothing to do with the American image of a gungho Stetson wearing, sharp shooting, lasso waving bloke riding the range rounding up the herds on a dusty farmstead in the middle of nowhere.
Here a "cowboy" is a rogue trader, such a builder, who does a botched up job on your property, one who is not professionally qualified and certainly not one that meets up with all the minimum professional standards of the job as required by statutory regulations as laid down by the official Trading Standards Authorities of which he was certainly not a registered trader. It would obviously be your fault anyway for not checking out his credentials beforehand.
He may well grab your cash (and they always insist on cash payments only!) and vanish into the ether before you have time to find out what a cock-up of a dog's dinner he's made of your property and any checking up after the horse has bolted is, of course, too bloody late....the bloke has scarpered. He was obviously a "cowboy". Tough shit, as the saying goes over here.
We have two kinds of cowboys where I live -- the American version and the Mexican one. (Don't forget, the latter actually came first.)
I steer clear of both; the American ones because I can't stand Wranglers or country music, and the Mexican ones because I cannot look at pointy-toed lime green alligator boots without snickering. I won't even go into the taco hat issue.... sorry, I was a little goth girl in the 80's and that's just a puente too far for me.