Frontier Myth the E-Frontier \"The

Frontier Myth

The E-Frontier

"The national story and eternal destiny is to struggle with, ad ultimately conquer, the frontier," (McLure 468). The Wild West has long been a romanticized part of our imaginations. Recently, this imaginative image has been exploited as a way to sell merchandise, both in traditional print forms and now in a whole new online arena. Western advertisements have been notorious for their rugged and cool cigarette depictions of the Marlboro man puffing away out on the frontier. This was then, a time where the main source of media was newspapers, magazines, or even posters. Now, it's all about modern technology and new advances. Advertisers are fully aware of this and the potential in innovation in online advertising. Not only are they taking the western myths and running with it, but they're now using the latest technologically advanced shoes for the run, the E-frontier. The web takes ads to another level. The ads themselves are interactive with the viewer, whether it's an exciting mini-game for the younger audiences, or a provoking question that leads the viewer to eventually click on the ad. Now, advertisers don't even have to integrate the western image with their product, they can just use it to draw their audience in. In this case, it was an addicting and fun-based mini game using colorful and cartoon like graphics. They can manipulate their ads to extend the western myth with limitless possibilities.

The traditional study of the west has recently begun to contrast more mythological and romanticized images of the west and how it fits into American culture. According the older, and more traditional views, the frontier has been closed for over a century. There were severe limitations placed on what was considered the west, "Conventional frontier theory never made much room for the West beyond the ninety-eighth meridian," (Limerick 82). Traditional thinking, posited by Frederick Jackson Turner, believed the frontier to have closed as early as 1890. However, "Homesteading persisted into the twentieth century; rushes to pump oil or to mine coal or uranium punctuated the 1900s," (Limerick 83). This tradition continues on today, for the west has not become some packaged deal, where when once everything was in chaos, it has now found resolution. It is quite the contrary, and much of the west is still in chaos, still in that frontier mode where civilized American society from the east has not been allowed to fully permeate into western life; "Moreover, the cross-cultural encounters and conflicts engendered by 'frontier' are still with us in 1990; the population of western America shows few signs of turning into a blended and homogeneous whole," (Limerick 83). With some of this chaos being left unresolved, it is obvious how impacting the image of the west would continue to be.

In fact, the image of the frontier continues to play a large role in the fabrication of American life. Traditional mythology paints a truly romanticized picture of the western frontier; "The American West in the popular imagination has always been a region of endless possibilities, a vast, magnificent, ideal stage for the national drama of liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness," (McLure 458). Much of modern advertising has continued to question scholarly assumptions that the frontier is closed through romantic portrayals of frontier life and existence in order to sell a romanticized dream to consumers on a massive level. In modern life, instead of the West as a physical place, it is a "process at work in this region's history, a process that has affected other parts of the nation as well as other parts of the planet," (Limerick 85). Therefore it still remains a powerful piece of American culture.

Companies have long exploited that romantic vision for the use of selling consumer items. Using the romanticized west has almost become a staple in advertising products meant to be truly American; "If no medium has ever been in closer communion with the mass mind than advertising, no popular tradition is more deeply entrenched in American culture than the Western," (West 39). Ads have long played off the popularity of particular characters, movies, and ideals tied up in the notion of the romantic west and finally fulfilling manifest destiny. Since before the frontier was even said to be closed images of the Old West were exploited for increased profits. This is based off of the nostalgic image which pulls at the heart strings of almost all Americans; "These ads have played on impressions of the Wes as a magnificent, mythic setting and, just as much, on the American fascination with movement into that place, with picking up and heading westward toward particular destinations and toward peculiarly western experiences," (West 42). Such ads have become increasingly common within the last fifty or so years, as other elements of cultural life tell Americans that the western frontier is closed. Therefore, commercialism is playing off our yearning for a new frontier, one which we can still romanticize.

The next step of the western frontier is through the World Wide Web. As print advertising has moved into massive online advertising, the western romanticized image has also gone digital. The online world itself represents a new frontier to be conquered, both by capitalism and the individual consumer; "Like the western frontier, the e-frontier is vitally significant to American economic and strategies of interests that were manifested first in continental (and now wired) expansion;" (McLure 458). It embodies the feeling of discovering a whole new world, a whole new playing ground which is then to be settled and explored. According to research, "the cyber frontier also appeals on a popular level to many romantic, nostalgic western myths about endless horizons, unlimited opportunity, and untrambled freedom," (McLure 458). Even the words used to describe the internet harkens back to western ideology with words being used such as "cyberspace," "netscape," and "internet pioneers." Online advertising and shopping is currently in the midst of an online gold rush, where there are big profits to be made, "Elements of the Old West survive in the gold rush mentality and the lawlessness and crime that have accompanied the opening of the electronic frontier," (McLure 459). It has become obvious over the success of the internet that there are massive amounts of money to be made. Therefore, it is repeating the old gold rush mentality; "Suddenly everyone is headed for cyberspace, scrambling to stake their claim to a domain name right before someone else grabs it and hoping to strike it rich on the e-frontier," (McLure 460). Companies are now spending more money on online advertising than traditional print advertising. One advertisement in particular was an interactive shooter. The task was simple, to point the mouse at the wild horses and click, attempting to wrangle five buckers. Once the task was complete, it automatically forwarded the page into their product of advertisement. Companies are developing revolutionary and interactive technologies to stay one step ahead of the game and dominate this new frontier.