Amelia Earhart's Brand and Making Flying Thinkable
This paper examines how the Amelia Earhart brand — encompassing her official website, Hollywood portrayals, images, and music — functions to make flying "thinkable" for consumers. Drawing on Corn's (1979) historical analysis of women pilots and the selling of aviation, the paper argues that Earhart was deliberately constructed as a cultural icon to overcome public skepticism about flight in the late 1920s and 1930s. It further contends that this branding strategy persists today, using multimedia storytelling to associate aviation with adventure, freedom, and American Exceptionalism — though the paper also questions whether such imagery remains sufficient to calm contemporary fears about air travel safety.
- Introduction: Flying as a Way of Life: Earhart brand frames aviation as adventurous lifestyle
- The Role of Hollywood and Brand Mythology: Hollywood amplifies Earhart myth to inspire consumers
- Historical Construction of the Earhart Image: Earhart manufactured to overcome public fear of flying
- The Official Website and Multimedia Persuasion: Website uses images, video, and music to sell aviation
- Conclusion: Does the Brand Still Work?: Brand's effectiveness questioned amid modern aviation fears
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What makes this paper effective
- It anchors a contemporary media analysis in a specific historical scholarly source (Corn, 1979), grounding its cultural argument with academic credibility.
- It draws a compelling parallel between the deliberate manufacture of Earhart's celebrity in the 1920s–1930s and the modern branding strategies visible on her official website today.
- It closes with a candid, nuanced qualifier — questioning whether the Earhart brand is still powerful enough to overcome modern fears about aviation — demonstrating critical thinking rather than one-sided advocacy.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the use of a historical source to contextualize a present-day media artifact. By citing Corn (1979) to show that Earhart was "manufactured" for promotional purposes, the writer reframes the website analysis as part of a longer, deliberate pattern of aviation marketing — a technique known as historicizing a contemporary argument.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by introducing the Amelia Earhart website as a branding vehicle, then broadens to discuss Hollywood's role in myth-making, followed by a historical grounding using Corn's research. It then returns to the present-day website's specific multimedia elements before concluding with a reflective evaluation of the brand's continued effectiveness in the context of modern aviation fears.
Introduction: Flying as a Way of Life
The Amelia Earhart website continues to make flying "thinkable" because it showcases aviation as an adventurous, bold, and beautiful — not merely a mode of transportation — but a way of life. The fact that the first video link on the site is to the trailer for the Hollywood film Amelia (2009), starring Hilary Swank, only emphasizes the point: the Amelia Earhart brand has embodied the spirit of Americanism, freedom, and flying for generations, making the concept of aviation far more appealing to the average consumer (Corn, 1979). For young people today, flying is regarded as an exciting experience — one that carries them out of the ordinary into the realm of the extraordinary — so that they become kindred spirits of Amelia Earhart, the pioneering woman in aviation history.
The Role of Hollywood and Brand Mythology
Flying is made "thinkable" in large part through brands like Amelia Earhart, which are used to cultivate a powerful image in the mind of the consumer. Hollywood — functioning much like the advertising wing of business and government — helps to construct the myth of Amelia Earhart and to inspire new generations of consumers to want to fly. One need only observe the steady stream of Hollywood films in recent years extolling the role of military agencies and national heroism to appreciate how effectively popular cinema manufactures cultural narratives that serve broader institutional interests.
Historical Construction of the Earhart Image
As Corn (1979) notes, "Women's place in commercial aviation in the late 1920s and 1930s stemmed from the peculiar needs of an industry in transition … the aviation industry had a serious problem. The public remained deeply skeptical about flight" (p. 558). Earhart was, in essence, deliberately constructed as a public figure — much as today's young celebrity musicians are manufactured — in order to promote the idea of flying to a consumer public reluctant to embrace it. Flying was still widely viewed as dangerous. However, if a woman could do it boldly and triumphantly, those fears might be alleviated. Flying could then be transformed from a frightening prospect into an exhilarating one — something progressive individuals could champion, because in the skies, if not always on the ground, all were equal.
Conclusion: Does the Brand Still Work?
Not everyone will be reassured by sheer necessity, and it is doubtful that the Amelia Earhart story inspires contemporary audiences quite as powerfully as it did fifty years ago. Nonetheless, the images, videos, and songs on the site work together to "sell" the narrative to the public — and like any effective advertisement, the campaign ultimately encourages consumers to buy into the brand. In this case, that brand is aviation itself.
References
Amelia Earhart. (n.d.). Amelia Earhart: The official website. Retrieved from http://www.ameliaearhart.com/
Corn, J. (1979). Making flying 'thinkable': Women pilots and the selling of aviation, 1927–1940. American Quarterly, 31(4), 556–571.
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