Pan-Am's ad for poseur cowboys

This Pan-Am ad from 1983 really grabbed my attention with an oddly disharmonious message: first you have the cowboy, sleeping with his hat over his eyes, a symbol of ruggedness and the ability to relax and sleep anywhere, out on the range under a cactus. But then you have the ad's USP: "Delta has spacious, comfortable seats." Do cowboys really value comfort? Isn't that a little citified? You know: "The chores! The stores! Fresh air! Times Square!" Or "East is east and west is west and the wrong one I have chose."

Ah, but the cowboy is wearing a suit. He's not a cowboy, he's a poseur, a nouveau riche oilman who likes to play pretend-cowboy as he jets from one five-star suite to the next. He doesn't clear brush on his ranch, he hires real roughnecks to do that, because otherwise he'd ruin his fancy manicure. So the value proposition here comes down to: Fly Pan-Am, it's the airline for insecure fake cowboys who have too much money.

Odd.

Contest Entry: Pan Am, "FIRST In Space", 1983

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: ad • media theory • Old school

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

http://twitter.com/freddiefreelanc Freddie Freelance

This is called “All hat, no cattle.”
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

The cowboy was actually one of the last things I noticed. The first thing I noticed was “First In Space”, which made my 2001-loving heart skip a beat. Did PanAm at some point have cheap and affordable spaceflights before it went bankrupt? Alas, no. The ad goes on to say, “We weren’t talking about THAT kind of space, you moron. Now go to coach where you and the other cattle belong. Important people have to stretch their legs without you getting in their way.”
- http://profiles.google.com/mondojohnson Christopher Johnson
  
  Just what I was thinking. My immediate, “blink” reaction was all Kubrick: space travel as workaday banality, brought to you by PanAm. Kubrick’s use of the PanAm “brand” (as well as that of AT&T for the now-quaint, then-amazing ‘videophone’ sequence) lent ’2001′ a thrilling sense of inevitability — a technique later used to great effect in the Atari-emblazoned, neon gulches of ‘Blade Runner’.
  
  I can also testify to the observations made by other posters that 1983 was all about “Who Shot J.R.” and the alleged sexiness of the “urban cowboy”.
  - http://twitter.com/manooshi Manel
    
    True. “Who shot J.R.?” was frickin’ HUGE that year. Probably the most famous question of the ’80s. ;)
  - IronEdithKidd
    
    1980 is the year you are looking for. I was 8 living in Dallas/Fort Worth at the time. I did not like it. I was much relieved when we returned to Minnesota in ’82. I have never been back.
    
    The only good thing I have to say about the place is that the pay phones at DFW were a goldmine for a prospecting youngun. And the dinosaur at the Braniff terminal was totally worth the tram ride.
Mark Dow

Dreaming of becoming president one day.
- niktemadur
  
  You beat me to it, my first thought was “Looks like a Texas politician”.
markh

It’s not odd. It’s advertising.

How much do you think real cowboys spend on airfare compared to symbolic cowboys?

Besides, who needs authenticity when you’re flying first class?
- slickhead
  
  I think you’re right. Wasn’t the TV show “Dallas” highly popular in 1983?
  
  He looks like a character from the show.
  - Jer_00
    
    Yes. The whole “Who Shot JR” thing was a big deal in 1980, but even by 1983 the Dallas phenomenon was still going strong, and the cowboy motif was huge in the early 80s.
    
    Didn’t mean that working class folks still didn’t think that pretend cowboys weren’t assholes, though. But as I recall, in the early 80s being a rich asshole was something that middle-aged folks saw as an aspirational goal, rather than a net negative.
  - James B
    
    Dallas was the #1 show in 1983, and Urban Cowboy had been a hit a couple of years earlier.
  - hadlockk
    
    It’s not even that. 1983 was the peak year for a building boom in both Dallas and Houston. PanAm had somewhat-recently entered the domestic market and were having to compete against American Airlines’s HQ and main hub operating out of Dallas.
    
    Yes, Texas businessmen really did, and still do dress like that. One of my previous bosses wore cowboy boots to the office on Thursdays and Fridays, and we didn’t work in oil, real estate or banking.
    
    Cory’s assessment of the ad is so out context it’s sort of frightening, really.
    - James B
      
      The first house I bought was one of those Houston building boom houses, about twenty years after the fact. I think they called them “drive by inspections”. But you got plenty of house for the dollar, even if the curtains did blow in the wind with the windows closed.
      
      While I was working down there, I do remember people wearing cowboy boots to work. But the one guy that wore his fancy hat every day looked out of place.
MadMolecule

How dare he wear clothing that doesn’t accurately broadcast his precise socioeconomic class???

Geez. He’s got to wear something. Might as well be something he feels comfortable in.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  I know, I can’t believe they’re insulting this male advertising model’s costume from 29 years ago.
- charlie strauss
  
  As someone who lives in the southwest and wears a “Cowboy hat” but has no cattle, I can tell you that 1) you need to wear something with a brim on your head `cause it is sunny 2) Boots and said hat are quite comfortable. Lots of us wear them.
  
  Cory is showing some supreme urban arrogance in thinking people who wear cowboy hats that are not nomadic hillbillies must be poseuers.
  
  Say Cory about those nerd glasses you wear, maybe you are just posing as a nerd?
Bevatron Repairman

It depends entirely on what sort of tie he’s wearing. If it’s bolo tie, he’s just a cowboy wearing a suit for some specific occasion.
http://uglyradio.wordpress.com/ Ricardo

This was also the time of both J.R. Ewing and the whole Urban Cowboy thing, so the faux cowboy thing was somewhat in vogue at that point and time.
Know your 80′s memes, folks!
It wasn’t all Wham and Mr. T!
- Navin_Johnson
  
  And the Marlboro Man, cowboy chic was in.
Melinda9

An actual cowboy might still want to wear a suit.
Barry Stock

The first thing I noticed was the weighted-up Palatino clone headline, probably an AGFA/Compugraphic design, kerned as tightly as possible, with rounded serifs. Maybe Hermann Zapf was in on it, maybe not. It is very much a product of its time, and hasn’t made a resurgence. Also notice the absence of word spacing on the footer after the period and the single quote on the contraction. It was the era where tight kerning was a given, even if it produced esthetically questionable results.
- xzzy
  
  What’s amusing to me is an ad that is bragging about how much leg room you get on their plans crams all the letters together as tightly as possible. Talk about conflicting messages.
- Teller
  
  Alwaysthoughtthatkerningwasbadass.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

It’s a space cowboy. Duh.
- Pirate Jenny
  
  Cowboy Bebop opening theme will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Thanks!
Jesser

Real cowboys are too busy and/or too broke to fly anywhere. And they’d be too embarrassed to travel in luxury. Perhaps this man was once a real cowboy, but the cowboy brethren will disown you if you climb the social ladder and lead a life that doesn’t somewhat resemble an Ace Reid cartoon. I am the son of a rancher, and to real rural folks a hunting party with new clothes, guns and dogs is a huge joke; this is doubly true for dudes with day-old hats and boots.
LinkMan

The first thing I noticed is how lame that seat looks compared to a proper international first class seat today. To say nothing of a suite on an A380.

Air travel has grown so extreme. Coach is so much worse, and First is sooooo much better.
VoxLuna

How did “Delta” come into this?
- http://profiles.google.com/shoomlah Claire Hummel
  
  Ditto this, colour me confused- especially since it’s an ad drenched in Pan Am branding.
soundhound

“Pan Am. You Can’t Beat The Experience”

Current business model may indicate otherwise.
Thomas Juette

Jeez, way to suck all the fun out of air travel, Cory. It’s just an ad, which (to me, at least) is also kinda reminiscent of the movie still from Giant, the one with James Dean kicked back in the old car (slow ground travel vs speedy air travel, maybe?) I think the ad is kinda interesting, in that respect. And also great job being so heavy-handed with the class war shtick in your second paragraph.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UWDFQHLRCTYZIOWFK3UZK223WI Rusty Shackleford

I just realized I’m wearing a baseball cap but I’m not a baseball player, and tennis shoes but I’m not a tennis player. Worse, my baseball cap has a Saints logo on it, and I never even tried out for the team. Oops, I just realized I have a paddy hat but I’m not Asian! I’m such a poser.
RJ

As was said, this was 1983, when J.R. from Dallas was still culturally relevant. J.R. was the epitome of the rich bastard who enjoyed all the finest things in life. Depicting him stretching out like that and really relishing his Pan Am flight spoke to people’s jealous covetousness of J.R.’s lifestyle.
GlenBlank

My goodness, what a confused analysis.

Perhaps this will help:

As someone who grew up around (and occasionally in) cowboy hats, I feel obliged to point out that, despite being called a “cowboy hat”, hats of that style are worn with suit’n'boots while jet-setting about (or church-going or business-meeting or sales-calling) by a wide variety of people in the Southwestern US: Yes, Cattle-ranch owners and Texas oil men, but also Texas, NM, and AZ politicians, country-western singers, revivalist preachers, aerospace executives, hotel owners, and a wide variety of other southwestern businessmen.

None of them are “pretending to be cowboys.”

Other people who wear cowboy hats – though not with suits, usually – include agricultural workers in small towns across the southwest on a Saturday night, horny teenagers on the make in C&W bars, old farmers, young tractor drivers, teenage desert-survival instructors, and on and on.

None of them are “pretending to be cowboys”, either.

Sneering at any of these people as “fake cowboys” completely misses the actual social signification of cowboy hats. (And the idea that anyone with such a hat should conform to some myth-based stereotype of the Olde West - Tough! Rugged! Not Interested in Comfort! – is absurd.)

It’s only ‘disharmonious’ if you believe the world works like your stereotypes. :-)
s2redux

Oh, FFS. Hope I’m still alive in 30 years so I can enjoy the mocking of today’s Watchismo ad: “Oddly-named vendor markets ‘time machines’ to suckers; in fact, they’re only watches.” (Now it’s time to put my Carhartts and Vasques back on to go outside and deal with the snow; guess that makes me a poseur construction hiker/hipster ;-)
blindingspeed

What a load of bullshit. Some people just like hats.
rafterman

My god people, it’s not that complicated.

Cowboys are used to wide open spaces, ”don’t fence me in”, etc. The lack of room in a coach seat would drive a cowboy crazy.

Enough with the class warfare. You’ve changed boingboing, you’ve changed.
schr0559

Maybe the title alludes to the publicity-gag “moon tickets” Pan Am handed out in the late 60s. If you search for “pan am moon ticket” you can find some images and discussions about it.

I like to pretend we live in an alternate universe where Pan Am has actually just started these flights, and is forced to honor their 50-year old waiting list by flying a bunch of geezers to the moon.
thatbob

What GlenBlank said! The elements of Western formal attire evolved over a century, and you cannot say that somebody wearing it is “pretending to be a cowboy” any more than you can say that a Northeastern gentleman walking with a cane is “pretending to be crippled” or his trophy wife wrapped in mink is “pretending to be a French fur trapper.” Those clothes just don’t mean what you think they mean.

As seen in movies such as Giant (1956), Auntie Mame (1958), The Right Stuff (1983), True Stories (1986), and many many more.
sam1148

Can someone help me out here. What was the name and painting of an American Artist…that pictured a walking man in a suit with stetson hat and tie. Head down obscuring the face and the tie being windswept around his neck. Very flat colors.
Almost like a Andrew Wyeth.
- millie fink
  
  Jean-Michel Basquiat?
Giant LakeOfire

Cowboys ain’t easy to love, and they’re harder to please.

They’d rather fly first class, ‘stead of coach where they can’t bend their knees.

Stale mini-pretzles and flat ginger ale,

Won’t satisfy him, and’ll earn you a glare.

If you don’t comp him champagne, an’ he can’t fully recline,

Then he’ll never fly your airway.
Nate Parrish

Totally evokes JR Ewing!
Pedantic Douchebag

I’ve known quite a few actual working cowboys, through my family, and a few summers working wild west shows and ranches. One way to tell poseurs from the real deal is their boots; working cowboys wear round or square toed (aka engineer) boots, and poseurs wear pointy toed (aka dancing) boots.
Mister44

Soooo you can only wear a cowboy hat if you live on a farm/ranch or you’re a poser? I guess you can only wear a baseball hat if you play baseball or you’re a poser? A trucker hat makes one a poser if you don’t actually drive a truck. Speaking of trucks, are you a poser if the most hauling your truck sees is the occasional friend move and sandbags for traction in the winter?

Good thing I stopped caring what other people thought or I’d feel like a poser for wearing a fedora and not being the Shadow or a 50′s era hard boiled detective.
J. Matthew Jacob

It’s kinda like a Canadian wearing a kilt.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/privateye/109387321/
Teller

I think the idea is that he’s tall, which fits the stereotype of a Texas businessman. Moreover, the boots and hat lend visual interest head to toe. As to the accompanying editorial comment, with all due respect, the writer’s head is somewhere in between.
Alice Bachini

Advertising is all about the zeitgeist, if you want to understand a 1983 ad and you don’t remember JR Ewing and what people thought of Texas (oil, money, the Houston space center) then maybe ask someone over 30? It’s not odd, it’s just odd to someone who doesn’t get it. Soz.
- petz79
  
  I’m just slightly over 30 and never watched Dallas, but I immediately thought of J.R. when I saw this ad.
http://twitter.com/QuietM0nst3r Mr. Usajii

Is not a cowboy… is THE Doctor…
http://about.me/roxanne.weber Roxanne

OMG, I did not know that marketing was supposed to be ethical as well as factual?

This just isn’t my day.
Bill Reals

I can see where the Oracle corporation got the design inspiration for their ad campaigns.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/7/2009/09/500x_500x_500x_PreviewScreenSnapz001_02-thumb.jpg
Jesser

At weddings, funerals and maybe to church. In pretty much any other scenario, the suit negatively impacts your level of perceived trustworthiness. For suit people, it’s kinda like if someone started wearing a cape and crown. Perhaps this only applies to where I’m from and where I’ve been.
Jesser

Applies to both. And of course, a lot of cowboys are ranchers.