I personally believe that the Davy Crockett “craze” was greatly influenced by the power of television and marketing to manipulate consumer taste.
The first reason I think this actually has nothing to do with the readings but later I will tie my point in with parts of the reading. My first reason is that I know how powerful marketing is today and I can only imagine how powerful it was then, especially since the Crockett “craze” happened right after the coming age of television. There are some crazes that we have had recently that seem extremely crazy now that I think about it, but at that time even I participated in buying the items. One example that I can think of write now is the croc “craze”. That phase was during middle school and of course I wanted to fit in so I begged my mom to buy me some. Now that I think about the crocs, I realize that there really was no good purpose for them to wear out in public. Especially the ones with the holes in them, which are the ones that I had. Another craze that I can think of is actually a fairly recent craze, which is the snuggie. This craze is a little more reasonable than the croc craze because it actually does come in handy if you’re cold but still need to use your hands. Of course you can just put on extra layers of clothes, but I think one of the biggest reasons that people make such a big deal about them is because they are so diverse that you can find a snuggie with pretty much any theme or color that you want.
Back to the readings, my second point is that the visions of people were normally determined by what people saw on tv. In “The Recycled Hero”, it mentioned that people became heroes through tv, music, and the record industry. After Disney’s “rewriting” of Davy Crockett, the emphais and interests in Crockett dramatically increased. Crockett went from the “frontier jokester” to being a forceful symbol for the frontier period. “The Recycled Hero” also mentions that the craze help test out the child market since the new class of citizens, the children, knew spending power and how to use it. Also, when the Crockett craze began to die out, it was believed that it was because the older kids began to let it go because they didn’t want to have a connection to younger kids, which is also a reason why some crazes die out today.