The Dallas series and its real life equivalent

By Larissa Bergolt, Magdalena Erdmann, and Benjamin Stramm

The series “Dallas” was published in the 1980's and gives insights to cultural living and industry, but what is true about the oil dominated farmer's state?

Dallas was founded in 1841 and it belongs to Texas. With its 1.2 million inhabitants it is the third biggest city of Texas. Dallas first relied on farming. Its special landscape and climate made it possible to grow cotton. By 1900 it became the largest cotton market in the world and 30 years later a hub of the petroleum market. Dallas was known for the following three things: Oil, cotton and its multiple rail lines. Then, after World War II, it changed.

Dallas now concentrated on telecommunication companies, engineering and became a real estate hotbed. Still today the city is shaped by skyscrapers, which were built for housing and working. Nowadays there is no more farming; oil and cotton became less important but there are a lot of shopping centers and companies placed in Dallas and it became the second biggest center of the U.S. computer game development branch. There is a lot of modern architecture and the fourth largest airport of the U.S.A. It became the third most popular destination for business traveling in the United States. It is still multicultural but it would be surprising to find big oil magnates or cowboys riding on their horses in this city.

In the series “Dallas” you do not find pretty much of the actual city of Dallas but the stories and plots are more focused on the Ewing family and their secrets, the sibling rivalry and betrayal among the family. Dallas, on the one hand, is portrayed as a city full of people who focus the drama and their desperate need for power.
On the other hand, the Southfork Ranch, the home of the Ewings, is shown as wide-spread and in every single episode there are shots of a beautiful landscape and the Ewings riding their horses. Of course, every now and then they work with cattle and sometimes they even get some dirt on their hands when working with the oil which is, as J.R. Ewing used to express it, their birth right. The oil plays a significant role in the series because this is what splits the Ewings and the Barnes in the first place and causes many rivalries and plots among the Ewings themselves.

All in all, one could say, “Dallas” centers around the Ewing´s success in the oil business which the series pictures as very important in this region. Basically, all the plots, the dramas and the power-games are about oil and the related wealth of the Ewings.

You may ask yourself now if the series “Dallas” is completely made up by the producers and its stereotypes about the South. To answer this question we will now compare the real life Dallas and the television drama by Cynthia Cidre.  While in the real Dallas life is rather normal like in every other city of the United States, the “Dallas” series creates pictures of the rancher’s land, making big business in the south by oil drilling, fighting the rivalry and live an extraordinary life there. As we depicted earlier, the real life Dallas is not like that. Today one could visit every bigger city in the United States with the result that Dallas, too, is just another city and people go to work there, enjoy their leisure time and do everyday business.

In fact, the audience of the “Dallas” series is misled in the way that Dallas is a city with an enormous skyline and skyscrapers, modern architecture and modern living while the series rather plays on the Ewing’s farm in the rural outskirts. Additionally, the series pictures a life of cowboys and ranchers but in the nowadays Dallas only the older people wear cowboy boots and hats and that, of course, not all the time but for special events like country music concerts and there only to live up to the heritage and make it persistent in the people’s minds how life was used to be earlier. Indeed, during the cotton and oil decades one could find a lot of ranchers and cowboys but today the people there have adapted over time to a more conventional western dress style.

To conclude, there exist huge gaps between the series “Dallas” and the real life Dallas. While Dallas is significantly different to the series concerning the lifestyle, the name “Dallas” serves beyond doubt as a symbol for the South of the United States, for Texas and its lifestyle and in concordance with that as a symbol for agricultural life and oil business. The name “Dallas” was chosen to set the story of the series into place and to give the viewers an idea of “Look, here is “Dallas”. Expect oil magnates, ranchers and cowboys to see in our television drama”. Thus one could say that the series “Dallas” is a stereotype-driven series which confirms the viewer’s expectations and attitudes toward the real Dallas.