Reaction Essay: The Merchants of Cool

Frontline's documentary: The Merchants of Cool does well to cast light on the hyper-focus marketers give to teenagers and United States' youth. The film outlines the industries $150 billion market for kids. The film is directed by Barack Goodman and written by Rachel Dretzin and relays its message quite effectively in the form of marketer testimonies, child interviews and a broad projection of the corners this market reaches and creates.

An early segment of the film depicts one marketer who leads a discussion on "what's hot" among teenagers. The discussion involves many kids who are paid fifty dollars to give their opinion on what's cool. When the facilitator first asks those in attendance "what's hot" he is given no direct response, outlining the many layers of cultural trends.

The narrator talks about this day's younger generation stating: "kids have more money and more freedom with that money today than ever before". The spending money kids acquire is deemed: "guilt money", money parents give their children out of guilt for self-defined neglectful behavior such as not spending enough time with their kids or lack of knowing who their kids are. The film points out that teenagers today are shown over 3,000 discrete advertisements per day, %75 of teens have a TV in their room and 1/3 claim to have a personal computer. Statistics seemingly outrageous to previous generations.

The documentary asks the question: How do you map what's cool? They provide the marketing tool or task as it were of "cool hunting", in my eyes a very interesting and scary concept. Not only do marketers seek to find what is cool, they actually hunt it. The documentary points out that once a trend is picked up and sold, the trend dies; thus "cool-hunting" and marketing research literally hunts what is cool and kills trends through selling them. Marketers steal the individuality from kids, sell it, and in doing so, kill it. The narrator points out that marketers penetrate teen culture seeking "trend-setting, leaders, attempting to grasp the sub-culture and then through this research diminish any "sub" about it. Quite paradoxical in nature.

The film first focuses on Sprite, a soft-drink turned into a bastion of hip-hop culture. The means of creating this union of soda and music however was created through more spending. Kids from the seemingly hip-hop sub culture were paid to attend a Sprite promo, displaying rising hip hop artists. MTV screened the event casting light on the artists and those chosen kids paid to think a drink is cool. The film poses the question of whether or not advertising expression has been erased and whether marketing is solely consumption.

The film uses MTV's promotion of Sprite as a segway into the pervasiveness of the corporation Viacom in terms of youth culture. Viacom owns MTV which, as depicted by the film, is all an advertisement and all infomercially based. The show is illustrated to air very cheap programming to serve as the leading force in creating what is cool to young viewers. Unfortunately, they remain the leading force and it costs them the least. Frontline attributes this to the company's screening location in Time's square, a hub of cultural strategy, among other things.

Frontline interestingly divides the culturally produced paradigm for girls and boys into two separate terms: the "midriff" and the "mook". The mook takes the form of a rebellious, gangster-type, reveling young male, where the midriff represents an insecure, very materialistic and superficial young female. These roles create the social dichotomy of American youth between secure, arrogant young men and insecure, vain young women. The midriff is a sex-object and the mook is in trouble; great images to instill in today's youth. In terms of the midriff, the film uses icons such as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears that send the message: "Flaunt your sexuality, even if you don't understand it". The film interviews a thirteen year-old who is obsessed with looking older and fulfilling the marketable-midriff image. The girl strives to be "bought" by modeling agencies, for something quite far from whoever she is under the skin.

I enjoyed the film's conclusion, focusing on the rap metal/rage rock musical group Insane Clown Posey or ICP. It was very interesting to watch a band grow from underground to mainstream through marketing and as the film first pointed out "cool hunting". ICP went from a few followers underground to music videos on MTV and spots on television for the world wrestling federation. The documentary concludes well with the questions: "Do today's youth have anything we can call our own? And "Who can today's youth look to, if anyone?". In final words, as best said by the film itself: "Welcome to the machine".