Must See Freeper TV: The Merchants Of Cool (How the mass media manipulates our children)

Frontline ^ | PBS

[ContentiousObjector]

They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the "next big thing" that will snare the attention of their prey--a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year. They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts--and wallets--of America's youth?

FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examines the tactics, techniques, and cultural ramifications of these marketing moguls in "The Merchants of Cool." Produced by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, the program talks with top marketers, media executives and cultural/media critics, and explores the symbiotic relationship between the media and today's teens, as each looks to the other for their identity.

Teenagers are the hottest consumer demographic in America. At 33 million strong, they comprise the largest generation of teens America has ever seen--larger, even, than the much-ballyhooed Baby Boom generation. Last year, America's teens spent $100 billion, while influencing their parents' spending to the tune of another $50 billion.

But marketing to teens isn't as easy as it sounds. Marketers have to find a way to seem real: true to the lives and attitudes of teenagers; in short, to become cool themselves. To that end, they search out the next cool thing and have adopted an almost anthropological approach to studying teens and analyzing their every move as if they were animals in the wild.

Take MTV. Long considered to be the arbiter of teen cool, the late 1990s saw MTV's ratings on the wane. To counter the slide, MTV embarked on a major teen research campaign, the hallmark of which was its "ethnography study"-- visiting teens' homes to view first hand their lives, interests and ask some quite personal questions.

But what lessons do MTV and other companies draw from this exhaustive and expensive study of teenagers' lives? Does it result in a more nuanced portrait of the American teen? In "The Merchants of Cool," FRONTLINE introduces viewers to the "mook" and the "midriff" -- the stock characters that MTV and others have resorted to in order to hook the teen consumer.

The "midriff"--the character pitched at teenage girls, is the highly-sexualized, world-weary sophisticate that increasingly populates television shows such as Dawson's Creek and films such as Cruel Intentions. Even more appealing to marketers is the "midriff's" male counterpart, the "mook." Characterized mainly by his infantile, boorish behavior, the "mook" is a perpetual adolescent: crude, misogynistic--and very, very, angry.

But also very lucrative. To appeal to the "mook," MTV has created programs such as Spring Break -- a televised version of teen beach debauchery--as well as a weekly program capitalizing on the current wrestling craze.

"What this system does is it closely studies the young, keeps them under constant surveillance to figure out what will push their buttons," says media critic Mark Crispin Miller. "And it blares it back at them relentlessly and everywhere."

Of course, there is resistance to the commercial machine. FRONTLINE takes viewers to downtown Detroit, where media analyst Rushkoff speaks with teens at a concert by the Detroit-based Insane Clown Posse, purveyors of a genre of music that's become known as "rage rock." When asked to describe what appeals to them about such music, the teens invariably respond that it belongs to them; it hasn't yet been taken and sold back to them at the mall. Full of profanity, violence, and misogyny, rage rock is literally a challenge thrown up to marketers: just try to market this!

But marketers have accepted the challenge: rage rock is now big business. Not only has Insane Clown Posse become mainstream, but much bigger acts like Eminem and Limp Bizkit are breaking sales records and winning industry accolades in the form of Grammy nominations and other mainstream music awards.

In "The Merchants of Cool," correspondent Rushkoff details how MTV and other huge commercial outlets orchestrated the rise of Limp Bizkit--despite the group's objectionable lyrics--and then relentlessly promoted them on-air.

But in doing so, critics ask, is MTV truly reflecting the desires of today's teenagers, or are they stoking a cultural infatuation with music and imagery that glorifies violence and sex as well as antisocial behavior and attitudes?

In today's media-saturated environment, such questions, it seems, are becoming increasingly difficult to answer.

"It's one enclosed feedback loop," Rushkoff says. "Kids' culture and media culture are now one and the same, and it becomes impossible to tell which came first--the anger or the marketing of the anger."

Therein lies the danger of today's teen-driven economy, observers say: As everyone from record promoters to TV executives to movie producers besieges today's teens with pseudo-authentic marketing pitches, teenagers increasingly look to the media to provide them with a ready-made identity predicated on today's version of what's cool. Rather than empowering youngsters, the incessant focus on their wants and desires leaves them adrift in a sea of conflicting marketing messages.

"Kids feel frustrated and lonely today because they are encouraged to feel that way," Miller tells FRONTLINE. "You know, advertising has always sold anxiety and it certainly sells anxiety to the young. It's always telling them that they are not thin enough, they're not pretty enough, they don't have the right friends, or they have no friends...they're losers unless they're cool. But I don't think anybody, deep down, really feels cool enough, ever."

And as more and more teens look to the media to define what they should think and how they should behave, even some cool hunters are no longer sure that their work isn't having a negative impact.

"Even though I work at MTV...I am starting to see the world more like someone who's approaching forty than someone who's twenty," says Brian Graden, the channel's president of programming. "And I can't help but be worried that we are throwing so much at young adults so fast. And that there is no amount of preparation or education or even love that you could give a child to be ready."

[ContentiousObjector]

This is a frontline documentry originally shown in March 2001, it goes into explicit detail as to how our children are manipulated by the media, popular culture and marketing

It is on tonight at 9PM on your local PBS station, or can be viewed online.

[IronJack]

Visceral marketing, bypassing the higher cognitive centers, will always work with teenagers and other emotional demographics (e.g., soccer moms). However, the products of that gullible age are embarrassing a few years later when the brain rules instead of the bowels. At least that's the way it used to be.

Nowadays, kids are encouraged to remain perpetual adolescents, irresponsible juveniles who throw their money away on fads and this week's "cool." Every aspect of their culture is disposable.

How does one form a culture when nothing endures?

[okie01]

"...it goes into explicit detail as to how our children are manipulated by the media, popular culture and marketing."

All selling involves "manipulation". Whether you're selling peanut butter to moms or shoes to teenagers. You discover what the market wants, then try to deliver a product that fulfills a perceived need.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with marketing and salesmanship.

At bottom, if the product doesn't deliver what the customer wants, it doesn't sell. This is the free market in action.

PBS is not familiar with, nor respectful of, this thing we call the free market.

[ContentiousObjector]

you just keep telling yourself that when you see 9 yearold girls dressed like crack whores

before you go on some anti-pbs rant, why not watch the show

[AdamSelene235]

Now why would I buy a Tee Vee.

I'd rather have a gushing sewage pipe in my home.

[ContentiousObjector]

american culture died in the 1960's, future american generations will be nothing more than semi-illiterate visigoths or house pets for japanese families

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

of course PBS isn't familiar with a free market. They depend on handouts and begging for their support.

[ChadGore]

This show reminds us that todays media goes THROUGH the hearts and minds of young people, leaving them in ruine, in a effort to reach their wallets.

[quebecois]

Until the rise of electronic media in the 50s, there really wasn't anything that could be called "youth culture". It arose when certain corrupt moguls realized that they could use the massive propaganda power of electronic media to manipulate immature teens to part with their newfound wealth (teens with money is another thing that really didn't exist until the 50s).

The moguls also quickly found that the easiest way to convince teens to throw their money away was to sell them rebellion...a rebellion against the mores and values of their parents and elders. Thus started the "race to the bottom" which began with Elivs swinging his hips and went on a smooth downward slope to gangsta rap.

One of the unfortunate things about merchandising rebellion is that it is like cocaine: you have to get a bigger hit each time to get the same response. No one would bat an eye at a modern singer who swings his hips like Elvis....been there, done that. In order to profit from notoriety, you have to continually push the envelope.

That is the real reason why our culture is a sewer. And that is the reason why we have epidemics of teen violence, pregnancy, etc etc. Teens are exposed to this toxin daily, and absorb its values into their own worldview.

My chosen strategy, as a parent, is twofold:

1) I've zapped the more heinous toxins from my household using the programming control/password system on my new TV. As long as God grants me life, there will be no MTV in this house.

2) We have only one TV in the house...so whatever is on, we all have to watch together. And I make it a point to run a continuous conservative commentary on everything that is happening on the TV (my wife hates listening to me rant, but she's learning to live with it). NOTHING happens on the TV that violates my cultural, moral, or political beliefs without my offering pointed commentary about it in realtime. It irritates the kids, but it disempowers the media moguls, who need to smuggle their points across without oppositional analysis. It really works. My kids can almost tell me what I'm going to say about a show even before I say it.

[okie01]

"you just keep telling yourself that when you see 9 yearold girls dressed like crack whores"

And a TV ad made her do it?

C'mon, you know better.

[IronJack]

And I thought I was a pessimist!

[ContentiousObjector]

Do you think in the absence of Britney Spears, that Aquliaria freak and company, and the image that is marketed to them, pre-pubesent girls would be dressing like prostitutes?

[ContentiousObjector]

I agree with pretty much everything you have said, although I haven't banned MTV, thankfully my girls aren't the type who are into looking for new and innovative ways to disgust me and their mother,

Be sure to watch this show tonight, I am sure you will enjoy it,

[okie01]

"Do you think in the absence of Britney Spears...pre-pubesent girls would be dressing like prostitutes?"

Britney Spears is not responsible for how pre-pubescent girls dress. She doesn't buy their clothes.

Parents do.

[ContentiousObjector]

there is nothing quite so funny as a freeper so blinded by idology that he can't see what is standing right infront of him,

So by your standards the downfall of western civilization is A-OK just as long as it is the free market that is inflicting the mortal wounds?

[Captiva]

Have you ever seen a crack whore? The only one I've ever seen is Cartman's mom on SouthPark. She was on the cover of "Crack Whore Monthly"

Its the Parents. Simple answer but true.

[ijcr]

Please read Pinker's "A Blank Slate"....You are too emotional on this issue.The "Magic Bullet Theory" is dead.

[ContentiousObjector]

my girls watch MTV, hell so do I (gotta love Jackass), but they are to busy with their own lives to behave like idiots, my eldest daughter is to busy with school (we told her if she can get into an ivy leauge school on her own merits we would pay for it, so she wants perfect SAT's) and our younger daughter is the star athlete who is to busy training every waking moment to screw around

not esspecially well rounded lives, but this daddy can sleep at night

[okie01]

"So by your standards the downfall of western civilization is A-OK just as long as it is the free market that is inflicting the mortal wounds?"

Where did I say that?

And where is the evidence that it is the free market that is to blame?

Or, for that matter, that the downfall of western civilization is at hand?

We were all teenagers...once. Remember?

We all did stuff that our parents didn't want us to do. Remember?

And when we became parents, our teenagers wanted to do stuff that we didn't want them to do. Remember?

In the end, the parents are responsible for their children. If, as you put it, a pre-pubescent girl wants to dress like a crack whore...well, in the natural order of things, that may be unpleasant to contemplate, but it's not a big surprise.

But that her parents would let her...well, now, that is a big surprise.