Journal (5/25)

Film: The Merchants of Cool

The film discusses the topic of teens and how teens run the economy. Teens spend 100 billion dollars on themselves and additional money is spent by the parents who want to keep their children happy; they provide them with guilt money. Thus, teens make and keep the economy going. The world is made of marketing as everywhere we go, we are exposed to marketing messages. I thought the statistics noted in the video that we see 3000 advertisements every day was very shocking but also made me realize how big marketing and advertisement of popular trends, products, and services are in today’s society. It was interesting to learn about cool hunting. Gordan and Lee and their team search for the kind of personality and player in social networking to find what is “cool” in society. They look at teen lives and find certain kind of kids that look like the “trendsetter- one who is a leader, creative, think outside of the box. They take pictures, interview them, then spread it on media. They target the subculture to start a new trend, but once companies learn and more people market it, it stops being cool. I thought this concept related to previous things we learned in class about Hall’s notion of how culture is constantly changing over time. Thus, what is the subculture today can be the popular culture in the future, meaning that what is deemed as popular is constantly changing and never fixed. This also reminds me of the last article we read about import culture. Cars are symbolic for individualism,  lifestyle, and the American dream. However, what is seemed as a “cool” or “popular” car is also changing. I thought it was also shocking and problematic when the video notes how youth culture should be the act of expression, not consumption, today, media dominates making youth culture all about consumption. They are selling youth culture by targeting the teens and looking at them as empires they are trying to colonize. This approach and way of thinking made we also think about the negative impact and influence of the media and the growing economy despite all of the positives. Another example of the negative impacts is the media machine’s second character, the women. Girls are influenced by popular artists like Britney Spears. They look up to her for what to wear, what to say, and how to act. This leads to shows portraying sex obsessed teens,