Merchants of Cool video response

Karen Nguyen

ASA 4

25 May 2017

Merchants of Cool Video Response

            The video captures how media targets and feeds teenagers content of which teenagers reciprocally use to create their identities. This system could be an example of hegemony because the teenage audience willingly consents to the domination of what the media portrays as "cool." For example, in observing Barbara, the narrator states how it appears the teens were trying to "sell back to us what we (the media) had sold to them." I found it alarming yet natural given human nature's need to belong, that the commercial tool "cool-hunting" existed in large media cooperations.  In terms of cultural hegemony, Sprite is an example of how a dominant cooperation coerced or "smuggled their message" into the teen's lifestyles. If the soda company became an icon of hip hop culture, does this mean that Sprite contributed to the predominance of the hip hop subculture across American culture through the vehicle of youth consumers?  The video also recounts that the teens will go far to protect their "authenticity;" however, the youth culture lacks authenticity because it is based on a relationship between the teens' variable definition of "cool" and the media's portrayal of "cool."