The Merchants of Cool

This one-hour PBS documentary is one of the most effective and scathing examinations of popular culture ever made. The guy who made this movie is a goddamned genius who should win any and every award given out to a TV program of its kind. After viewing "The Merchants of Cool," you will wonder why no one has yet attempted to tie every single one of today's MTV-generation teenagers to chairs and force them to watch this movie. It would be a great service to all of humanity.

"The Merchants of Cool" is about exactly what the title suggests. It chronicles the late 90s surge in the marketing of "cutting-edge" culture to youths in North America. This movie shows you exactly how MTV and their ilk were able to turn teenage rebellion into a profitable industry in corporate America. By the perpetuation of ready made so-called "cutting-edge" musical groups like Limp Bizkit and Blink-182, along with "dick, balls, crap and fart" joke comedians like Tom Green and sexually flaunting pop-star-cum-role-models like Britney Spears, corporate America have managed to turn good ol' Teenage rebellion into big fat dollar signs.... and the kids just keep on buyin'.

The movie sheds insightful light on the process of setting trends. Dozens of youth oriented companies in the U.S. seek out confident, ordinary high school teenagers and sign them to fairly lucrative contracts to endorse, wear, listen to or even just talk about their products in a light that makes the product look like something that the kids just "gotta have" in front of friends and school peers. The thought that the 15-year-old kid sitting next to you at the bus stop next time could be a walking, talking endorsement is truly repulsive.

Even more repulsive is how MTV and Hollywood movie studios have managed to dumb down the level of vulgarity in mainstream culture to the point where it makes being offensive "cute." Essentially, as MTV would have you believe, boys acting like 13-year-olds up until they are in their thirties is not only perfectly acceptable, but damn cool! And 13-year-old girls dressing not unlike Vegas hookers would have dressed 10 years ago, all while flaunting a sexuality that they do not yet understand is not only "cool," but perfectly acceptable in most fashion circles. And of course, the kids will eat this crap up because they are so warmed over by the fact that music, movies and other facets of mainstream culture with this false "cute" offensive edge to it are so readily accessible to them now, that they'll still feel like they are rebelling against their parents, all while unknowingly feeding the wallets of entertainment industry big-wig's.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing of all was the shot in this film of the kids participating in MTV's annual spring break telecast. Here was a group of kids, whose age ranged probably from 14 to their early-20s, grinding and dry humping each other in an orgy of misunderstood sexuality that I have never seen the likes of before. Seeing 14-year-old girls shove their barely covered t**s into the faces and bodies of surrounding males in a giggle some fest of sexual overexertion surely lead me to believe that 80% of 'em don't understand or hold the slightest bit of esteem of their own bodies or sexuality. Girls who grew up with Britney Spears and such do not dress "sexy" because they want to flaunt their sexuality, but because essentially it is what most visible females of this faux-counter culture dress like. Sexuality in that sense, at least for young teenage girls, has become less of a self-discovery and more of a fashion.

This documentary did not stop there, though. It went onto scathe the ever-popular mainstreamization of the "anti-mainstream." In particular, we see acts like Insane Clown Posse and Slipknot schlock up a routine of saying "F**k You" to the establishment and acting as though they were somehow a voice to an underground legion of fans who were all brought together by their music as though they were outcasts of society, shown for what they really were -- rock stars. As a hilarious end-note to the film, we get to see the ICP gang participate in a Professional Wrestling match and are told very matter-of-factly by the narrator that they had very recently signed to an outright major label.

I could go on for hours describing many of the issues covered in this movie, but I'll refrain from doing so and let you seek it out for yourself. If you are someone who rolled your eyes at the inexplicable amount of kids who champion music like Limp Bizkit and films like "Scary Movie," this movie perfectly articulates what has been on the tip of your tongue for the last couple of years. What is most extraordinary about this documentary is how much ground it managed to cover in only one-hour. Quite an amazing feat, if you ask me. If I were the President of the United States, I would make this film mandatory High School viewing.

When questioned about the low quality of much of art and entertainment in the United States (the majority of which is targeted to the 14-to-25-year-old crowd), the media conglomerates such as MTV, Viacom, FOX, and the other networks will respond simply that they are just providing what the young people want to consume, no different than buying a bicycle or a car. If middle-aged men throwing themselves into pools of excrement is what these teens and early twenty-somethings regard as entertainment, than the likes of MTV will provide it. But if they are given nothing other than junk entertainment, how can kids possibly demand something of higher quality? The correspondent suggests that if all the media is being driven by profit-hungry corporations, teens become nothing more than consumers with nothing that they can call their own. If all that matters in art and entertainment is appealing to the lowest common denominator purely for profit, then true teen expression will cease to exist, which is possibly the main point of PBS Frontline's "The Merchants of Cool".

According to "The Merchants of Cool", music, television programs, and movies are rarely made by singular artists who have a vision. They are contrived packaged products assembled by committees in board rooms at the behest of the large media corporations. They do surveys on kids, endlessly looking for the "typical" American teenager, as if there could be such a thing in a country as diverse as the United States. They want to know what music he or she listens to, what they eat, what they wear, what interests them, where they go, what do they do for fun, and what do they like to watch. These items are put together like a laundry list and sent back to the studios where producers put together programming based on these results. But it begs the question: is this really art? Or simply marketing, not unlike a political campaign or a laundry detergent.

They are also looking for the "leader kids", young people who will point the way toward the new "thing", which could be music, fashion trends, film, etc, when it is still underground. The corporations want to find out what is the next hot trend and be the first ones to package and distribute it on the mass market. Of course, the irony is once the trend becomes corporate, the original die-hards lose interest, usually saying "it went commercial". This phenomenon happens to many music groups, fashion designers, and filmmakers that started out with cult followings. And that's one of the other points of the documentary, that the media conglomerates end up ultimately destroying what they find. The other irony is that media projects that these 20% that are the trend-setting kids will lead the other 80%. Where does that leave the small amount of people who are neither leaders nor followers who want find their own expression?

Another commentator argues that MTV, Viacom etc are not really listening to teens as a means to help create new and innovative material, but instead they simply use their marketing research as a way to market what they have to sell. Teens are only being listened to as customers and not really as people with their own thoughts and ideas. Unfortunately, teens are very impressionable and the desire to be with the "in" crowd is a very intense factor in consumer decision-making. But has this what it comes down to? A few "average" kids' tastes will determine what gets thrust down their throats?

The most unfortunate aspect revealed by the documentary is not just the resulting dumbing-down of material but the influence they have on behavior, for which the conglomerates would never admit any responsibility. If the kids are exposed to nothing other than silly mook shows like Howard Stern, overly sexually-explicit programming like "Spring Break", overly violent movies and television shows, like wrestling, and endless Hip-Pop groups with violent and derogatory messages, they will reflect back these ideas through behavior that may have damaging consequences in the long term. Rapes and violent outbreaks occurred at Woodstock 1999. But weren't the kids just behaving in a manner consistent with the media messages? The irony is kids will believe these things are cool if it's marketed to them as such. I don't entirely buy the idea that they are just giving them what they want. I would hope this next generation of kids will create their own trends and not just follow whatever MTV and Viacom tell them to follow. But it would mean looking in places other than shopping malls and cineplexes. It might mean looking into their own minds and hearts. But that would be almost taboo and very uncool.

This is an exceptional documentary about the marketing efforts that are specifically focused at our teens. And, as a parent of a teenage daughter, it sure was frightening--though as a recently retired high school teacher, none of of the content of "The Merchants of Cool" came as a major surprise.

This film consists of various interviews with folks who market towards teens. You see focus groups, marketing execs, internet entrepreneurs and media executives touting the benefits (at least the financial ones) of their efforts. In addition, there are a wide variety of clips and interviews with teens. Together, they all do a very good job of explaining the story and creating a strong emotional impact on the viewer.

What surprised me about this film is that almost none of the participants seemed to feel the slightest responsibility for the possible negative impact on our kids. Extremely sexually-oriented television and films is now the norm--all in the name of marketing dollars. What was also troubling was the show's discussion of 'the mook'--making it seem funny or cool to be gross and excruciatingly stupid. So, according to the film, guys are being encouraged to be masochistic idiots and girls to become tramps. Again, not huge surprises, but shocking to watch nevertheless.

One of the few surprises of the film was its discussion of groups who pay folks to go online and pose as regular teens. There job, however, is pretty insidious--as they talk about how great a product or TV show or celebrity is in order to promote these things! I have noticed some of this over the years (particularly fake websites that pretend to give unbiased reviews of products) but I didn't realize the full extent of the problem.

All in all, a sad film. They state that the media's efforts to mass-market to kids all appeal to 'celebrating the worst in us'. And, as you watch the case of Barbara (a 13 year-old who appears about 17 and VERY sexually eager) you can't help but feel sorry for these kids and wonder what our future will be. I sure know it won't be a smarter future!

By the way, if you are curious, check out the Urban Dictionary's definition of a 'mook'. Apparently the term was first used in this documentary AND the definition makes for enjoyable reading.