5/25 Merchants of Cool


On the documentary Merchants of Cool, it portrayed interesting ideas about the relationship between media and youth subculture. In the beginning, the narrator argued that media corporations and marketers only came up with their ideas to illustrate what they believed that youth thought were “cool.” They tried to stay “true to the lives and attitudes of teenagers” by asking teens what they thought was “cool” or asked of their opinion on a certain celebrity or clothing trend. Through this point of view, this shows that youth subculture is constantly transforming and changing based on the youth which means that media culture is always changing accordingly as well. I was not a fond of this point of view as this reminded me of culture as a tool for exploitation. I bring up exploitation because analyzing and researching youth to find out “their culture” and then creating media according to them, means corporations are profiting from youth and their ideas of what it means to live. The youth do not receive anything in return, but instead they become consumers. On the other hand, the documentary also argues the youth are simply consumers of media and act according to media instead. This can be complicated as explained by the digital divide—from the year the documentary was filmed, not every teenager had access to cable TV such as MTV or the internet. Furthermore, this argument does not take into account of the systemic rebelliousness that youth have to show their agency to reject popular notions of media.

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