Merchant of Cool

In the documentary Merchant of Cool, there are constantly a reshape and restructure of mass consumption of popular culture.  The creators and sellers of popular culture invest so much in research in order to figure out what consumer “wants.”  Most of the discussions relates to the concept of popular culture mentioned by Stuart Hall.  For instance, Hall provides many definition of the term ‘popular’ and one of the definition relates to the “cool” mention in this documentary.  Popular, in this case, is determined by the mass consumption by the youth, which are the main target in the documentary.  I found it really interesting where the researchers recruit mostly young teenage boys to represent the whole youth population.  They were asking the boys what they think were cool and why they thought their choices were cools.  In this case, this reflects the male dominance in a setting that should be determined by a various group of folks since they’re trying to please a massive crowd.  This emphasize the privilege that males contain in most society which allows males to determine the structure of how things should be about.  Even the interviewers are male who continuous created a male dominant space in order for the young teenage boys to engage.  As a young male, there are moments where I get caught up in this privilege and take up spaces without acknowledging the struggles that other may face in terms of belonging.  For instance, in the ASA04 class Professor Maira always bring up the question of why females not volunteering in class. When Maira brought that up, I did not realize I was engaging in a space that was built for male.  I did not think twice of the gender differences in volunteering to speak in class.