Merchants of Cool

Popular culture is one of the main themes in this documentary. I noticed that many of the teens shown were all Caucasian. There was not much of diversity, it was usually centered around one particular race. Also, the teens who were talked about more were probably middle class. I didn’t see any Asians. All of the issues the media made popular were centered around typical, middle class, white teenagers. The shows the documentary discussed did more harm than good in my opinion. The ideas the media created to be popular are the reasons why people Kylie Jenner have such a fan base. It’s because of her appearance and status. If the media had shown more positive role models then teenagers wouldn’t be so obsessed with appearance, status, money. It’s also interesting how the market researches tried to find what was popular knowing that once they exposed it, the trend isn’t popular after. It didn’t make any sense for me. The marketing team did create their own trends like with the spring break shows on MTV. The show promoted sex with teenagers. Today MTV has gotten worse, the network hardly ever has anything music related. The network is all about views that they get from promoting people like Kylie Jenner, people with the same characteristics. The marketing team only made what they wanted relevant which is why sex is so popular because sex sells. Even when the thirteen year old was telling producers she could pass for a seventeen year old and she was fine with that. That's so disturbing. There wasn't any feedback from males. 

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