We are living in an extremely commercialized society. I cannot lie about that. In the February 27, 2001 episode of Frontline entitled The Merchants of Cool, author and media critic Douglas Rushkoff explores the sociological background in which teenagers and young adults grow up in, where the world of young adults is shaped against built in beliefs of what is and isn't "cool", engineered, tested and developed by and around marketing. Can genuine coolness, media that has not been committee-approved, clothing and food that is not created by a trend prevail? Culture created by marketing is not a new concept. It has existed for quite a long time. Most individuals are not bound by what makes every single thing ingested by the popular majority "cool". Even when the majority motions towards material that is the product of a market-driven quest for instant popularity, there are still individuals who don't "follow the leader". Are teens really striving for popularity by buying into what everyone else does? In the first segment, "Hunting for Cool", a group of teenagers from different backgrounds are brought together and interviewed by a focus group as part of market research. We are told that there are 32 million teens in the United States, the largest generation in history. Teens also have more money and more say over how they'll spend it than before. Parents feel guilty over being unable to spend time with their children, and thus a credit card and the Internet/the mall have become a substitute. Surrounded by mass advertising in Times Square, marketing everywhere one goes, how do teens find a voice in today's society? Major corporations are forced to come up with a product based on what the majority of teens think and feel, and provide them with a message on their terms that let them know "We're here for you. We know what you're going through. Buy our product." Teens do not respond to brands and traditional marketing messages, but to "cool", and what's "cool" frequently changes. Corporations employ "cool hunters" to provide continuous research on what is hot, and when to strike the iron, to find "trend-setters" who will influence the rest of the culture. Cool hunter Dee Dee Gordon, who is one of the highest-paid consultants and has been the subject of a profile in The New Yorker, is interviewed. Gordon runs a coolhunting firm which employs "culture spies" to keep in touch with what's "in" with the young demographic. These "correspondents" are trained to find teens who could be trend-setters or "early adopters" who "think outside of the box" and serve as leaders within their own groups. A correspondent is sent out to interview and take pictures of these trend-setters, which are posted on the company's website, available by expensive subscriptions to major corporations. The teens spied on by the "correspondents" tend to be tattooed or pierced, and one is a fan of the musical group Slipknot. If a company can "get in" on a trend or subculture while it is still underground, they can be the first to popularize and market it. But as soon as marketers discover cool, it ceases to be cool.

The second segment focuses on how some companies will be a little more subtle in their advertising by employing "under-the-radar" marketing tactics. When Sprite discovered that teens had become cynical to traditional methods of advertising, they launched an ad campaign featuring professional basketball player Grant Hill, which advertised the soda by pretending to be anti-marketing, but teens became cynical to this tactic as well. Former record executives Jon Cohen and Rob Stone, who run the New York marketing firm Cornerstone, which specializes in under-the-radar marketing, are interviewed. For example, the firm hires teens to log into chat rooms and pose as fans of their clients, or to throw parties where promotional material will be passed out to their classmates. The third segment, "The MTV Machine," focuses on the Viacom conglomerate, the owners of "cool" assets like MTV, which had successfully launched a programming schedule based around promotional videos shot by record labels. Because all of their programming is devoted to commercial content, they have made millions of dollars. The launch party for a new hip hop album by a major label artist shown as being funded by Sprite was filmed and aired by MTV. MTV's ratings have been slipping due to their inability to hide the commercialism of their program. In 1998, MTV launched Total Request Live, which claims to give its viewers control of programmed music. In order to keep up with what is popular amongst its youth-based audience, MTV's market researchers visit a fan's home to interview him and understand him as a customer. MTV's non-music programming is largely based around two caricatures: "the mook" and "the midriff". The "mook" (loud, obnoxious males) is shown as being typified by programs like The Tom Green Show and Jackass, or South Park and The Man Show, on Viacom-owned Comedy Central. Howard Stern, shown as the "originating mook", broadcast a television series on Viacom-owned CBS, released books through Viacom-owned publisher Simon & Shuster, and a film version of his biography was funded and distributed by Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures, which grossed $40 million domestically, and millions more on home video, where it can be found at Blockbuster Video, which had been owned by Viacom until 2004.

"The midriff" fuses faux female empowerment and willingness to become a sexual object for the other sex, with Britney Spears portrayed as the archtype for this caricature. Essentially, the "midriff" takes the addige of "when you got it, flaunt it" to heart, and young female viewers receive the same message, even if they do not understand it. In the fifth segment, "The Giant Feedback Loop", the WB is shown as having attempted to keep its evening programming "family-friendly" as a novel scheduling approach. By the network's third season, it introduced edgy, teen-oriented programming like Dawson's Creek. The business of producing teen films and television is discussed. It is argued that rather than reflecting the sex-oriented lifestyles of teens, popular media is influencing their mode of thought. The final segment, "Teen Rebellion: Just Another Product", focuses on the music industry's attempts to package the concept of rebellion to teens through bands like Limp Bizkit, best-selling performers in a genre that, according to this documentary, is referred to as "rage rock" or "rap-metal", whose faux anti-authority lyrics were approved and informed by the corporation that sold their music to the masses. (Rap-metal is correct, but I've never heard of "rage rock".) According to this documentary, Limp Bizkit's success was built upon "One part authentic rage, two parts marketing". I sincerly doubt that lyrics like "I pack a chainsaw / I'll skin your ass raw / And if my day keeps going this way I just might / Break somethin' tonight" are the product of "authentic rage". Despite poor critical reception and much controversy, including critics who blamed the rapes of four women during their Woodstock '99 performance on the band itself, Limp Bizkit's frontman, Fred Durst, became a Senior Vice President at Interscope, and the band developed a steady friendship with MTV, placing an image of an executive in their liner notes, and frequently appearing on Total Request Live. The underground hip hop group Insane Clown Posse is incorrectly identified as the founders of "rage rock". The fans that have gathered to see the group in concert on Halloween in Detroit, are portrayed as "mostly white" young males, and it is claimed that their music ridicules women and gays. Member Joseph Bruce--Violent J--is identified simply as "Insane Clown Posse member" during his interview. ICP's fans found their music appealing because it is not commercial, and because it does not receive airplay on radio or MTV, they feel that it is truly "theirs" as opposed to what is popular with mainstream audiences. In noting that ICP had been signed to a major label, Rushkoff fails to rationalize the group's inclusion in his documentary. Signing to a major label does not make a musical group corporate. If that were true, Rushkoff truly has no point in stating "welcome to the machine" after revealing that ICP were signed to a major label -- Pink Floyd, the writers of that line, were also signed to a major label.

One of the things missing from The Merchants of Cool is a counterview of teenagers who don't fit into trends created by marketing. ICP's fans--juggalos--are slapped into the same supposed market-created "rage" genre created by Limp Bizkit, and juggalos as another group of teens, like the rest of the teens portrayed in the documentary, as buying into another form of "cool" created as a marketing form influenced by kids influenced by market. ICP has been around since the early 1990s, directly proceeded and influenced rappers like Eminem (who is not portrayed in the documentary), and made it big on their own terms -- producing the music that they wanted to make, dressing the way they wanted (in clown paint and ripoff clothing), and care more about making quality music and entertaining its audience than Limp Bizkit, Britney Spears, etc. ICP signed to a major label in order to expand their fanbase and spread their message, which stands against things like racism, violence against women and children, etc. ICP are about as far from Limp Bizkit as you can get. Furthermore, while ICP are not rap-metal, the very intelligent and progressive music of Rage Against the Machine is. Not to mention that the supposed genre of "nu metal" (which "rage rock" is likely another code for) has been associated with artists like System of a Down, who share these aspects. The documentary needed to focus on teens who did not follow trends and did not consume anything based on marketing. The ICP segment almost does this -- before revealing the correspondent's bias. Furthermore, what of System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine? Surely these artists would have made a nice trifecta (along with ICP) of musicians who have made it on their own terms and developed an audience without having to intentionally appeal to the masses or "sell out". Furthermore, the focus is largely on white teens, with little to no attention on minorities. Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit were largely popular with white teens. ICP does have non-white fans, but this fanbase is portrayed as predominately white, which is incorrect, as the fanbase is very, very mixed. The overall message is a very simplistic one: "Corporations bad. Capitalism bad." The quality of the social deconstruction in this piece is very poor. The entire documentary comes across as if we were focusing on another species. Douglas Rushkoff has little understanding of the teens he focuses on, and the subjects are given the same focus as a type of specimen, not as human beings. Although the documentary makes some good points, it is wrong about many things. It is wrong about the idea that teens always reflect the media, not the other way around. It is wrong that teens always follow trends and are unable to think for themselves. There is no real opposing viewpoint, there is no focus on society beyond marketing. In this biased view of teen culture, there is no existing alternative to a marketing-created or overseen culture amongst the youth of America. Without the areas of teen culture not focused on, The Merchants of Cool comes across as being extremely one-sided, like using this documentary as a rationale for why you shouldn't donate to PBS.

Recommended:
No