Though it's not a new documentary, The Merchants of Cool is now available in its entirety, FREE, online from PBS. Resonating well beyond the initial Frontline reportage, PBS has built a terrific site around the ideas and issues presented in the doc--from PBS:
They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the "next big thing" that will snare the attention of their prey--a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year.
They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts--and wallets--of America's youth?
FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examines the tactics, techniques, and cultural ramifications of these marketing moguls in "The Merchants of Cool." The program talks with top marketers, media executives and cultural/media critics, and explores the symbiotic relationship between the media and today's teens, as each looks to the other for their identity.
The conceptualization of one's identity--the self-framing, if you will--that this conditions into American teenagers is one of the basic forces that the LF Project is trying to help undo. It is critical that all of us are aware what basic ideas about the world, ourselves, and other people we have, and where those ideas came from. I discovered years ago that many of my ideas about the world were set by influences I would never choose, let alone advocate (like marketing, for instance), and they were limiting my experience of the world, by closing me off conceptually to "certain kinds" of people, music, places, etc.
The influences that Rushkoff explores in "The Merchants of Cool" are particularly pernicious, and often surprisingly invisible to us, immersed in marketing constantly as we are. I highly recommend watching this terrific documentary and exploring the outstanding site built around it.
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