I, too, watched Merchants of Cool with a cynical eye. Sure, I remember when Dawson's Creek and TRL were cool, but I haven't heard about any of them in years. This documentary was made ten years ago, about content that was relevant 20 years ago. If "cool" changed daily in the book Feed, then imagine how much has changed since 2001. I have heard, although not really recently, that MTV isn't cool anymore because they are more about reality TV shows than the music. I never watched MTV, so I ask others who have - is MTV still cool? Or are they so corporate that they're audience no longer appreciates them?
Also, another thought I had, I was a teen growing up in the nineties, so this documentary was about me. Sure, I listened to Brittany Spears, but I didn't watch MTV, nor did I go to Cancun for Spring Break, nor did I turn into a model at 13. Does this mean I am abnormal? Or, in their search for cool, do they only look at, and therefore attract, the "extreme" teenagers. Like when the correspondents were taking photos of people with tattoos - that was not me as a teenager. In fact, that wasn't anybody I knew. Maybe growing in rural Michigan meant that I wasn't cool? I think, as much as my opinion counts, that cool is not universal. Cool to me is completely different than cool is you, which is completely different than what is cool to my younger brother. How do the corporate people decide which cool to go with. They grabbed the "average" teenager for focus groups, but who are these "average" kids? They weren't me. Is there such thing as an average teenager? I don't think so. So what these researchers are doing, is finding a certain kid and then advertising to a certain kid. They catch other kids along the way, who think they are acting cool because MTV is showing them this, but really they are just seeing one personality type. I feel like I am talking in circles here. If I don't make sense, feel free to comment and let me know.
Thanks for listening!
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MTV doesn't play music often anymore, so I guess you could say its not Music Television anymore.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about these so called "average" kids. That was not me at all. Maybe we were too young at the time, but no one I knew had tattoos or did the things the kids in the video did.
MTV plays less music than it used to, but I was never allowed to watch it as a kid, even when there had been music.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading some girls' magazines when I was younger. It had what was cool and not in the states where they were living in. Some of it was the same where I was and some of it wasn't. I know I didn't always agree with their ideas of "cool". I agree with the fact that different people will like different things. Corporations really play to different types of people, not everyone at once. That would be too hard to sell.