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Frontline: The Merchants of Cool
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List Price:
$29.98
Computers-Internet Price:
$24.99
Your Savings: $ 4.99 ( 17% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: PBS (Direct)
Starring: Douglas Rushkoff, Shaggy 2 Dope, Christina Aguilera, Greg Berlanti, Bob Bibb
Directed By: Barak Goodman
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0841887005562
Format: Color
Label: PBS (Direct)
Manufacturer: PBS (Direct)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: PBS (Direct)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-10-04
Running Time: 55
Studio: PBS (Direct)
Theatrical Release Date: 2001-02-27
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Another attempt to disguise sex
Comment: This program doesn't deserve a positive rating of any kind.
80% of the program was dedicated to marketing techniques and research on the media and their efforts to advertise to the teen market and what the teen market demands from them. The other 20% was dedicated to gratuitous sexual and vulgar footage in the disguise of support for the research done.
It is inappropriate and feeds the growing problems of our youth today by supplying them with more images and behavior that has no moral value.
The program would have been acceptable for a marketing or research class on the college level IF it didn't have the unnecessary video footage. As it stands right now, it is crude, vulgar and not suitable for any age.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Marketing to kids.
Comment: This film exposes some of the marketing techniques used on young people.
I'm glad to read that another reviewer shows it to his students each year.
Another teacher who showed it to her class was less impressed with the response it received from some students who thought it was dated. There are some more recent documentaries on this issue from the Media Education Foundation, but this Frontline presentation is a good place to start.
I learned in the film The Corporation that some psychologists hired by the corporate world work to achieve a high "nag factor," that is an intense pressuring from kids on parents to purchase particular items for them. The techniques are many, and are constantly used on adults as well. Another related field to marketing is public relations. PR's founder, Edward Bernays, wrote a book called Propaganda, that was utilized by Joseph Goebbels during the rise of fascism. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, boasted that "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it."
To counter all of this propaganda, I'd suggest the following resources:
Adbusters - Adbusters also offers items for teachers to use in the classroom.
Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel
So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids
New Moon: the Magazine for Girls & Their Dreams This commercial free magazine written by and for girls, includes a lot of insightful comments on media manipulation from the girls.
Teen Voices This magazine is for young women.
Hopefully there will someday be magazines that aren't manipulating boys and young men in the service of corporate interests.
Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media This documentary has become something of a movement, inspiring a new level of media criticism and countless efforts to create grassroots media.
Chomsky's work has been a big influence on Amy Goodman of the independent news hour, "Democracy Now!." Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Comment: I purchased this title to show to my senior high school Economics students thinking it would fire up a lot of discussion about how teenagers are manipulated. Instead it elicited yawns and many comments about how the material was dated and didn't apply to them. I'm still deciding whether or not to include it in next year's curriculum.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Please enter a title for your review
Comment: the part about the underground marketing to make Sprite hiphop was interesting but didn't cover the campaign beyond one promotional event so i didn't really learn anything about how successful it was. this film is mostly propaganda for people with no style who think anyone who likes something they don't must be braindead and feel clever telling others "you only like that because it was marketed to you". if you're willing to accept the equation that if 1> a product is marketed, and 2> someone buys that product, then 3> that person bought the product because the marketing is so successfully insidious, then you'll enjoy this film. if you require the question of whether marketing makes a product cool (i.e. brainwashes people into liking it) or merely makes people aware of a product which they then make up their own mind about to be addressed you might find a lot of the conclusions the narrator reaches prejudiced.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing commentary on popular culture
Comment: I teach a popular culture class at the high school level, and usually begin the class with this documentary. It gets students thinking about important questions, specifically: "Why do I do what I do and make the decisions I make?" To reduce the answer to this question to something as easy as, "Because corporations and advertisers tell me to" is obviously an oversimplification, but that can be part of the answer, and this documentary provides a very watchable way of presenting that side.
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