Merchants of Cool

Melissa Chow
05.23.2017

Instead of the normal readings, for today’s lecture we watched the documentary, “Merchants of Cool” which I have actually seen before. Basically, for businesses, the biggest consumer, or demographic, to target are youth so a lot of preparation goes into what the youth like, and what they would ultimately buy. A lot of this needs to be undercover because as they say in the movie, as soon as businesses start marketing something as “cool” it soon becomes “uncool”. Such is the nature of teenage culture. This documentary immediately reminded me of our discussions about “cultural appropriation” and the use of “Native American” symbols used by Urban Outfitters, as well as the henna “tattoos”. We’ve discussed that there really is no such thing as cultural appropriation, but then why are we upset? Should we burst out in anger at the people who buy these products? As Professor Maira had said before, we should be angry at the source, the giant corporations that are using these symbols simply as a marketing ploy rather than actually caring about it. Sometimes we can tell there’s a disconnection between corporation and consume, case in point, the infamous Pepsi ad. Pepsi tried using symbols and ideas that are prevalent today. In particular, protests, peace symbols, and references to the Black Lives Matter Movement. But in their commercial, it was so obvious that they had no connections with these ideas. It was nothing but a way for people to buy Pepsi, and it didn’t work. This documentary kinda helps us get in the same mindset as these corporations which is eerie, because the way they talk about the teenagers is almost predatory. Well, it’s predatory in manner anyways. American youth also includes Asian American youth whom can be targeted by these predator corporations.