Merchants Of Cool Analysis

Merchants of Cool:
Teens and Sexuality

Teenagers are bombarded with images and ideas of sex in the media. However the advertising industries claim that teenagers were already obsessed with sex before the images were plastered all over their world. The industry also claims that they develop their advertising around what the teens enjoy and that they've researched teen lives, culture and their way of thinking in order to obtain the most successful advertising method. "We're only reflecting the real world. Sex is a part of teen's lives, so it better be in their media, too." (Narr. in Merchants of Cool). Did the teens develop the pop culture first, or did the media hype teen sexuality and therefore make it pop culture? Which came first, the chicken or the
egg? I'll be arguing that although teens may have always had a sexual appetite and were the ones that fed on the sexually hyped shows, the media had a snowballing effect to the point of increasing and encouraging sexual behavior in teens, and still does today.
Teens play the biggest part in the film industry. It's no wonder most films out these days are so sexual and violent; it's because that's what the industries believe teens are looking for. Once a story line has been done, it gets boring, and no one pays to see a boring film. The only way to spice things up is with a little violence or sex, right? Spicing things up is exactly what director Neal Moritz is all about. He says "I really want to push the envelope in my movies. Because to me, if you're making the same thing everyone else is making, then you don't have much chance of getting people to come to your movies..." Neal pushes boundaries and keeps the tension high in all of his movies both sexually and graphically violent, keeping his teens hooked. Audiences and critics have put him under "intense scrutiny" (Narr. in Merchants of Cool), however, because they argue that teens should not be exposed to that level of sex and violence. This is exactly the behavior that is beyond the maturity level for a teen and should not be practiced by a teen. The ratings for movies such as the ones Moritz directs with explicit content are almost all "R"; if you must be seventeen to see it, you better be at least seventeen to think about practicing that type of behavior. Besides movies, television also plays a big role in what teenagers are exposed to.
The television network WB started off in the 1990's with a program called 7th Heaven that was designed to target families who wanted to watch television together. When the program was losing ratings, the producers added steamier kissing scenes to compete with the newer dramas and sitcoms. When 7th Heaven couldn't compete, the WB launched Dawson's Creek; a teen drama based on the ‘lives' of teens. The teens talked about sex constantly and their lives revolved around it. When teens see these idyllic celebrity teens in the media, they idolize them. This idolization leads to mimicking behavior, and before long, the teens are engaging in sexual behavior much like that in television (and other media). Television producers are apt to use what they see in pop culture and find out what teens are doing, and push that a little farther, to make it more appealing to their teen audiences, thereby hyping teen sexuality even further. Television shows such as Dawson's Creek that continuously exceed their own standards of what's sexually appealing to the teen masses episode after episode are what drive the sexual economy in the eyes of a
teen. Teenagers make up the biggest demographic in the world right now—even bigger than their baby boomer parents. The biggest demographic has the most amount of money to spend. These teens not only have their own money to spend but they also have the most influential dollars—their parents feel guilty for not spending time with them, so they spend money on them instead. Companies know this, so they target their products to this demographic. In turn, these companies hire the advertising companies to appeal to the teen masses, so the advertising companies must get in tune with the teen pop culture. Not only must they think like a teen, but they have to "kick it up a notch" in order to appeal and be attractive to a teen mind. So although teens may lead sexual lives, the advertising industry has to hype that sexuality to make it appealing to their audience. This hyped sexuality in turn encourages other behavior, because teens think that what they see in the media must be what everyone else is doing, and therefore exercise the behaviors they see, and then the advertising industry has to "one up" themselves, again, encouraging the teens to become ever more sex-obsessed. Teens may have a vicious appetite for sexual behavior and already may be practicing this type of behavior, but the encouragement is in the media. The media produces sexual images and violent scenes every day just to appeal to the teen. These images in turn encourage the teen to practice even more sexual behavior. The media will always have an influence over the teen and pop culture; it only begins with the curiosities of teens.