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
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