In “The Merchants of Cool,” the author investigates the rising fascination with teen pop culture. Teenagers are constantly vying for attention, causing them to imitate popular celebrities. Major corporations try to capitalize off this, showing productions and advertisements to influence them further. The era of family friendly programming has no longer any place in primetime television; shows such as Dawson’s Creek and Cruel Intentions have completely infiltrated the TV schedule to reflect teens’ all-consuming fascination with sexuality. One of the major networks responsible for influencing pop culture is MTV, telling kids what’s cool.
The younger generation think that is what they should do since that is what they see on TV and the internet. Divinecaroline.com state “Reality shows have become very popular and teens have begun to realize that you can become famous just by being a bad girl, teen mom, or a crazy party animal who likes to do nothing but drink and “smush,” like the cast members on Jersey Shore.” Shows like this are giving teens the wrong idea. Why should the cast be paid so much for setting a bad example? This country is supposed to be looked up to as a great clean country. With shows like this on air for the world to see it is a disgrace.
Many alcohol advertisements are placed in different types of media that are popular among adolescent.” They spend billions of dollars in developing an advertisement to capture the publics’ eye, especially the young adolescents. The alcohol industry target a specific group mainly teenagers, but they don’t realize is that all of the colorful effects, the music, and the atmosphere of fun and excitement makes the teenagers want to take a shot or two. At John Hopkins University made a estimate, “the likely effects of several alcohol policies on youth drinking behavior in the U.S. population concluded that a complete ban on alcohol advertising would be the most effective, resulting in 7,609 fewer deaths from harmful drinking and a 16.4% drop in alcohol-related life-years lost.” Banning alcohol commercials can affect the life of young adolescents and adults by not having the influence or the temptation in front of you will decrease the amount of drinking in teens. Commercials have a lot of power over a person’s judgment persuading them to act like different
Ads in today’s society are not that ethical. They are trying to sell their product to everyone not just to a specific type of people or race. Sources | Title, URL, and Date of Access|Central Idea| Advertisements targets, affects teens, http://www.waterloo.k12.ia.us/schoolsites/thespectator/advertising-targets-affects-teens , 6/21/14 | The main idea of the article is to tell about all the reasons of why ads affect teens. Ads show new “luxury” items that are a must have for everyday teens.| Teens ads http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/article.aspx?articleid=14465&title=teens-will-listen-to-other-teens-in-ads 6/21/14| The main idea of this article is to show you how much other teens will listen to ads. How many use social media and the internet.
The film writers, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, supposedly based this film loosely on their personal experiences during their own awkward teenage years. Though I’m not sure how true this actually is, the film is excellently written. There is sensitivity in superbad that other teen movies such as American Pie don’t achieve, this gives the film heart. This is also the main reason that Superbad works so well, it gets away with being immature and crude by using well-written and well-acted parts to create a sense of vulnerability and loveable geeky awkwardness in the three main characters, who constantly attempt to appear cool and confident, particularly around their high school crushes, desperately fabricating stories, with hilarious
Anyone who was positive in the movie they tried to hurt or they killed them off. Young minorities are faced with theses images everyday from music videos on down to television shows and I feel that it was an awful depiction of black culture. I do feel that the movie is detrimental and can taint a young urban minorities mind; it could lead young men and women to idolize criminal lifestyle. When Goldie refers to himself as a “hero” I could almost imagine what is going on in a young teenager’s mind. Their probably thinking the movie was great or they want to sell drugs, be a player or pimp just like him without seeing the truth.
Therefore unlike the Daily Mail, which delights in demonising teenagers, The Observer encourages people to “try a little love instead”. Indeed if everyone tried a “little love” it would not only support teenagers but it would encourage them to behave and to well at school which would ultimately make them more successful. In conclusion the representation of teenagers in the media is completely unfair and wrong. I believe that we should all give teenagers more support and less criticism, including the Daily Mail. Being a teenager is a very difficult process as your body dramatically changes and you are subject to over-whelming hormones.
Twenge states, “To many older people, it’s funny. But too many younger people the main consumers of the reality shows on, say, MTV it shapes their views of the world” (pg 7). Narcissism is shown often, and without hesitation on reality TV younger viewers are being conditioned by the depiction of narcissism. Slowly, the excess amount of narcissism seems normal. For instance, on “America’s Next Top Model” young viewers wish to be thin, tall, and overall a model, but go about it in the wrong ways.
Despite the films comedic tendencies and its simplified subject matter, it manages to provide some interesting insight into high schools social pyramid. It helps illustrate how difficult it is to resist being popular when everyone in society is so invested and unwilling to change it. People can lose themselves when they just accept what everyone else believes to be ‘worthy’ of social acceptance. This movie preaches the judgments that are rolling off teenagers tongues and out in the open where it can hurt someone. As a society we are incapable of accepting that we are all unique and different, but we need to just accept
They have made bad decisions in their life and they are getting publicity out of it. Is this really the type of thing that you want your child to be looking up at? Seeing these popular movies, television and teen icons influences us to think that it is cool to be pregnant at a young age. The media is influencing us too much, we follow whatever the "trend" is and we don't think for ourselves. Casual naked people dancing around, thin and built models, and teen pregnancy is subconsciously affecting us to think all of this is okay.