Compare and contrast ideas of youth culture in Merchants of Cool and No Logo chapter 3

In the last decade, corporations and the youth culture have merged to deal with the same thing. The Merchants of Cool and No Logo both agree that corporations have conquered the youth culture in determining cool. The one vital difference between these two facets of society is where they come from and what they represent. The youth culture is determined by what is “cool” in a period of time, that cool thing being off the mainstream. The Merchants of Cool show that teenagers will go as far as rage rock, music with shocking lyrics that allows the rebellious teens to point the middle finger at mainstream, feeling they need to ensure their authenticity. Teens hope that by engaging in something that the rest of society finds repelling, they can escape the “giant feedback loop”. The feedback loop is a tool for corporations to reach their aim by copying the teenage life-style, then selling it back to them making as much profit as possible. By attempting cultural resistance by avoiding mainstream, teens show that they try to oppose the corporation’s marketing strategies that limit their freedom in expression, but fail because of the way society is centered around media, which influences teens at all times. No Logo describes the Woodstock festival of 1996, where media tried to sell “the mood” that should remind of the original Woodstock, by selling all sorts of merchandise. This, again, shows how corporations take the image of 1970s teenagers that are now considered cool, and sell it to modern teens. The fact that the cool was sold using the feedback loop, contradicts the idea of the personal freedom that was experienced at the first festival. Youth culture originates from the natural individuality that teens get as they approach adulthood, which corporations exploit in trying to control the trend of the changing “cool”.

Corporations, through their marketing and advertisement, have an uncontrollable power over the trends that teens think are theirs and therefore follow. The Merchants of Cool and No Logo, through explaining the youth culture and their relationship to corporations seeking teens as a target group, agree that even though kids try to rebel, their activity is sponsored and sold back to them, with a force (supported by media), against which teens are powerless. However, the sources disagree when discussing where the youth culture gets its always changing cool from. In The Merchants of Cool it says that the new trend is spread by 20% of the teens (trend-setters), who influence their friends to wear a certain style of clothing or listen to a particular type of music. These trends are discovered by “cool-hunters” employed by corporations. This would allow “cool” to originate from any region or cultural background, just that 20% of the teen population would have major role in identifying what exactly the youth culture is. No Logo, on the other hand, believes that all “cool” comes from the ghetto of the African-American population, whose style, attitude, and imagery is then taken from corporations such as Nike and Hilfiger with a system called “bro-ing” to then sell it to the large market group of the middle class teen. The Merchant of Cool’s view on where cool originates allows there to be a greater diversity and therefore more possibilities for alternative trends, than No Logo’s belief that everything that is deemed as “ghetto” automatically becomes cool. Regardless of the origin, both texts explain that whatever this teenage phenomenon may be at the moment, corporations will grasp it and, against the teen’s will, make profit out of their culture.