catapult magazine

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Media

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mwooten
Jan 18 2003
07:14 am

Yes, I agree at many levels, but what concerns me is this spirit of “victim” with which we approach these issues. And while I do believe that some truly are victims in our society (children, the powerless etc) I don’t think that this is a helpful posture to begin looking towards renewal.

I too have seen the merhants of cool and I don’t hear a language of creation/creativity throughout the investigation in the doc. Instead, I saw an industry that looked for what was happening at small levels and then cannibalized it. What I am saying is that I believe the big adv/media firms are very desperate but far from creative. What they are instead is poweful. They own every big outlet by which a certain message can be passed out. This is a major part of the problem.

The short history of this thing has proved over and over though that the power can still lie with the creative. And, I don’t think that the consumer is as predictable as the adv/media would like to think. For example, no one in a million years would have placed Norah Jones on the top of the charts for 8 months. Or no one at Viacom ever ever could have predicted what happend in Seattle in the late 80’s. But what the firms did do was latch on to what was already happening and then exploit it until it died. And Viacom didn’t create Boy or Girl Bands. They have been around since Motown and the Jackson Five. But they did identify that kids between the ages of 12 and 18 have a lot of money to spend.

My point is simply that things will never change in a free eeconomic society until the people decide to redirect their money. And here is where the problem lies…our money speaks for us, and it indicates what we value, and our value have been shaped outside of a community of faith but instead in the world. But only because we have allowed this to happen.