Debbie Does America

In our recent discussions on how pop culture has changed (or hasn't), I neglected to point out how much the financial ascendancy of America's youth has done for movies, books and television. Over the last 50 years, entertainment marketing has become a science, as Tad Friend discovered in a very insightful and somewhat depressing recent New Yorker piece. And that science is primarily concerned with getting young people into theaters, buying music, and even reading books.

I mentioned Harry Potter, and it says a lot about the last half-century that the biggest bestsellers have been essentially children's books that are entertaining enough for adults. That seems to be the overriding theme in pop culture marketing: aim for the adolescents, grab some adults if you can. Adolescents are the most easily amused, the least informed about what has come before (so it's easier to recycle things like, say, The Pink Panther), and the most willing to part with discretionary income. If the film, literature and music of the past seemed more mature than the present, it may well have been so in many cases, as much of it was not aimed for the most part at teenagers.

For an entertaining and wholly cynical dissection of the horrific effects of youth marketing, read Frank Zappa's "Debbie Speech," as it encapsulates the dangers inherent in marketing so heavily to any one demographic. But it's inevitable as long as money is involved, because it's the job of business to generate the most capital with the least amount of risk. Again, the lowest common denominator is always the safest bet.

So, my original thesis being that people and culture really haven't changed all that much, I would like to amend it to say that the financing and marketing of popular culture has been sharpened to a rusty, jagged point. Up next: The Industry of Cool.