Nickel and Dimed

The author, Barbara Ehrenreich, makes a compelling argument in the introduction of the book. Her goal is to determine whether a single female worker can survive in the workforce on minimum wage. She will not use government aide including welfare, or other programs geared toward the underclass. I believe that her experiment will show many people the reality that there are people living in poverty that can barely make it by on minimum wage.

The author will also implement a number of rules throughout her experiment. She will only take the cheapest housing possible, she will only take the highest paying jobs, she will always have a car, and she will never fall back on her education in order to obtain a job. She tries to stick to these rules to the best of her ability. But there are some circumstances where she may be forced to break them. For instance, if she thinks she may go hungry one night she will use her ATM card to buy food. Or she will never allow herself to live in her car.

Now that we have covered the basics of her experiment let’s move on to the actual experiment. Her first experiment had taken place in Florida. She was to become a waitress at the restaurant called Hearthside. She works from 2:00 until 10:00 and made $2.43 an hour plus tips. There she begins to understand the theme of companionship. She befriends another server named Gail who watches out for her. But this is also where she breaks one of her rules. She uses other languages to greet guests that she learned in college. This brings her tips but risks exposing her cover.

While at the restaurant she learns or the resentment the servers and cooks have toward the managers. She finds out how the workers used to like the managers, before they were managers, but the title meant they gave up the care toward the worker and adopted a care toward the corporation. This can be seen on Page 23 in the book where the author talks about a mandatory meeting where the managers lay down many new rules which the workers don’t take to very well.

The Hearthside is also where she met many new people who are living the same situations that she is experimenting. She meets people like Billy a cook, a busboy named Timmy, and a Haitian immigrant named Claude who, lives in a crowded apartment with his girlfriend.

The next restaurant she goes is Jerry’s, because “Jerry’s attracts more customers than the gloomy old Hearthside. Here she meets a 19 year old Czech immigrant named George who has only been in America for one week. The author begins to bond with him and makes it her goal to try and teach him how to speak English.
In order to cut the cost of gas she moves out of her apartment and into trailer number 46 at the Overseas Trailer Park. The trailer is 8 feet in width and is shaped like a barbell inside. The place is not close to and supermarket but is across the street from a liquor store.

I believe she is doing a great job. So far she has been able to survive and try and help other people out. Hopefully she will be able to keep this up for the rest of the book.

The Merchants of Cool

1. What is “cool hunting” and how is it done? What theories and methods of media research are the “cool hunters” using?
Cool hunting is the search for a certain type of personality that is considered “cool” by the teenage population. It is done by gathering information on what will “sell” in the market at the time. “Cool hunters” use a variety of methods including surveys, focus groups, and the usual case study.

2. According to the commentators in the video, why do television, music, and fashion corporations want to understand how teenagers think and what they want?
Because the media only wants to know what will sell. The teenage generation is a $50 billion a year business for the media. So the big corporations including; News Corp, Viacom, Disney, Universal, and AOL will do whatever it takes to find out what the teens want.

3. How do MTV executives and other programming and marketing decision-makers characterize their relationship to teen culture? Do they say they are creating or reflecting teen culture?
The market executives claim that they are only reflecting the teen culture. I believe that they are creating the culture. The businesses like MTV choose which bands will be listened to and which will be silently killed. So in a sense the corporations are making the same culture they are trying so desperately to be a part of.

4.what is the difference between marketing research and human research, according to the commentators in the video? What are the goals of each?
Marketing research is research for the sole purpose of finding out what will sell to a certain group of people while human research is research where the companies figure out what the people want as individuals. The goals of each are to determine what will sell to the people that the company is focused on.

5. Who is giving the most accurate description of the relationship between teen culture and commercialization, the “merchants of cool” or their critics? What role are these institutions playing in the socialization process? Argue for one of these two positions using specific points and examples from the movie.
I believe that the critics give the better view of the relationship between the two factors. The merchants claim that they are only mirroring the teen culture while the critics say that they are creating the culture entirely. For example, most of the music you listen to on the radio is produced by a major record label. The only bands that are not are the ones who make their claim to fame underground. So the corporations are deciding which items should and should not be listened to by the mainstream teen culture.