Corporations fabricated archetypes glorifying violence and sexuality to sell to teens

Evidence

Marketers were no longer developing advertising campaigns. Rather, they were fashioning a youth culture as the vehicle for their commercial purposes. The prototypic male model in this culture was a crude, angry “mook” who glorified violence. The female model was a libidinous “mid-riff” who flaunted her sexuality. In commenting on the merchandizing of this seamy, dumbed-down teenage counterculture, the consulting producer Douglas Rushkoff asked, “So is there anywhere the commercial machine won’t go? Is it leaving any room for kids to create a culture of their own?” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1001

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘mook’ and ‘mid-riff’ as two manufactured teenage archetypes.
• XREF: Links to the moral disengagement thesis: media that glorifies violent male and sexualized female models normalizes those behaviors.