Corporations Want Your Kids
You may think of them as cute, adorable little people. At other times, you probably think of them as nefarious, treacherous trolls. To corporate America, teens represent a vast and wealthy market. Major compani...
Evaluating Culture: High and Low and in Between
The Lascaux cave paintings were discovered by accident in 1940, and since then new discoveries have been pushing the dates of humanity's first art ever further backward.In 1994, explorers in France discovered e...
From Blind Consumption to Informed Engagement
Catwoman was one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2004. Tens of millions of dollars were spent hiring Halle Berry, designing her sexy costumes and the film's elaborate sets, and promoting the film to en...
Investigating Teens, Pop Culture and Spirituality
In an age of Matrix movies and Harry Potter books, it doesn't take a sociologist to prove that spiritual themes and images appear frequently in popular movies, TV shows and music.So how do teens deal with the s...
Ragged Rock: From Emo to Screamo
If it's even remotely possible to talk about laws of rock music, these might be two:1. In their never-ending quest to express themselves in meaningful musical forms (and to drive the adults in their lives crazy...
Saving Kids from ‘Nature-Deficit Disorder’
When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the setting was a beautiful outdoor location on top of a mountain. When Jesus delivered His Sermon on the Mount, He chose a beautiful outdoor mountainside location wher...
Toddlers Tuning In
At home, at school, at church and even in the car, kids are tuning in to visual entertainment— their eyes and ears glued to DVDs or videos, TV shows and video games. In recent years, they've been tun...
The Sexual Revolution Continues
If you're looking for signals and signposts showing how mixed up many people are about the subject of sex, one good place to look is ABC's "Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People," which is one of...
Remembering MTV
Few of us were up watching TV after midnight, August 1, 1981, to witness the debut of a newfangled cable channel called MTV; but before long, most of us were watching and talking about this visually stunning, r...
Kids for Sale: Corporate Consumerism and Its Primary Target
In your better moments, you may view young people as the future of the church; but for some of America's largest corporations, young people are little more than an irresistible target market."The Merchants...