My take is that big companies don't drive secular culture - they follow it. Big companies are incredibly conservative - in the sense that they don't change, they don't take risks, they keep doing what they were doing that seemed to work.

Of course, there is resistance to the commercial machine. FRONTLINE takes viewers to downtown Detroit, where media analyst Rushkoff speaks with teens at a concert by the Detroit-based Insane Clown Posse, purveyors of a genre of music that's become known as "rage rock." When asked to describe what appeals to them about such music, the teens invariably respond that it belongs to them; it hasn't yet been taken and sold back to them at the mall. Full of profanity, violence, and misogyny, rage rock is literally a challenge thrown up to marketers: just try to market this!

But marketers have accepted the challenge: rage rock is now big business. Not only has Insane Clown Posse become mainstream, but much bigger acts like Eminem and Limp Bizkit are breaking sales records and winning industry accolades in the form of Grammy nominations and other mainstream music awards.

In "The Merchants of Cool," correspondent Rushkoff details how MTV and other huge commercial outlets orchestrated the rise of Limp Bizkit--despite the group's objectionable lyrics--and then relentlessly promoted them on-air.

But in doing so, critics ask, is MTV truly reflecting the desires of today's teenagers, or are they stoking a cultural infatuation with music and imagery that glorifies violence and sex as well as antisocial behavior and attitudes?

In today's media-saturated environment, such questions, it seems, are becoming increasingly difficult to answer.

"It's one enclosed feedback loop," Rushkoff says. "Kids' culture and media culture are now one and the same, and it becomes impossible to tell which came first--the anger or the marketing of the anger."