The June issue of Gentlemen’s Quarterly features the new
Ketel One Vodka ads, models in white linen suits, and recommendations for parted
haircuts and colorful socks with ravens (the latter I already owned). Such
visuals adduce the temps of summer are now upon us. Thus, I have been prompted
to expand my analysis of the hipster just in time for summer backyard soirees,
the sixty-ninth anniversary of the Zoot Suit Riots, and for the unveiling of
the new American Apparel khaki short for men (brace yourselves, gentlemen: the
thigh is back).
Like modernism,
tracing the origin and terminus of la
hipster is directly proportional to the version one is interested in
exploring or perpetuating. There are many hipster-doms in the temporal realm of
modern life and each inhabits a different spatial relation to mainstream
culture. A postcolonial-structuralist read on the hipster might take John
Leland’s approach and equate all ‘hip’ movements with one hundred years of West
African semantics and designations of a counter-culture in urban America. For
this read, Leland’s hip: a history does
a fantastic job. A poststructuralist rumination on power and subject formation
a la Foucault might find great material in beginning a search for the American
hipster in US policies on the home-front during the world wars. The beats and
Hollywood would figure prominently in such a read, as well as McCarthyism and a
nation’s egocentric need to define itself (relative to other nation-states)
through gender and self-fashioning.
In my own work, hipster
is a phenomena best reached and exegeted by the Frankfurt School’s
neo-Marxist contemplation of the ways in which media coverage of world events
become integrated into human systems and then performed through culture. As
such, the avant-garde responds immediately to the mainstream and vice versa,
creating a cycle of visually-performative feedback. In this essay, the era of
the hipster –as I define it – is coterminous with media coverage of the release
of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and the continued broadcast of the events
of September 11, 2001. Television shows
like “Freaks and Geeks,” “Saved by the Bell,” “Felicity,” “Daria,” “Celebrity
Death Match,” and “Doug” proved just as integral to the hipster-subjectivity as
films like Titanic. Monica and
Brandy’s wistful, half-hearted throw-down in “The Boy is Mine” typified the
half-hearted attempt of hipsters to embrace even fights over a good man by a
good woman. Furthermore, while I would not go so far as to proclaim that the
hipster is dead, I would say that, in my estimation, the hipster is now in its
second or third generation, and should be called la hipster ironica. Like the writers of the beat generation who
were either dead, drunk, or living in California as part of the San Francisco
renaissance (and hip to new thrills and new politics) by the time On the Road was published in 1957
(leaving the mean streets of NYC to their black-stocking and beret-wearing
“beat-nik” siblings) the original late twentieth-century hipsters have joined
their brothers and sisters in the land of Bobos[1]
In my recent
article-cum-post-cum rant, “The Hipster, the Popinjay, the Dandy, the Aesthete,”
I proffered that the hipster was the younger sibling of the late
twentieth-century grunge set for whom ‘authenticity’ became the asset to be cherished.
Viscerally affected by the media representations of major world events (i.e.
the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mandela’s release, the Clintons leaving Air Force
One hand in hand post Lewinsky, 9/11), the hipster became a twice-removed, doubled
reflection of the times: a strange ekphrastic representation of the televised image
of the sublime. Unlike their grandparents who witnessed the broadcast of the
atomic bomb and whom, in the words of John McClellon Holmes, became beat “face[s] which could only be deemed
criminal through an enormous effort at righteousness […] Bright, level,
realistic, challenging,”[2] the hipster hid all of
his/her angst and questioning within a disaffected, devil-may-care intellectual
façade, chanting, I shall not want or
rather, I shall not show that I want. The
hipster of today-‘ the ironic hipster’ – is equally effected by media representations
of events; however, WiFi and broadband have made this stimulation constant,
with little time for digestion or comparison. The irony of the age of the
ironic hipster is that dis-affection for the latter generation stems more from
a physical inability to process rather than a sense of distrust. How can one
trust anything that is not explained, that moves too fast to even purport
itself as truth?
What connects these
two or three generations of the hipster are there inability to fathom utopian
harmonies. From their birth, the hipster has never experienced peace-time
activity, and, as such, remains a product of the postmodern sensibilities of
anti-truth and declension narratives. Wars and rumors of wars abound—domestic,
international, and broadband. The V-neck-tee-wearing, scrawny (but toned) man
who collects soul records, the grown woman who looks like a twelve-year old boy
with just as much vitriol against the world, the beefy, tatted flannel-draped personage,
with the smartphone and the bangs, and the beard are all typologies and
material emblems of a yearning for a “good ole days” that never existed. The
hipster is a mirage, a visualization which calls into question the very notion
of a future worth investing in or sticking around for. Even the bringing back of the horn-rimmed and
black plastic eyewear of the Fifties and Sixties reflects the centrality of
distorted visions of reality to the movement. Or, put another way (as my friend
Matthew attests) the hipster has been disaffected so long that dis-affectation
has circled into an emotion all its own.
Enclaves such as Bushwick,
Williamsburg, Providence, Silver Lake, Portland, and the Red Line of Chicago
attest that for the first time in sartorial history, hipsters of either
generation equal a collective that draw little excitement in consuming (and
buying) into the bourgeois class but
prefer, rather, to sculpt out of the
commodities privilege has denounced an effigy, or false god, to whom they can
belong. Using their own bodies as the canvas onto which tattoos, hair, and
cosmetic accessories can be collaged and inked, the hipster’s life is a form of
critique of the ‘real’ of the culture industry. What is real? What is true? Nothing. So then, what is the narrative?
Everything is sooo meta! Opinionated ennui is the religion of the hipster
because boredom and distrust prove authentic in their constructed-ness. Opinion
for the hipster is sacrosanct as fact cannot be trusted and may not exist but
affect (no matter how misguided) is, at least, part of one’s subjecthood, and
therefore, tactile and inherently critique-able. While a hipster will not
sanction a friend for having the wrong opinion, they will curl their lips and
sneer if a person has no opinion.
Baudrillard’s
“Simulacra and Simulation” can be used here as a lens through which the
hipster’s negotiation of urban life becomes plain. As Baudrillard attests, "The simulacrum [system of signs] is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true." In other words, the hipster is composed of a system of both interrelated and non-correlative signs that simulate both the inaccuracy and the nonexistence of truth, rather than the beat generation, or the lost generation of the Twenties, which merely responded to the idea of truth's non-substantative veracity with malaise. Thus, to be a 'hipster' is to be a visual system of reverse ekphrasis (vis-a-vis Heffernan): a representation in image of a mimetic language of truth which does not exist.
Adorno and
Horkheimer’s formulation of the cultural industry proves central to the hipster
project in the era of irony. The cultural industry has both led young, urban
professionals astray while simultaneously commodifying their image for profit. The
current (or new) hipster functions as its own sign with its own non-correlative
significations to person, place or thing. At this new form of existentialism,
living with mirror-images of the self, hipsters have become a market catered to
by Urban Outfitters, Target, Spencer’s, and the ilk. Instead of “like finding
like” and the lived necessity of such affected pastichios of secondhand and first-rate equipage, tout le monde can don the hipster
‘look.’ Advertisements seem to suggest that one is either part of the
mainstream or a hipster. Yet, in the twenty-first century, twenty-somethings in
either group are marketed to. The hipster is no longer a subculture. The
hipster has become acculturated, discussed, named. Renato Poggioli anticipates
this shift in his The Theory of the
Avant-Garde arguing that it is a natural stage in the capitalist system for
the fringe subculture to become dominant. Thus, when n+1 and the culture cognoscenti of the blogosphere declare ‘ the
hipster is dead’ they do not mean that no one is making their own beer any
longer, or tattooing themselves with needles or passing a wasteland of old meat
packing plants turned lofts and boarded-up warehouses on their McLaren on way
to work , but rather that the hipster now has a sense of itself, that once a
subculture finds a name and a poster-child, it is over…Can someone today move
to Brooklyn, grow a beard, start politicking for a city-wide ordinance on
composting without a sense of self-critical irony? At least asking themselves
how I ‘fit’ into this mode? Probably not. When the hipster became a ‘thing’ it
ceased being an Other and became a lifestyle that people could buy – a sign with significations beyond
itself, meaning nothing.
Americans can now
“buy into” the hipster mode, allowing access to the aesthetic regardless of
locale and income. Such product placement has forced hipster to commit suicide
via the hemlock of successful marketing. Herein lies the pardox: for if the
hipster is not authentic, he or she is nothing. So if the hipster is dead,
finished off during 9/11, or the shunning of Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars, or the end of Daria on MTV, who can lay claim to
authenticity: the now late-thirtysomething original hipster who has a job, a
few kids, and a 401k and has moved to the suburbs for the best Montessori
schools or the twentysomethings who buy their fake gold from American Apparel
(rather than the bodega on 4th Avenue between NYU and Chinatown)? Thus,
the tautology of L’art pour l’art
must be true. For the hipster, art certainly cannot be for anything, or anyone
else. Life, then, does not imitate art but rather constructs new forms of art,
new urban vocabularies from the detritus and secondhand flannels of those who
were supposed to protect the young. Self-fashioning, then, becomes the
anti-affair. Like the Futurists, hipsters are under no illusion of illusion. A
hipster might take forever at his toilet but still emerge looking tired. He
hopes others recognize the ruse. This is why so many hipsters embrace
bisexuality, resisting the categorization of identity politics for as long as
possible, and refuse to hold down a meaningful, monogamous relationship. When
one is under no illusion that there is nothing and no one to trust, how does
one love?
Etymologically, both the late twentieth-century hipster and
the ironic hipster are strange hybrids of the Ivy-League ‘beat’ of the Fifties,
and the Kent State ‘hippie’ of the Sixties. They are well-educated, haute bourgeois, and politically active
to the point of activism or opinionated disaffectation. One could argue that
the hipster would be nowhere if it were not for Wikipedia, independent film,
Prada loafers, and the FIFA World Cup. Hipsters would rather be anywhere than here, are more at home in languages they
do not speak, and in climates of extremes rather than the comfy cubicles of
Wall Street. And while hipsters can be dandies, and some even border on
aesthetes, hipsters will not claim the label of hipster. It is redundant, and
no one cared enough the first time, so why repeat the sentiment?
How can one ‘recognize’ a hipster if the species does not
proclaim itself? Websites such as “My Hipster Kitchen,” “Hipster Puppies,”
“Such a F*cking Hipster,” and memes like “Hipster Ariel” can help. The
following post by Dana A on 17 February 2010 on the tumblr site,
hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com can help us.[4]
rambo's appreciation for the music of r. kelly rapidly evolved from "ironic" to "genuine" to "not at all"
In this instance, disaffection has turned on itself. If we
were to diagram the evolution, it might look something like:
A * B = C àD
àE
Rambo * R. Kelly’s
music = Irony/Scoff/Disaffect àAffect àNon-existence
In which Rambo’s consideration of R. Kelly’s music causes
him ironic nonchalance that grows to actual, genuine emotion toward, which then
becomes disaffect once more. In verbal terms, such a transference might
resemble this imaginary exchange:
A = Rambo
B = the subject of R. Kelly’s music brought up in
conversation by various frenemies:
C = (Rambo): “Dude, what? C’mon. Really? I mean, sure, if we
look at “Trapped in the closet as a metaphor for our time, right?, then, maybe…”
D = (Rambo): “Dude, shut the fuck up, I love this shit. It’s
nutrageous. Been loving it since he appeared in that Aaliyah video, ‘Age Ain’t
Nuthin’ But a Number’”
E = (Rambo): “Wha?? Oh, I’m
sooo over it.”
So let us recount: In the hipster, there is always a bit of
the disappointment….life is shitty, people and things will disappoint, images
and news are updated too fast to be digested so why care? Empathy hurts too
much, why not apathy? A hipster’s irony is the modern dilemma transmogrified
from cultural entertainment into affect. To be hipster (now) is to be unable to
live without any sort of assurance or code of authenticity…the hipster brain
cannot cooperate with the hands or the heart…nothing is without an audience…the
hipster has an internal audience… the subject formation of the hipster is
always meta…there is always a camera watching…always an internet stream
In closing, allow me to pontificate upon a sartorial choice
that leads me to wonder. When did the tank top become a thing? Did I miss out?
Was there a Vogue article I missed,
proclaiming the skinny tank for men comme
il faut? As my friend Matthew and I pondered this, we pointed to MTV’s
reality-television program, “The Jersey Shore” as a probable culprit. Since I
was a child, a week during the summer was spent in Wildwood, NJ, home of one of
the longest boardwalks in the world, the Dragon rollercoaster, the Atlantic
Bookstore, and the middle-class, beer-bellied dude’s tank top. In this
environment, the tank top was the opposite of the farmer’s tan, for the arms
and the neck were fully bared to the raise of the sun and the stars. In solid
colors such as white or black, or with Guns-n-Roses and pirate emblems, the
tank top was the ultimate in anti-white collar wear. “The Jersey Shore” brought
the tank top to the national stage, proudly by characters like The Situation,
Vinny, and Pauly D showing off the tripartite rigors of their modish program:
1) gym, 2) tan, 3) laundry. In their large, moisturized hands, the tank top
went from trashy to ironic parody, from de
rigeur to haute couture, and now,
you can buy semi-respectable, polychrome arm-bearing tanks at Target and
Nordstrom. While middle-class petit bourgeois
tastes have long driven the modes of production and consumption, why must the
ironic hipster embrace such a symbol of anti-elitist-kitsch? Is it the ultimate
in ironic parody? Is it solidarity with the 99%? Is it merely out of comfort in
the summer heat?
If Nietzsche gives us the Apollonian and Dionysian dialectic
of aesthetics, then this current trend of the hipster draws from Daniel
Albright’s formulation of a postmodern relation between Apollo and Marysas: “an
“overdetermination and overemphasis, which may in turn lead to a kind of
ironizing, which may in turn lead to the disaffiliation of the very arts that
are trying to cooperate.”[5]
And while I would not advocate that anyone flay their rival alive, laying their
entrails bare to the elements (as Apollo does to the satyr, Marysas), I would
argue that the tank top might, in some ways, symbolize the demise of even this
current mode of hipster-dom,, or, at least a reorganization of the way fashion
trickles down. If this is the case, then the hipster, in all its forms, truly
has revolutionized American thought and style…An interesting idea indeed.
[1]
See David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise: The
New Upper Class and How They Got There
[2]
Holmes, “This is the Beat Generation.”
[3]
Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulation.” Emphasis mine.
[4]
Once again, I am indebted to Matthew Lukens for sharing his knowledge.
[5]
Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent:
Modernism in Music, Literature, and the Other Arts.
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