To understand contemporary hipsterdom, one must first understand
the maelstrom of righteous fury directed at this classification of beardy youths
and thirty somethings. Implicit in most uses of the H word is a litany of observations and clichés. For example the
hipster’s pretentious dismissal of all culture known to man, their shabby but
expensive and meticulously constructed wardrobe, their incomprehensible dietary
needs etc. These trendy extraterrestrials may lack the human concepts of sincerity
or empathy; they appear to live in amniotic wombs of self-satisfied irony and sarcasm. This
mixture of temperaments branded as “snark”, is often their preferred dialect in
communication, both face-to-face and online. But are these actual qualities
shared by the contemporary hipster? And are there deeper roots
to this seemingly universal contempt?
One answer has to do with the hipster’s amoeba-like sponging
of a wide range of cultures and customs that transcend time and meaning. The
issue here is that the hipsters lack the cultural capital to appropriate these ideas. They
are appropriating elements in a vacuum not contextualized by history or
prevailing social constructs. Moreover the intended meaning of these appropriated objects is often walled behind several feet of reinforced irony. Hipsterdom can be understood as a creature that consumes the meaningful cultures of others and excretes them as easily commodified fashion items, like a Duchampian human centipede.
The pace of this process only accelerates with technology.
The second and perhaps more meaningful problem has to to with class and race. The modern image of a hipster is largely homogenized,
white, and upper-middleclass. While hipsters classily espouse progressive
political beliefs, ironically, Hipster culture as a whole has lead to less
pluralistic communities (*no citation whatsoever).
The influx of well-educated, often wealthy, white, young people has accelerated
gentrification in urban centers and brought with it the societal mixed bag of
consequences that goes along with it. Simply put, the distain for the hipster is
closely tied to the heightened tensions in this country swirling around income
disparity and race.
All this being said, we still far away from defining what a
hipster actually is. The more one looks for a concrete definition, the more
nebulous the category becomes:
When did this particular
strain of contemporary hipsterisim
start?
Who is definitely included?
Who should definitely be excluded?
How does one differentiate between a hipster’s ironic detachment and the ironic detachment that comes to many as a natural phase adolescence?
What does alternative
mean? (Does it have to do with tattoos?)
etc.
In order to fend off some of these endless questions I’ve found it useful
to bisect the modern Hipster movement into two distinct categories; High Hipster
and Low Hipster, and attack each head
of this convoluted Cerberus separately.
I would define Low
Hipster as a highly localized, underground
subset of youth culture. The young people in this group often exist on the
fringes of their communities’ prevailing social norms. Their shabby fashion
sensibility is most often the result of a lower middle class or suburban upbringing.
Low Hipster perhaps shares the most
in common with its bohemian namesake and is most often tangentially attached to
artistic endeavor, especially music. See New Wave in the late seventies or Grunge
in the late eighties. High Hipster by
contrast, is a more recent invention. Characterized by the paradoxically high-end
shabbiness of the socially conscious consumer. The result is the phenomenon
known as trendiness. While High and low hipster often intermingle, low
represents the subset of arty weirdoes that have remained more or less constant
since the counterculture movement in the late fifties. High hipster by contrast
is a temporary marketing strategy used to sell a de-fanged version of the
aesthetic to whoever wants it.
So then where does this leave our definition of the
contemporary hipster? Let’s break it down into some known quantities:
The group is made up of discerning youngish people with
highly individualized cultural preferences, which are mostly arrived at by
consensus. Many hipsters are hipsters only by indictment rather than
self-identification.They view themselves as soothsayers of modern culture, having
been granted the ultimate powers of Judgment (possibly by a half Kim Deal, half
Morrissey centaur in a magical forest).
They are disproportionately white, unisex, well educated and
massed in conventionally low-income urban areas. This dramatic shifting in
populations hastens the spread of gentrification and fairly-traded Quinoa. Like medieval Internet Monks they labor in
darkened coffee engaged in a Sisyphean struggle to uncover ever-more obscure curiosities.
When they discover a sparkling nugget of obscure coolness they must guard it
from the mainstream, lest their local
artisanal winery/lesbian-knitting emporium goes commercial. Paradoxically, it
is actually possible for something to be so uncool culturally, as too
ironically re-enter the hipster vortex and become cool once more.
Part Two, Cool Stuff:
For those who are still confused I highly recommend consulting http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ the definitive guide for understanding the strange and incongruous universe of hipsterdom.
Now to the ever-reliable La Blogotheque for some intense
music by a very beardy man:
And on to Angel Olsen preforming for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk
Concert:
Obligatory hipster anthem:
The Decembrists grappling with trendiness and mainstream
success:
Finally perhaps one of the most influential indie rock
groups of all time:
Moving on to some movie stuff. These are some filmmakers
that are relevant to defining a contemporary hipster esthetic.
Firstly a conversation with Shane Carruth an indie filmmaker:
Also CASTELLO CAVALCANTI a commercial directed by Wes
Anderson for obvious reasons:
A forceful trailer from Nicolas Winding Refns’s most recent
film Only God Forgives, Refns’s work,
especially in Drive defines
alternative contemporary esthetics in filmmaking:
And Finishing up with some animation by Don Hertzfeldt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMsyOowMaEY
