At Least Three Reasons to Care about Hipsters
tim a (among other commenters on Peter’s post from last night) asks the sort of question that deserves to be answered:
I love the seriousness of so much of this blog (including some Suderman contributions), but have no idea why any serious person (including myself) would be engaging this conversation….
We truly are at a world-historical moment that’s been building for generations. Who the hell cares who’s a “legit hipster?”
Obviously there are two questions here, the question of “Why should the hipster matter to me?” and that of “Why don’t we stick to the serious questions and ‘helpful’ analysis and skip the insidery, esoteric cultural stuff?” If you don’t think the first question is even worth asking, I urge you to skip to my answer to the second. If you don’t think the second is worth asking, check out commenter c.t.h’s spot-on answer to the first:
it boils down to a question of where a generation of educated, privileged, creative class sorts of people are ending up. As a group, those who wind up being hipsters tend to have a good deal of opportunity, so if hipsterism is a kind of psychological/cultural zombie state (suggested by the Time Out New York article, and the Adbusters article from a couple years ago “Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization”) then there is a vast amount of potential being wasted.
I’d add that, for better or for worse, “hipster” seems to be the dominant archetype/stereotype for this generation. It’s not mainstream, but neither was “hippie” or “punk” or “greaser” or “grunge,” all of which enjoy outsized significance in our collective memory. Years from now, when high school student councils declare the Tuesday before Homecoming “00’s Day” and tell everyone to dress up accordingly, the boys will wear skinny ties and skinny jeans and the girls will wear tunics, leggings and Uggs. They will have gotten mixed up about the Uggs, but the only teacher with the chutzpah to make a comment to this effect will be greeted with a class-wide hush and the wide-eyed question: “Miz Gould, were you a…hipster…back then?” The answer will not matter then either, but the question will endure, only the verb tense changing.
But it’s c.t.h.‘s point that’s more important to my answer to the second question, which speaks more to the implicit critique of anything that doesn’t seem important to this “world-historical moment” than it does to anything in particular about Peter’s post or tim’s response.
Those of us who routinely write about “culture,” including cultural ephemera, do so exactly because we’re trying to figure out what (if anything) its impact will be on wider society and the way we live our own lives. Culture routinely has a more immediate impact on us than politics does, but it’s often harder to pin that impact down because it’s more subtle and variable (which also means that people are more likely to disagree on what’s important based on where they live, who they interact with, etc.) It’s a vicious cycle, to a certain extent: when no one is aggressive in calling attention to something in culture and explaining what its significance is, people get progressively more resistant to the idea that anything cultural is really that lasting or important — because they certainly can’t see what its significance could be!
Just as newspaper or magazine columnists (or even bloggers, though I find the column to be a more analogous form than the post) take the events of the last week or two and try to ask themselves “What is important here? What might it mean for the future? What should we do next?”, cultural critics—the ones I like and respect most, at least—are examining each contemporary moment for the narratives that actually define our age and who we are in it. It’s a process somewhere between doing a puzzle and panning for gold. This is why, for example, Tom Wolfe (one of this blog’s secular patron saints) has succeeded so well, and while David Brooks seems to generate conversations in the blogosphere more consistently than any other New York Times columnist. Everyone loves to hate newspaper “trend pieces,” but they often end up talking about them around the proverbial water cooler anyway — because “trend pieces” hint at significance, and even sometimes try to address it, but they’re rarely well enough sourced or thought through to do a decent job of it.
And, in fairness, it is incredibly hard to do well. When I wrote for Culture11, I’m sure that I was responsible for a few of the pieces tim a. thought were “garbage” because of their “attempted ‘hipsterness.” But they weren’t aspiring to “hipsterness” at all. Far from it! I was trying to explain these phenomena in a way that didn’t exclude people who’d never heard of them, but held insights even those who were more familiar wouldn’t have thought of before. I don’t mind being called out for my (numerous) errors of execution. Using consumer products to read the national zeitgeist is generally a tall order.
But it’s also a tall order to, say, use a series of posts over the course of years to articulate a dystopian theory of the “pink police state,” or perform an autopsy of local journalism — to name just two of the grand endeavors contributors to this blog have taken on. We wouldn’t do these things if we didn’t think there was something worth finding there. “Seriousness” should be about the purpose to which we’re putting a metaphorical microscope, and the rigor of the examination, not the specimen in the slide under the metal clips.
I was just out with a friend from DC, and after a large amounts of texting with some of her still in DC friends, we confirmed that there are few hipsters in DC because all of the potential hipsters are ‘crusties’ or DIY self-righteous punk rockers. My argument stands.
The thing about C11 that is relevant here was that, from my view, a lot of it devolved into, and I used the term not as an insult, ‘grad school bullsh*t.’ I can understand someone over 40 confusing ‘grad school bullsh*t’ with ‘hipsterdom’, but they are radically different items. The latter can namedrop Zizek in a shallow but comforting way; the former wants to get you into a corner at the party, away from all the cool kids dancing and drinks, and explain to you just how some random philosopher you couldn’t care less about has already shown that all of everything is wrong in every such way…
— Rortybomb · Apr 16, 08:29 AM · #
I just wanted to say — this post is the shit.
Also, I think I need a TAS “grand endeavor”. Besides, you know, pissing off the commenters.
— PEG · Apr 16, 10:43 AM · #
“it boils down to a question of where a generation of educated, privileged, creative class sorts of people are ending up. As a group, those who wind up being hipsters tend to have a good deal of opportunity, so if hipsterism is a kind of psychological/cultural zombie state (suggested by the Time Out New York article, and the Adbusters article from a couple years ago “Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization”) then there is a vast amount of potential being wasted.”
I guess the reason I have trouble taking any of this very serious is that I remember the exact same thing being written about my generation; Generation X (see also Linkletter’s “Slackers”) We were the first generation that wasn’t going to live as well as our parents, we moved back with our folks after college, we wore funny clothes (I don’t remember what the were, but undoubtable this was written by someone.)
Then after all the worrying, my generation completely transformed the world by inventing and exploiting the World Wide Web.
The clothes change, the music changes, the script doesn’t; or at least that one doesn’t.
I think a critique of Culture11 without discussion of the finances is next to worthless.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 16, 11:17 AM · #
where a generation of educated, privileged, creative class sorts of people are ending up.
Give me a break. You know where hipsters will “end up?” The same place as everybody else: worrying about mortgages, marriages, kids, health, death and significance.
Oh, but past is prologue! The road! A whole generation of creative types! Free time!
Believe me, this too shall pass. When you look back on this in thirty years, you’ll ruefully shake your head and think “ah, youth.”
— JA · Apr 16, 12:58 PM · #
Yikes, my comment sounded far less tongue-in-cheek read back than written late at night, sorry. I agree that PEG needs a grand endeavor – but it’ll come naturally.
Tony, I think some of the anxiety about the hipster stuff is this generation is worried about not getting it’s own grand projcet, other than sitting out the Great Recession. I hope not though.
— Rortybomb · Apr 16, 01:28 PM · #
Et tu Rortybomb? — “this generation is worried”?
Seriously, guys, think about it. In every generation, the chaff shows up before the wheat. We shoul stop worrying about the former, who will soon be canalized into their proper places, and instead try to find when, where and how the latter will appear.
— JA · Apr 16, 01:55 PM · #
Et tu Rortybomb?
Ha! Yes, a lot in fact. Actually, I’d like to see Dara, if she makes this a larger project, use more explicit Bourdieu-ian language and methods. “The Hipster Habitus” would be a good piece of short-form journalism.
— Rortybomb · Apr 16, 02:19 PM · #
“Tony, I think some of the anxiety about the hipster stuff is this generation is worried about not getting it’s own grand project, other than sitting out the Great Recession. I hope not though.”
A couple of things:
Between Soilent Green as a grade schooler and graduating HS in a very depressed post-logging economy collapse town my expectations for the future were decidedly downbeat. In fact, I’ve wondered if in some strange way that didn’t help me along. My two bandmates from HS went to Yale. I don’t know if I would have gotten into Yale, but my grades/SATs were on par so probably I could have gotten into somewhere name brand, but it seemed like “What’s the point? I’m just going to end up waiting table anyway.” So I went to state school and studied what I wanted to study.
I think that maybe trying to have a Grand Project is sort like tying to make Important Art. The first meaningful communication I had with my wife (to be) was “Have you tried this Linx program? It seems pretty cool.”
I got my first small glimpse at my own artistic gift (such as it is) after nearly a decade as working professional. I was asked to make a short memorial video for Dina Shore and surprised myself by making something that made me and everyone else cry happy-sad tears. It took another ten years to really find my voice.
The last generation that had to sit out hard times had their patience rewarded by getting the chance to defeat fascism. Significance indeed!
— Tony Comstock · Apr 16, 02:57 PM · #
The question, Rortybomb, is whether a damn good novel — to say nothing of a great American novel — can be written about The Hipster Habitus. If the answer is no, there really is something qualitatively more ‘worried’ — and worrisome — about Hipsteria than ephemeral youth niche identities of yore.
— James · Apr 16, 03:01 PM · #
James,
I take it you didn’t like “All the Sad Young Literary Men”? :) There’s also Eggers and the McSweeney crew, Benjamin Kunkel, maybe Foster Wallace, maybe Chris Ware…
— rortybomb · Apr 16, 03:11 PM · #
This is totally grad school BS in my opinion, or magazine BS, as in “I have to think of some topic for an article that will be current and says something about profound about the world we live in. I know: hipsters!”
Youth identity movements are to culture as acne is to adolescence. Something that happens over and over again every generation is an example of basic human development, not of unique forces bubbling up within the culture. Maybe we are getting confused by the youth movment of the sixties which COINCIDED with deep forces bubbling up within the culture such as the civil rights movment and wide-spread prosperity and a demographic bulge, but the youth culture surfed on top of that upwelling of cultural forces, they didn’t cause nor were they caused by the upwelling. That would be like saying beatnicks invented jazz. Or that jazz invented beatnicks.
Of course every youth identity movment would lkie to believe they ar something the sun has never seen before and are super important and will change the world with their tattoos and racoon coats and straw boaters and gay friendly attitudes. But that is just the egotism and anxiety of youth.
In my opinion.
— cw · Apr 16, 03:34 PM · #
James: Right, your comment to rortybomb is exactly the sort of thing I am also wondering.
Tony: Your comment about the generation of the 30’s rewarded with the opportunity to defeat fascism highlights my set of worries, because the flip side is also true: the generation of young Germans whose bottled up anger provided the energy, if not the engine, for the fascists. It goes both ways. I agree with everyone who is suspicious of egocentrically inflating the dangers of our own times over the past. We are not likely the last of humanity. However, I am not at all convinced that a: it is impossible for a generation as a whole to genuinely fail to do the right thing (whether viewed through the lens of history or morality), or b: that such a generation couldn’t appear under our noses.
— c.t.h. · Apr 16, 04:32 PM · #
What if you’ve actually read Zizek and you like grad school?
— Freddie · Apr 16, 05:07 PM · #
I’m with you c.t.h; I don’t take the profound peace and prosperity in which I’ve lived my life for granted. Things can and do get bad, sometimes quite awful, with warning signs that are only clear after the fact.
At the risk of harping on it, and recognizing that there’s no way for me to really convey this without sounding histrionic, I really do think my outlook was warped by the cultural and economic chaos of the seventies. My father was a doctor, until I was 16 we lived a block from the beach in one of the most affluent districts in the world. And although my father didn’t make “doctor” money, he still made plenty and we never wanted for anything.
None the less, by the time I was starting to chart my own course in any real way (college, apprenticeships) I didn’t see how I was ever going to be able to own a new car, much less a house or be able to provide for a family. I don’t mean I didn’t see how I was going to be able to do that as as artist — I didn’t see how I was going to be able to do it at all; and my own feelings were echoed by the popular press of the day (All that gen x shit.)
Skip forward another 5-10 years and my wife and I were in New York in the thick of the tech boom. Perhaps I’ve (unintentionly) intimated that we made our fortune in that boom; in early and cashed out in time. That’s not the case; we simply did fine. We were able to buy property and start a family. But you know what I remember most about those boom years? I remember walking around New York, which was now safe and clean, instead of the dirty dangerous New York I used to visit; I remember being a playgrounds in Jersey suburbs that had new jungle gym and swings; I remember going into schools and seeing they had plenty of band instruments and text books and all sorts of other goodies: and I remember thinking, “Maybe this is real life. Maybe what I grew up with was an odd detour or eddy. Maybe this is how life is going to be from here on out. I hope so, that would sure be nice.”
Well since then we’ve had the tech crash, 9/11, real estate boom and bust, and an international monetary crisis; plus some industry specific or personal crisis that inside of my frame of reference are at least as terrifying as jets as missiles.
Is it anxiety provoking? You bet! I’ve had what I can only surmise is a stress-provoked ringing in my ears for the last month, plus my usual gastro-intestinal response that I picked up after a particularly wrenching trip to Sub-Saharan Africa. What can one say except It has been one hell of a decade!
So why the trip down memory lane? Well partly because chatting on the internet seems to lesson the ringing (except when it makes it worse.) But also because I remember being 22 and being discouraged about what held for me, and I’m old enough now that I want to things like “Your circumstances are not special, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not special, or that you don’t have something special to offer the world. And if you just keep at it, life will probably turn out a lot better than anything you’ve ever dreamed of.”
That probably veers way too far into the therapeutic culture that is the subject of such derision around here, but fuck it. I don’t care. I’ve got a house and kids and a minivan; I’ve earned the right to offer platitudes and encouragement now and then; even when their not wanted.
Also, this essay is very good. In fact, I think it’s the best thing I’ve read so far this year. The long and short is I don’t think we have to worry about the rise of fascism, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to worry:
Social Collapse Best Practice
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html
Like I said in another thread, I keep a bluewater capable boat, mostly for pleasure, but also as a hedge against black swan scenarios.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 16, 05:13 PM · #
“Like I said in another thread, I keep a bluewater capable boat, mostly for pleasure, but also as a hedge against black swan scenarios.”
I’ve got a hollow tooth filled with soothing fantasies.
— cw · Apr 16, 05:37 PM · #
tony: thanks for the link. And you make an excellent practical point about living well in good and bad times. What your earlier comment gave me was the opportunity to address the more cavalier responses that seem presumptuous at best, which I did not make clear.
— c.t.h. · Apr 16, 07:11 PM · #
“What your earlier comment gave me was the opportunity to address the more cavalier responses that seem presumptuous at best, which I did not make clear.”
c.h.t., it seemed clear enough to me what you were responding to; and I for one appreciate the thought.
Most people only ever buy the insurance they’re sold, and no one wants to think of themselves as either chicken little or the boy who cried wolf. One of my greatest fears is of looking foolish, but it hasn’t helped me a one bit.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 17, 04:02 PM · #
So, possibly this thread is dead now, but I’d note that I really don’t think any of those novelists listed Did It. I’d also add that this whole subject is NOT grad school bs insofar as anyone younger than Kunkel, for instance, HAS to acknowledge the weirdness that is hipsterdom — whereas Kunkel (for instance) is busy acknowledging in his own novel, well, the Cold War.
— James · Apr 18, 03:00 AM · #
Is hipsters any wierder than punks or oscar wilde style dandys or goths or mods or the trad jazz guys or any of the zillions of other identity groups formed over the past mine zillion years? I think not, my young friend, I think not.
— cw · Apr 18, 04:36 PM · #