Deconstructing the Hipster


Maynard G. KrebsI was recently invited to an art show opening at a large Soho gallery where a friend’s work was being exhibited. I found most of the paintings, drawings and photographs on display quite interesting, with some exceptions. After a while, I noticed that most of the people surrounding me in the gallery were more interested in sucking down the free caipirnhas and chatting with their friends than enjoying and discussing the art. And it should come as little surprise to many of you that the majority of those chatting away and ignoring the art were hipsters. Yes, that dreaded word.

Hipsters are often reduced by critics to the style of clothes they wear and the type of music they listen to, but that’s only half the story. Hipsters are usually not artists, poets or musicians, but they frequent the right clubs, and wear the right clothes. They are obsessed with fashion fads, drink fads, music fads — all things that the old-school hipsters shunned. The original hipsters of the 40s and 50s listened to jazz, smoked reefers, took peyote in the desert, and wrote poetry about the atom bomb. By the late 60s, being a hippie was just a fashion statement. Many hippie wanabees were under the impression that if you took enough LSD, you could become a real poet. The Bohemian lifestyle was simply another costume one could wear in public. The same thing happened to the punk subculture in the late 70s and early 80s. When people start to lose any sense of individual style and identity, the original terms lose their meanings — which is how ‘beats’ became ‘beatniks’ and Maynard G. Krebs became a household name.

The term ‘beat’ was coined by petty thief and drug addict Herbert Huncke who used the word to describe being down on your luck. To put it another way: you gotta pay your dues before you can sing the blues. It’s no wonder then that Beat Generation icon William S. Burroughs was embarrassed to tell his friends he received a monthy allowance from his family trust fund. Today’s hipsters are often spoiled trust fund kids who are so insecure, they can’t allow themselves to dance at rock shows (sans ecstasy), or even applaud after witnessing a good musical performance. So obsessed are they with being on the cutting edge of style or music, that once the general public embraces a certain band or fashion, it’s ridiculed. For the original hipster, turning people on to what they considered cool was a manifesto. Teenagers in the 60s were excited that The Beatles were not only bending the rules of rock music, but also forcing the ‘establishment’ to pay attention to the restless youth culture around the world.

What motivated me to write this post was a recent Time Out New York cover which read in large black letters: The Hipster Must Die! I was intrigued that such a magazine seemed to be biting the hand that feeds. The first cover article must have been written by someone born in the 80s. How else can one explain using the term “Elvis Costello glasses” to describe those square black plastic frames made famous by Buddy Holly? Such is the problem when a member of the current youth scene tries to look back and deconstruct the history behind their own fad-ridden scene. The inclusion of Kurt Cobain and ‘grunge culture’ is also rather odd. As someone born only a few years before Cobain, I can tell you that wearing long hair, plaid shirts and ripped jeans in High School was anti-fashion, and anti-cool. To quote The Bunny Brains: “Kurt saw the future and it wore designer plaid, and that disgusted him.”

In the Time Out lead article, a real estate broker explains that “the profile of the typical (Lower East Side) renter in the area is changing from the ‘counterculture hipster’ to the ‘more mainstream’ hipster and young professional.” In a series of interviews with old-school hipsters, Stephanie Stone explains that “New York is losing its diversity, all because of the mighty dollar. It’s pretty sad.” Just take a quick walk up and down Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and you will understand why the Polish immigrants in Greenpoint are so angry about the hipster invasion. They have lived in Greenpoint for generations, and now they see rents going up and old businesses closing.

So, can ‘New York Cool’ be saved? Naw. I guess it’s time to move to Buffalo where they have a real alternative art and music scene. Oh, and the hipsters there are actually friendly to everyone, not just those who spend half their paychecks at Urban Outfitters.

Possibly Related Classroom Projects From DonorsChoose.org Powered by Social Actions

Information and Links

Join the fray by commenting, tracking what others have to say, or linking to it from your blog.

Information
June 14th, 2007
Comments
Feeds and Links
Comment Feed
From This Author
Del.icio.us
Digg
Technorati
Categories
Uncategorized

Other Posts
My Dad’s Letters from WW II
Welcome to Fuckin’ Deadwood!

Readers

Shop newcritics

Featured books:


Viewing 10 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Hipsters are really making kewl scene in my locality!.
    • ^
    • v
    Good post. I like the article, Very much appreciated.
    • ^
    • v
    good article and information you've given.
    • ^
    • v
    I live in Buffalo and have to completely disagree with your comment there is a real scene here. There is not a scene here. The hipsters here are so disillusioned there is one they cannot be saved.

    Here's what I have to say about these apathetic individuals known as the hipsters of Buffalo...

    This is an open letter to all the hipsters and quasi-musicians (and other misc. "artists") of Buffalo who are reluctant to grow up and realize it is just not going to happen and those dirty, patchouli smelling hippies are more enjoyable to be around. I planned to make it a little longer, but as of late I have become a fan brevity. Enjoy...

    The most ignorable characteristic of a hipster, they are in denial. Their general idea is to have an unkempt appearance and throw in god awful haircuts, american apparel hoodies, err, I mean sexist-sweatshop hoodies, girl jeans, and then the wannabe just not right 80s hip-hop style sneakers.

    How about their overall music and art taste…let's pick the safe classics and what are those primarily composed of? Absolute and complete crap! I know, after selecting such masterful pieces of dog crap let's post these classics (of course they have to be ranked) on our myriad of blogs and myspace (which leads me to say that most of the hipsters are a bit too old nowadays to be doing such things). Not to mention how everyone just loves you for having such great taste, hell it can even give you some of that hard earned cred you so valiantly achieved. Why is it that no matter what a hipster has listened to band "x" before anyone? It's like they came out of the wound with this pseudo-superior musical taste that just crushes the tastes of anyone within 30 miles of them. I also adore how they will manipulate others into feeling guilty that thinking they're listening to doesn't reach elitist levels. Then we have all the hipsters with a band(knife to wrists), besides the undeniable force your band sounds like shit you somehow are able to carefully combine profound artistic inadequacy and whiney teenage angst.

    What's sad and ironic is that a hipster really doesn't believe they are one. They are so entrapped in their pathetic existence their vision is terribly narrow and dim. A hipster also tends to firmly believe their superior taste goes beyond music into film and art. In fact, so much so they are greater than the artists themselves. Ultimately, what they like parallels their empty insipid existence.

    Lastly, one of the worst traits these parasites seem to share is an inappropriate intensity for any given situation. They seamlessly and effortlessly reject the idea of enjoying themselves and if they unfortunately succeed at it they will make sure everyone around them knows they are having fun in their very own sordid world (remember knife to wrists).

    Speaking of parasites and traits, I almost forgot to mention just how insanely cool it is to starve yourself via veganism/vegetarianism. Yeah, let's blindly follow a trendy form of self-sustenance. I know you cannot help it because it is idiosyncratic with your self-righteousness and complete lack of intellectual rigor.

    So, I'll end here as in hopes the hipsters are reading this and they come to terms with their vast inhuman existence. By the way, any hipster who reads this please pass it along to your hipsters friends so the rest of humanity can stop living in quarantine and breathe a little.

    So I'll end there as in hopes you've had enough and can admit your pretentious, pathetic existence. By the way, I think you should pass this on to your hipsters friends so the rest of humanity can stop living in quarantine.
    • ^
    • v
    i live in buffalo and i can tell you one thing the hipsters are essentail. how else can i find rich kids that think im hot shit and make um give me cigs an bud etc. haha. they are the financers the consumers of art and fashion let the rich pay the poor for the art we produce. thats why the buffalo thing is so small , cuz we broke as a joke, the whole buffalo 66 image. its what feeds us an makes us different
    • ^
    • v
    In the interview with Danny Simmons w/in the same issue of Time Out, he is asked if he is a hipster. Danny is the brother of Russell and he's a working artist. His answer: "I don't see artists as hipsters. Hipsters are the patrons."

    In Buffalo, I haven't meet many people out in "the scene" who also do not contribute in a creative way. The rare hipster, out just to be seen and way too cool to dance, gets called by a different name: "fanboy."
    • ^
    • v
    For "disciplined" in my previous comment, substitute "boring." Nothing like blunting your point...
    • ^
    • v
    I live in Austin. I would be happy to shuffle many of the recent arrivals here off to Buffalo, even though I know that Buffalo does not deserve such treatment.
    I think what you're describing is really the same phenomenon as people moving to LA or DC--they see what they think is an exciting lifestyle and are attracted to that for its own sake. The dedication to the actual work itself that characterizes, to take just some examples, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Harry Reid, and Lou Reed, is alien to scenesters. But every scene attracts them.
    It's sort of an inversion of Flaubert's famous statement about being disciplined in your life so that you can be outrageous in your art. They just flip that idea on its head.
    • ^
    • v
    Well, as one who was living in the East Village at the time of its 80s incarnation, I recall very well the articles about the galleries being part of the gentrification process starting up, and the overall loss of innocence, like a paradise lost scenario occured at the same moment constructing paradise did. But it has always been a very fleeting instance that the cultural movements and scenes are an actual scene, and not transitioning from something to something else. Your Beat analogy for example, the issue wasn't Burroughs money, his cool factor came by a kind of analogy to his own class refusal, as a kind of self-search in the form of Junky and so on. But not to get writing here on all that. Kerouac was doing Steve Allen shows as well, and trying his best to explain this new American voice...
    I always think there is a moment you are part of something and a moment you aren't. It's like looking at photos documenting super cool vintage punk bands, only from a few months earlier than their classic shots, and there, the same very cool punk bands had metal shags, and certainly other values than that "punk". And so on. I think what you refer to is the artworld, and then all other scenes. And NYC.
    What would be of value, if one does need to ask why social relations and the arts gets so packaged and tagged, is a more precise syntax. A "hipster" vs a "scenester", and so on. Warhol knew what to do with the differences, as few did since, except maybe in the music world.
    • ^
    • v
    Well hip hop fashion had been really popular, mostly the designs of these clothes come from some printed drawings and the applied to shirts.
 

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus