"Hipster" as pejorative.

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Fear of Fashion
Fear of Artifice
Fear of Youth

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:20 (nineteen years ago)

the only "generation" i actually approve of is the Foghat generation. people 5 or 10 years older than me. too young to really be considered boomers. too old to be gen x. no irony. just badass. all the girls wanted hair like linda blair. all the boys wanted camaros. so, mid 70's to early 80's u.s. teendom? that's where my heart is. everyone else is so lame in comparison. including myself, so, you know, don't sue.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

I prefer the Duckie generation.

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/8762/pg/one/six.jpg

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:26 (nineteen years ago)

GenDuckie, as it is commonly known.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:26 (nineteen years ago)

This guy is straight out of Degrassi High

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/8/8668910_14195694c9.jpg?v=0

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:29 (nineteen years ago)

i watched pretty in pink again recently. duckie is fucking annoying. no wonder andi ran off with blaine.

― lauren, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:30 (nineteen years ago)

they're all fucking annoying. No anthony michael hall, no credibility.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:31 (nineteen years ago)

loving that Kirsten Dunst-swing lapdance photo up there

― milo z, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:31 (nineteen years ago)

this guy pegs duckie correctly, i think, as kind of scary.

"Cryer exposes something rancorous within himself that frightens us innocent moviegoers. I wouldn't want to be there when Duckie finally detonates."

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:38 (nineteen years ago)

you can see duckie detonate every week on two & a half men! i never miss an episode. plus, on that show you get 80's yin/yang with the awesome cryer/sheen tag-team.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:41 (nineteen years ago)

yup, that's right on.

― lauren, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:41 (nineteen years ago)

In The Conquest of Cool, Tom Frank writes about a time, in the late 60s and early 70s, when the media began to co-opt notions of cool and hipsterism

yeah I was gonna say The Baffler elucidated a lot of the consumer discernment-as-nonconformity shift. Haven't read CofC.
Re: 90's, kind of interesting that Kramer on Seinfeld was still working under the old definition of hipsterism, which was spelled out occasionally. Jobless, rummaging, philandering, distracted conspiracist cobbling a comfortable life from the margins(fwiw his best scenes involve him trying to approximate a 'square' ala Alfred Pennypacker et al). Seinfeld himself can't be accused of 'hipness' so one wouldn't expect him to update the hipster template but I think it might point to the fact that the old stuff was pretty much still in the air, to the extent that it was around at all in the mainstream, at least up to the mid-90's.

― tremendoid, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:05 (nineteen years ago)

Key Text:

http://girljukebox.typepad.com/sugartown/images/blossomdearie__1.jpg

"Oh man, do you believe that chick? She has got no idea what's happening, no idea. I am the one who's plugged in around here. That's why they call me The High Priestess of Cool! Ha ha!

I'm hip. I'm no square.
I'm alert, I'm awake, I'm aware.
I am always on the scene.
Makin' the rounds, diggin' the sounds.
I read Playboy Magazine.
'Cuz I'm hip.

Like, dig! I'm in step.
When it was hip to be hep, I was hep.
I don't blow but I'm a fan.
Look at me swing. Ring a ding ding.
I even call my girlfriend "man,"
I'm so hip.

Every Saturday night
with my suit buttoned tight and my suedes on
I'm gettin' my kicks
diggin' arty French flicks with my shades on.

I'm too much. I'm a gas.
I am anything but middle class.
When I hang around the band,
poppin' my thumbs, diggin' the drums,
sqaures don't seem to understand
why I flip. They're not hip like I'm hip.

I'm hip!
i'm alive, i enjoy any joint where there's jive

I'm on top of every trend.
Look at me go. Vo-dee-o-do.
Bobby Darren knew my friend.

I'm hip, but not weird.
Like, you notice, I don't wear a beard.
Beards were in but now they're out.
They had they're day. Now they're passé.
Just ask me if you're in doubt,
'cuz I'm hip.

Now I'm deep into Zen
meditation and macrobiotics,
and as soon as I can
I intend to get into narcotics.

'Cuz I'm cool as a cuke.
I'm a cat, I'm a card, I'm a kook.
I get so much out of life.
Really, I do. Skoo ba dee boo.
One more time play "Mack the Knife."
Let 'er rip. I may flip, but I'm hip.

― jed_, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:07 (nineteen years ago)

all the girls wanted hair like linda blair. all the boys wanted camaros"...upstate ny is rife w this riff raff..and i love it

― danbunny, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:11 (nineteen years ago)

MUMMY: I wish there was somebody somewhere who wasn't afraid of me. Oh,
well. Watch what happens when I walk up to somebody.
<dit-dit-dit-dit-dit> I'm a mummy.
BEATNIK: That's cool.
MUMMY: I'm a mummy.
BEATNIK: You mean you're a mother.
MUMMY: No, I'm a mummy.
BEATNIK: I'm a beatnik.
MUMMY: People are afraid of me.
BEATNIK: Yeah, I'll bet.
MUMMY: I was born one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine years ago.
BEATNIK: Oh, yeah, like, that's a long gig.
MUMMY: Where can I buy a copy of "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb"?
BEATNIK: Oooh, man, I don't dig that trash. You know like Brubeck,
Sherwin, Modern Jazz Quartet?
MUMMY: I'm a mummy.
BEATNIK: Man, you got a warped groove.
MUMMY: Aren't you afraid of me? Aren't you gonna scream?
BEATNIK: Oh, yeah, like, "help."

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:17 (nineteen years ago)

I judge people more harshly if they use "hipster" derogatorily. They obviously have some inadequacy issues I don't want to deal with.

― Yerac, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:19 (nineteen years ago)

otm.

― lauren, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:26 (nineteen years ago)

otm otm.

― s1ocki, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:31 (nineteen years ago)

also lauren's "moving in on their territory" comment is very very true.

― s1ocki, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:32 (nineteen years ago)

I say this all while sitting in Williamsburg not working, eating my trader joe's beef jerky and having a drink before going to my guitar lesson.

― Yerac, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:34 (nineteen years ago)

Del Close to thread!

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:35 (nineteen years ago)

How to Speak Hip

endless fun

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:35 (nineteen years ago)

love that old nichols & may routine where they parody hepcat poetry. "Kools! Kools! Smoke Kools!" riffing on advertising and hipsterism in 1959! if i hadn't been such a fan of The Mechanical Bride (which came out in 1951) before i came upon the Baffler i probably would have been more impressed by thomas frank. he can be good in a you have been lied to preaching to the converted kinda way.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:44 (nineteen years ago)

i'm just glad that the pressure to find at least one black guy willing to join yer ska revival band is off

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

hahahahhaha

Did I mention hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

</former ska revival band member>

― nickalicious, Friday, 16 March 2007 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

'hepcat' was really good at finding those guys. uncanny.

― tremendoid, Friday, 16 March 2007 18:21 (nineteen years ago)

We should draw a distinction between 50s beat/Mailerian hipsterism and the postmodern Letterman-esque version, which is a kind of channel-flipping detachment from all surrounding events and people. I'm not sure that the two share a direct line of evolution.

― fife, Friday, 16 March 2007 18:43 (nineteen years ago)

Somebody said that Mailer's hipster is more a figment of his imagination, or something he tried to will into being: a kind of violent but sly crook lurking in urban environments which he contrasted with beatniks, who are fairly mild middle-class dropouts. If Freud had replaced Marx in the 50s intelligentsia, hipsters were his bolsheviks, the murderous revolutionaries of the psyche as opposed to the menshevik bohemian-liberals.

― fife, Friday, 16 March 2007 18:53 (nineteen years ago)

i haven't read this thread but "hipsters", to me, are kids who are trying too hard. there's a difference between being hip and being a hipster.

― chicago kevin, Friday, 16 March 2007 18:54 (nineteen years ago)

They try 'too hard' because they care what they look like

ie:::Fashion

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 19:38 (nineteen years ago)

Nah. You can care what you look like without caring how young/trendy it is. You can wear nice, pressed shirts and keep your shoes shined. That's not a hipster.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 19:39 (nineteen years ago)

My friend was born with a white eyebrow...everyone accuses her of trying too hard. With a genetic eyebrow deal.

― Abbott, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:18 (nineteen years ago)

i know someone who has eyebrows that curl up at the ends giving him a look similar to a demon or pixie or sprite or something with pointy curly eyebrows.

― chicago kevin, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:20 (nineteen years ago)

I guess there's a subtle line between dressing young and trendy and feeling the need to put on a costume before you leave the house. And you can sense the latter. Maybe it's a personality issue more than a fashion issue? You can look cool as hell and still look unpretentious.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:39 (nineteen years ago)

can people just not use the phrase "trying too hard" anymore

― s1ocki, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:41 (nineteen years ago)

You're pushin' too hard, uh-pushin' on me
You're pushin' too hard, uh-what you want me to be
You're pushin' too hard about the things you say
You're pushin' too hard every night and day

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:44 (nineteen years ago)

ya! people should just sing that instead.

― s1ocki, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:44 (nineteen years ago)

― chaki, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:44 (nineteen years ago)

I hate that phrase too, slocki.

― Abbott, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:45 (nineteen years ago)

No i think theres a sense here that people are looking down on people who care about fashion, rather than wearing some good clothes. In a way that others care about music, rather than just having some good cds

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

ie: subtext:people shouldn't spend too much time thinking about their outfits

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:13 (nineteen years ago)

What hipster didn't start out overdoing it and then mellowing out? You should see pics of me in HS. Like sitting in giant piles of peers in a puppy pal evolved into sitting alone on a barstool w/a gimlet.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/igotabeefpastry/papes.jpg

Actually this is the closest I ever got to 'trying too hard' (and it should actually go on the secret goth shame thredd):

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/igotabeefpastry/BIGHEAD.jpg

Vainglorious me.

― Abbott, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:14 (nineteen years ago)

subtext: people should stop dressing funny

― milo z, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:17 (nineteen years ago)

"You can care what you look like without caring how young/trendy it is. You can wear nice, pressed shirts and keep your shoes shined. That's not a hipster."

it's not really fashion either, is it? i mean i'm sure you look good but you're missing the point.

― jed_, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:20 (nineteen years ago)

"can people just not use the phrase "trying too hard" anymore"

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=30843

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:22 (nineteen years ago)

I like when people dress funny, like the old woman I saw dressed like an anthropology prof. w/the flowy dress & billion turquoise necklaces...paired w/neon orange chuck taylors. i like the kids who dress too much, they add some levity to my world.

― Abbott, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:23 (nineteen years ago)

I like the sartorialist a ton but it everyone dressed like that what a dry world it would be. I'd rather eat ice than look at Vice, tho.

― Abbott, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:24 (nineteen years ago)

can people just not use the phrase "trying too hard" anymore

i'll stop saying it when i stop seeing it. restraint is key, rarely is anything any good when it's over the top.

― chicago kevin, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

But what attitude does it imply beyond dress sense and musical taste?

― fife, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:36 (nineteen years ago)

Slocky OTM. In my experience, the phrase "trying too hard" is generally employed by self-conscious killjoys.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 16 March 2007 21:38 (nineteen years ago)

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