"Hipster" as pejorative.

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most people i know who complain about hipsters are actually complaining about people who are exactly like them moving in on their perceived territory.

― lauren, Friday, 16 March 2007 14:59 (seventeen years ago) link

The original hipsters seem quaint and naive because they were only operating on three levels of irony instead of, like, 100, run in parallel.

Also, due to the nature of contemporary media, an idea transforms from underground to institution in less than 2.3 seconds, so in order to remain cutting-edge, one has to become a douchebag fashionista.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:01 (seventeen years ago) link

i just found a book by Chandler Brossard callled Who Walk in Darkness from 1952,from th flyleaf.."this is a novel about "hipsters" and their girls in ny's greenwich village.here for the first time the new generation of american bohemians are presented in fiction-what is a "hipster"?the name derives from the jazz term "hip" and denotes a person who possesses "superior awareness".the "hipster" sees through the shams of conventional attitudes and morality:he patterns his life on a code of personal freedom which has something in common with that of the French Existentialist.Becaiuse hipsters are much too smart to work,they live by their wits in a kind of underground which lies halfway between neurosis and violence,they drift from tough bars to harlem dance halls,from private dope parties to prize fights,from one love affiar to another."

― danbunny, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh yeah, THAT guy sounds like a winner.

― Laurel, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:10 (seventeen years ago) link

"Because hipsters are much too smart to work, they live despite their wits in a media-saturated fog which lies halfway between neurosis and schizophrenia, and drift from one 'graphic design' job to the next."

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:10 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ginsberg's "angelheaded hipsters." The attitude toward them seems ambivalent, though.

― jaymc, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:15 (seventeen years ago) link

i miss the hepcats :(

http://home.macvaerk.dtu.dk/~lilbaek/images/Hanna_wave.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm not quite sure how to put this, but there's some kind of a nebulous thought spinning around my head that the view of hipsters changed when the idea stopped being about rebellion (i.e. 60's and before) and started to be about jumping on any bandwagon that the media portrayed as "cool". If I can refine what I think I'm on about a bit I will elucidate later, but don't hold your breath, obv.

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:23 (seventeen years ago) link

NEVER BEEN IN A ZOOT SUIT RIOT!

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Ok, so maybe not rebellion in that way, but anti-establishment, at least...

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:27 (seventeen years ago) link

in a small city like i reside in,th appearance of anyone in black frame glasses,band shirt and gf w bangs or funny hat is immediately filed away under "brooklyn hipster",but to me it's a good thing cuz they r th only ones who can truly appreciate my Big Eye Vietnam velvet art or Amon Duul records.Hopefully th true meaning will circle back around to Harlem music hall goers and troublemakers.

― danbunny, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:28 (seventeen years ago) link

I have black frame glasses and am wearing a Miles Davis shirt. Can we be friends?

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:30 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm just glad that the pressure to find at least one black guy willing to join yer ska revival band is off and there are people who will now pay me money for my horrible christian folk rekkerds on ebay.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:31 (seventeen years ago) link

All I'm saying is nice panty lines.

― Laurel, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:33 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.miss604.com/blogging.jpg

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:34 (seventeen years ago) link

scott that picture just made my morning

― gff, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:35 (seventeen years ago) link

peteR

Do you mean the change from 'rebellion' to 'rebellious image'? The change from when people 'walked the walk' (or believed they did. or it was believable they did), to when they 'wore the clothes'? they always wore the clothes of course but, with increased media penetration, 'wearing the clothes' didn't need to stand for anything, other than itself.

Which leads us back to anti-hipsterism as basically being anti-fashion. You might be realer, you might know more, you might be the real deal, but 'that hipster guy' over there looks better, he looks more convincing

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:36 (seventeen years ago) link

James Baldwin had a classic rejoinder to "The White Negro" but I can't find it online anywhere.

― gff, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:36 (seventeen years ago) link

It seems like the term had its initiat heyday in the 50's / early 60's, probably well exemplified by Richard Farinas, Ginsberb and such, and then somehow reappeared pejoratively in the 90's to describe Gen Y / Urban outfitters cliques. So, the question is, did the term disappear in the 70's and 80's?

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:37 (seventeen years ago) link

It went underground. The 70's and 80's were when the word had *real* cred.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:38 (seventeen years ago) link

How come you understand MY BRANE better than I do? That's it, I think: a move from "genuine rebellious image" to "rebellious image laid out for you by fashion houses"; from doing-it-because-you-wanted-to to doing-it-because-you're-told-to; from bucking the trends to following them. Er, or something.

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:42 (seventeen years ago) link

xxxpost, oh dear

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:43 (seventeen years ago) link

In essence, I suppose that when cool hits the mainstream it ceases to be found cool by those who aren't particularly mainstream. Make more sense?

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Right on!

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link

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; whereas previously the media thought of itself as an organ of information for mainstream Americans (even in advertising, products were targeted principally at homeowners, and companies relied on science and reason to make their appeal), suddenly there was this desire to present itself as hip. And since part of what being hip meant was being anti-consumer, the advertising industry started to poke fun at itself, expose the artifice, so that eventually you have Sprite commercials that say, "Don't drink Sprite because we tell you to; be an individual."

― jaymc, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:50 (seventeen years ago) link

lauren's sittin pretty on the clams, daddy-o

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Cut to Ray Winstone: "Don't look at me! I'm not going to tell you what to do!"

OTM, completely.

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:52 (seventeen years ago) link

OMG where did that girl buy the royal blue vintage 40's dress!! (The metal side zipper is the giveaway..) I want that dress! I can never find anything 40's in that color & it's my favorite. (Not that I care for swing dancing and being retro, it's actually because they are simply styled and don't look retro..)

― daria-g, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:00 (seventeen years ago) link

daria my guess is a costume designer made it!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:04 (seventeen years ago) link

i am pro-hipster kickball by the way.

http://www.rachelleb.com/images/2006_04_29/johnny_knoxville_lookalike.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:04 (seventeen years ago) link

my two bosses - both in there 40's - both seem a bit confused with the tag of hipster as pejorative. They seem acutely aware of who/what is being tagged and that it's current usage is typically lobbed at goofball fashionistas with a photoblog...

both were in bands and part of "scenes" (one in Portland, the other Memphis) in the 80's-90's and they recall the term being used seldomly and usually with a vague sense of respect... like the weird dude with the pencil-thin 'stache who played fuzz bass in that one band and lived in an abandoned transmission shop and cooked his meals on a hot plate powered by a car battery.

― will, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:07 (seventeen years ago) link

i think the anti-hipster thing is an age thing too. cuz a lot of the vice magazine crowd seems so young and there is the sneaking suspicion that these are the same people who were rocking those really really dirty and baggy big pants that everyone used to make fun of when they saw them on the kids and "i used to get beat up in high school for listening to amon duul, man!" and that sort of thing. which is just silly cuz gen x hepcats are just as boring and tiresome in their own way with their starsky & hutch opie taylor looking motherfucker ways and means.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:09 (seventeen years ago) link

people just need more harry gibson in their lives.

http://idata.over-blog.com/0/37/49/10/hipster/harry-the-hipster.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:12 (seventeen years ago) link

pictured: Mid-noughties hipsters "playing ball"

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:12 (seventeen years ago) link

i am pro-hipster kickball as well.

― gff, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:18 (seventeen years ago) link

lol at "johnny_knoxville_lookalike.jpg"

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 16:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Fear of Fashion
Fear of Artifice
Fear of Youth

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

I prefer the Duckie generation.

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

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

GenDuckie, as it is commonly known.

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

This guy is straight out of Degrassi High

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

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

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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

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

loving that Kirsten Dunst-swing lapdance photo up there

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

yup, that's right on.

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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