"Hipster" as pejorative.

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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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

otm.

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

otm otm.

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

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

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

Del Close to thread!

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

How to Speak Hip

endless fun

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

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 (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

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

hahahahhaha

Did I mention hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

</former ska revival band member>

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

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

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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

ie:::Fashion

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

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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 (seventeen years ago) link

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

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

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