Yawn…what is a hipster, anyway?

Hipsterism is fun

Hipster is brown seaweed floating inert in the crystalline wall of a breaking wave. By refusing to arch and foam with the leading edge it can be simultaneously part of the undertow and the tube; responsible for the vanguard and a part of the past. After the wave breaks it bounces and rushes to the shore.

Hipster as a term has been corrupted by the same vanities that created it: It is used as an insult, it is confused and cross-bred with terms like “emo” and “scenester”. I was recently told that, “all the hipsters are dead. There are only scenesters now.” In the same breath this individual seemed to lament the loss of an “authentic” movement and despise that same movement for being identifiable. In the context of the conversation, hipster meant original and scenester meant copy; Hipster meant vintage tee-shirt, while scenester meant store-bought reproduction. The distinction is worthless because in any movement there are pretenders. There is no authenticity of that kind.

Like most identities in the post-modern United States, being a hipster isn’t exactly something to take pride in. It isn’t usually something we “claim”. However, hipsterism has identifiable characteristics that get tangled in the constant need for Unitedstatesians to be individuals. Much like the attendees of Woodstock increased over time, so will the number of people who say they “used to be a hipster”.

Hipster, scenester, emo, these are all stripes in the same plaid; they are all chipsters off the old blockster. I’ve settled on the term hipsterism as a way to describe a generation, not because it is without other connotations and complexities, but because the term is already a throw back to “hippie”. As with the hippie, the term hipster is distorted and re-appropriated. That is, it is specifically the ambiguity and controversy surrounding the term hipster that makes it powerful and worth discussing. Eventually, hipster will have a static meaning, which will also be a distortion of the truth.

In a television interview, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones said that he had to pretend to be on both sides of the Mods and Rockers divide during the 60’s.(1) In order to escape getting beaten up he had to tread the line between the two gangs. Our reality is somewhere between the cheap terms we use to describe ourselves. Since the 60’s, physical violence has dissipated, but the battle rages on in style, music, art, and politics. Hipster is knowing “no man who bothers about originality will ever be original” (2) and still bothering about it anyway.

Hipsterism, as I am defining it, has many identifiable characteristics. Here are a few:

1. A resolution to salvage many of the disposable, ugly, or campy trends from any time period. This component arises out of the necessity created by recession and an aesthetic appreciation for all things “retro”. A sixty year-old antique collector, particularly one who flaunts their appreciation for out-of-date style, is a less deliberate hipster, but exhibits hipster tendencies. The hipster ideal would be finding an Eames chair in a dumpster and bringing it home. The usual would be buying and Eames chair and saying you found it in a dumpster.

2. A broader definition and use of irony. It is perhaps not a new idea to poke fun at previous generations, but annoying your parents by growing a moustache from the nineteenth century is somewhat novel, because you have to go shopping at CVS with a curlicue moustache. It is, perhaps, out of simultaneous embarrassment and nostaligia for the eighties and early nineties that the invention of amplified irony emerges. For example, you still love Alf so you wear the t-shirt “to be funny”. You might also play “Informer” by Snow at a party “to be funny”.

3. Hipster Humor includes acute self-deprecation, amplified irony, and lovable oddball characters. “Napoleon Dynamite” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” are perhaps the most easily recognized as hipster. Nonetheless, without dark comedies like “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1995) newer hipster comedies might not have been successful.

As a nation America is already polarized.  We are a part of hipster and in order to control how we are understood in the future we must define the term now.  Will it be limited to tight jeans, 80′s skater hair and crazy mustaches, or will it include a sense of humor, musical taste, literary objectives, and new social patterns?

(1)  Top Gear Season 10, Episode 3

(2)  C.S. Lewis

Let me know where you stand.  Take my poll:

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