I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
- Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1956)
The passage quoted above was how the father of the beat generation described the inhabitants of the bohemian scene of his day in a manner so condensed that only a poet could produce it. It took Kerouac and Burroughs full length novels to expound on this simple summation.
The emergence of hipsters can be traced back to the rise of the urban metropolis. Cosmopolitan London and Paris in the late-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries with their quaint coffee shops which apart from spawning revolutions produced dandy writers like Charles Baudelaire who elevated aesthetics to a living religion. It was he who coined the term modernity to depict the fleeting, ephemeral quality of life in an urban setting and made it the artist's role to capture its essence.
In the 1920s, with prohibition in the United States stifling artistic types, the poetry of jazz moved from New Orleans to France. It is this world that Woody Allen's film "Midnight in Paris" seeks to bring to life. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, Salvador Dali and T. S. Elliot are some of the characters that populate the Jazz Age of Paris after WWI whom his fictional character Gil played by Owen Wilson meets as he travels back in time. Even then, nostalgia during the early twentieth century for the period known as the Belle Epoque era of the late nineteenth century was in full swing as depicted in the scene with Marion Cotillard.
Don her with a Nirvana T-shirt and replace "Belle Epoque" for "The Dream of the Nineties" as per the opening skit of the show Portlandia (shown below) and she sounds exactly like the kids of today wistful for an idealized period in the past that they wish they had been born into.
The word hipster which actually comes from the 1940s referred to aficionados of jazz, bepop in particular, who adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician which included any or all of the following: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic humor, self-imposed poverty and relaxed sexual codes.
From Greenwich Village to the Haight-Ashbury district, beatniks of the 50s spawned hippie culture of the 60s which took its focus on sexual liberation and drug use to all new highs (and lows). We can talk about the punk era of the 70s or the independent scene of the mid-80s and 90s, and how this led to the hipsters of today who have replaced those emo scene kids of the noughties (whom I found absolutely adorable: whenever I would see them out and about, I just felt like cradling them in my arms so that I could say, "You know everything's gonna be alright.") waxing nostalgic for those earlier times.
Don her with a Nirvana T-shirt and replace "Belle Epoque" for "The Dream of the Nineties" as per the opening skit of the show Portlandia (shown below) and she sounds exactly like the kids of today wistful for an idealized period in the past that they wish they had been born into.
The word hipster which actually comes from the 1940s referred to aficionados of jazz, bepop in particular, who adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician which included any or all of the following: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic humor, self-imposed poverty and relaxed sexual codes.
From Greenwich Village to the Haight-Ashbury district, beatniks of the 50s spawned hippie culture of the 60s which took its focus on sexual liberation and drug use to all new highs (and lows). We can talk about the punk era of the 70s or the independent scene of the mid-80s and 90s, and how this led to the hipsters of today who have replaced those emo scene kids of the noughties (whom I found absolutely adorable: whenever I would see them out and about, I just felt like cradling them in my arms so that I could say, "You know everything's gonna be alright.") waxing nostalgic for those earlier times.
They do so by reading NME, a publication from Britain which was staple reading of those into Brit-pop and Brit-rock during that seminal period. One way of explaining this new-found affection among American hipsters is to say that it took about twenty years for British tastes to make its way across the pond.
But first thing's first: let's define what we mean by the word "hipster" in today's colloquial. Is it a disdain for anything mainstream, whether this be in music, thinking, diet, fashion? Probably all of the above. Even something as mundane as what kind of coffee bean you roast, whether fair trade or not, signifies a lot to a hipster. Obscurantism and quirkiness: it brings to mind a funny quip from a novel I read, "Something for Nothing", which is about a freshly minted economist from Columbia seeking to land a tenured position.
He said that in the real world, success was measured by how many people read your work, but in the world of academia, success was determined by how few people read and understood it. The same can be said of success in the hipster world. Success can be measured in the same terms: the more obscure one's musical tastes and preferences are, the better as that quote from "High Fidelity" about musical snobbery revealed (see the clip below).
But first thing's first: let's define what we mean by the word "hipster" in today's colloquial. Is it a disdain for anything mainstream, whether this be in music, thinking, diet, fashion? Probably all of the above. Even something as mundane as what kind of coffee bean you roast, whether fair trade or not, signifies a lot to a hipster. Obscurantism and quirkiness: it brings to mind a funny quip from a novel I read, "Something for Nothing", which is about a freshly minted economist from Columbia seeking to land a tenured position.
He said that in the real world, success was measured by how many people read your work, but in the world of academia, success was determined by how few people read and understood it. The same can be said of success in the hipster world. Success can be measured in the same terms: the more obscure one's musical tastes and preferences are, the better as that quote from "High Fidelity" about musical snobbery revealed (see the clip below).
Of course like any genuine flowering of art, there will be those hangers-on who join and are simply in it for ulterior motives who come along as earnest wannabes, never really quite capable of adding anything distinctive or be cool enough to fit in, just as Don Draper the fictional ad executive discovered in the series "Mad Men" when he got introduced to the beat poetry scene and found it not to his liking. "Too much art for me," he remarked.
It can't be helped. Like the young hipster in the clip who Don mocked for having spent more time on his hair that morning than his female companion to look the part of a bohemian, many of today's kids are simply mimicking a culture that they believe sets them apart from the mainstream suburban lifestyle, unwittingly succumbing to a stereotype and becoming the target of mockery by observers who see in it a desperate attempt to fit in.
Here is how one article described that aspiration:
First, you'll need some opinions. Not on politics — that doesn't matter. No, you need opinions about music. And no, you do not need your own opinions about music. It doesn't matter what you think (unless you happen to be a college DJ). Your opinions are derived from the hipster bible: Pitchfork Media.
This would be funny if it weren't so true. Video may have killed the radio star, but the Internet has slain the hipster with kindness by burying him under a pile of indie landfill mangling the meaning of the term beyond recognition (think Arcade Fire) driving the race for the next best thing into hyper mode.
Here is what another writer says about that, which is so spot on, that it is worth quoting in full:
If asked to define what it is to be a hipster, one might be tempted to give a number of answers. Passion for obscure bands, obtuse fashion sense, cheapness masquerading as quirkiness or upper-middle-class white self loathing are all popular. In actuality, most of the culture boils down to judging. Judging items, activities, bands, companies, clothes, oneself and most importantly other people. If someone else is less savvy, cutting edge or knowledgeable than you, doesn't that mean you are a better person?
Hipsters must therefore strive at all times to stay a step ahead of everyone else. Worshiping the most obscure bands available and then dismissing them after they come out with their first LP is a good start. Successfully using the phrase "I was into them before..." is rumored to actually make a hipster's penis larger.
You may be wondering: isn't all this ridiculous scrambling to attach oneself to the next big thing exhausting? Doesn't it reflect a deep personal flaw that people would choose to relentlessly consume rather than attempt to create? Isn't this a sad comment on the state of society that people would glorify this type of inane behavior? Well, that's exactly what I'd expect someone who didn't buy the In Rainbows boxset to say, asshole! Maybe you'd prefer Coldplay?
Oh, and apart from constantly being ahead of the curve, there is one sure fire way to gain respect among the trend-set, and that is to be part of a certain übercool profession. Apparently, it is not enough to be just a quirky store clerk these days. I have it on good authority that to be respected in the hipster community, one has to become one of the following: a writer, a photographer or a chef, while DJing, playing in a band or blogging on the side. And of course, any true hipster will deny he or she is one. The ubiquity of hipsterism makes it a target for hipsters.
I suppose it is a rite of passage or coming of age. Like those college kids in the 90s who tried to appropriate the spirit of 60s hippie culture that belonged to their parents by dancing in that weird esoteric way with their hands in the air twirling about as if performing an age of Aquarius incantation from the era (in Manila, this would spontaneously occur while listening to a set played by the Jun Lupito band), or the way grunge and alternative bands emulated Led Zep and Black Sabbath (again in Manila, think Razorback and Wolfgang), I find the nostalgia of kids today for the indie music and culture of the 90s as being of the same mould.
On the one hand, it is one big compliment, as they pay homage to the cultural nous of "their elders". On the other hand, I feel like saying, "Leave these cultural artefacts alone! Stop defiling them with your heathen hands and make your own damn music!" Like that rock jock who slammed indie pop and dance music germinating at the time by deciding to date the death of really good music round about 1973, today's hipsters seem to believe that nothing new under the sun has developed since 1991.
Perhaps it is simply part of that longing that some members of each generation have to be identified with a movement that has its roots in something hip or cool which traces its lineage back to "where it all began". I am certainly of the view that those of us who comprehend this should try and practice some measure of tolerance as much as we can. But like everything else, there is a limit, and there is only so much that we can or should take. Right. Then again, it may simply be part of becoming artefacts ourselves.
I suppose it is a rite of passage or coming of age. Like those college kids in the 90s who tried to appropriate the spirit of 60s hippie culture that belonged to their parents by dancing in that weird esoteric way with their hands in the air twirling about as if performing an age of Aquarius incantation from the era (in Manila, this would spontaneously occur while listening to a set played by the Jun Lupito band), or the way grunge and alternative bands emulated Led Zep and Black Sabbath (again in Manila, think Razorback and Wolfgang), I find the nostalgia of kids today for the indie music and culture of the 90s as being of the same mould.
On the one hand, it is one big compliment, as they pay homage to the cultural nous of "their elders". On the other hand, I feel like saying, "Leave these cultural artefacts alone! Stop defiling them with your heathen hands and make your own damn music!" Like that rock jock who slammed indie pop and dance music germinating at the time by deciding to date the death of really good music round about 1973, today's hipsters seem to believe that nothing new under the sun has developed since 1991.
Perhaps it is simply part of that longing that some members of each generation have to be identified with a movement that has its roots in something hip or cool which traces its lineage back to "where it all began". I am certainly of the view that those of us who comprehend this should try and practice some measure of tolerance as much as we can. But like everything else, there is a limit, and there is only so much that we can or should take. Right. Then again, it may simply be part of becoming artefacts ourselves.
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