Shout to my boy NIsaacs for hitting me up with a very interesting article from AdBusters magazine about “the hipster.” As Nis put it, it is reminiscent of Norman Mailer’s famous essay “The White Negro,” in which Mailer in only a way that he knows how, condemns the youth subculture as not being really counter-cultural at all but in fact reproducing bourgeois ideology and values. One does not have to read “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization” to figure out what side of the argument the author stands. It is written for AdBusters, a Situationist-inspired collective that notably pulls “culturejamming” stunts around the world. If you are familiar with the politics of Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, then you will not have too much trouble understanding where the AdBusters are coming from. (Full Disclosure: Klein and the AdBusters come from completely different intellectual trajectories. Whereas Klein is a much more traditional marxist, the AdBusters come from a much less rigid, French marxism. However, both hail from Canada.) Yet, I think the article does bring to light some interesting questions about what kind of generational identity (if any) the children of Baby Boomers fashion for themselves.
As I read it, the main point of the article is quite simple: the hipster is an exception to the tradition of youthful, rebellious counterculture. It is “the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality,” as the tag line puts it. As I said, one could from a mile away see that this would be an indicting expose. “
With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.
In attempting to paint hipsterdom as stripped of any core meanging, the author does bring some hilarious insight to what hipsters are all about. Here are some highlights:
Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”
“Offensive?”
“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”
“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”
“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”
Here’s another:
The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.
Notwithstanding the amazing impressionistic description of hipsters dancing, I think the author has some serious vitriol that can only be read between the descriptive sections in the analytic sections. The main theme, and what’s bugging the author the most, is attitudinal nonchalance, which the author maintains is having cake and eating it too. In other words, hipsters get to have an identity based on shrugging identity off.
Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.
I understand where he’s coming from because the argument he is making is not really new. Though packaged as an attack on hipsters, it is really an attack at large. The very handful of characteristics attributed to hipsters have been hurled at the Gen X’ers and beyond–chief among them APATHY. What is sad about this is that the “apathy”-argument is always made by New Lefty type older folks, who, accordng to their renditions, were taking over any and everyone’s office while they were in college. They are confused as to why young people aren’t wrecking more havoc. I have heard this type of talk come from many older New Left-era (not New Era, though that would be cool) professors, who I otherwise would like. Frances Fox Piven, an exemplar of the type of person I’m talking about, has written several books detailing why it’s important that people begin to care again. To me, that comes off as not only completely patronizing to young people but also a culturally conservative argument coming from a politically left scholar. These type of people claim that all young people are into is crass consumerism. And true enough, the author of the hipster article articulates a critique of the hipster from that very position:
An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.
This well-trodden argument is wrong for so many reasons–none of which has to do with liking or disliking hipsters. It is wrong because of the long-standing, yet unstated, collusion between New Left folks and Western culture or, as the author more bluntly states it, “civilization.” What is irking him is that Western culture has run out of steam. And for him, the measuring stick for the West’s cultural evolution is the reactionary movements that emerge throughout the course of history. (Sound like any famous German philosopher we know? Yes, it is the Hegelian dialectic rearing its head again.) But aren’t some movements reactionary which aren’t exactly “bright” moments for the West….like…er…I don’t know…Nazism, Stalinism, religious fundamentalisms, and racism (just a few to start with). Why so invested in the West? Why should anyone have any trust in Western civilization over any other sort of civilization? To me, the critique read in this way is more than a little Eurocentric and overly romantic. Not every counterculture has been 100% politically fruitful. 1960s student radicalism in the US, for instance, was responsible for a lot of sexism in SDS, the Civil Rights movement and Black Power movement. (“Us men have some serious business to attend to like kidnapping evil capitalists, can someone (hint hint) get us some coffee?”)
If the hipster is signaling the DEATH of Western civilization….well then, long live the hipster.
(But can we ease up on the jeans? You all must have some terrible jock itch.)
