"The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class."
"We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new."
Read the rest of this hard truth from a recent AdBusters article here.
No comment.
(another opinion)
3 comments:
What is a hipster anyway? I'm pretty sure they don't actually exist in any way other than aesthetic labels. A hippie was originally defined by a shared social agenda that they all seemed to hold in common, not by the clothes they wore, or at least not entirely. The group of people he's targeting have existed in EVERY generation for decades, we're just rounding them up this time by their clothes and bikes.
I can remember as a kid there was a wave of 50's nostalgia with flat-tops and Stray Cats type music, ten years ago their was that whole rebirth of Swing music (yes, I admit I took the dance classes). "But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change"... while there have definitely been elements of social change in hip hop, for example, from the beginning, it definitely wasn't a movement that was born of it. Most of the critiques he places here could easily be transferred to the kids of the 80's, as it was about nothing more than style back then too.
And this idea of criticizing appropriation from another time or culture is absurd; every generation or culture borrows, steals, remakes another's; the Beatles and their friends of the 60's ripped of their fashion from India. I remember reading my Rolling Stone magazines in high school, articles always saying "Rock n Roll is Dead!!"... well yeah, you 40-year old Led Zeppelin-listening burnout of an author, in your definition it probably is, but really, it just expanded, merged with other styles, it grew, for better or worse, and maybe the results weren't as easy to classify, but it didn't die. You want to criticize the style that the hipster brings, aesthetically, fine, I'm with you, it sucks in a lot of ways, but its not devoid of meaning (substance maybe, but style by definition doesn't incorporate substance). It will spawn new styles, that merge with other styles, and so on and so on.
It probably is true that a lot of these things that have become popular have been so because of rich kids wanting to feel like they are slumming it, and I think that's a fair critique, but when you look at things like the social awareness of this generation (wherever that begins or ends), from this years interest in the election, or the huge anti-war rallies over the past five years, that's a hell of a lot more than any kid from the grunge era, or breakdance era, or punk era was doing. And yeah, there are a lot, lot of stupid hipsters- not smart. But there were a lot of stupid flannel-wearing kids in the 90's, a lot of stupid breakdancers in the 80's, a lot of stupid punks in the 70's. So to find and interview two of the less-intelligent girls you can find, and cite them as an example of this generation isn't fair.
I mean, yes, we all know who he's talking about, and yes, they do suck, but it is a little ridiculous to seriously try to slap a label on them. I'm pretty sure clueless, style-obsessed, shallow people have been around for much longer than this hipster-group's existence. I'm pretty sure these hipster zombies exist all around the world, wearing all kinds of different clothes, smoking all kinds of different cigarettes, speaking apathetically in a whole range of different languages, just waiting to attack.
I was gonna say some stuff, but I think Swampass covered it pretty well. I stopped reading half way through. Anyway, I think AdBusters is kind of a hipster magazine, and we're all kind of hipsters. I'm more interested in making fun of streetwear kids. That shit is ridiculous!
Be yourself, if you think something that trendy is cool, than do that shit,but dont do it just becasue someone else is, do it becasue you want to do it!
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