Hipster (contemporary subculture)

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In the 1990s and 2000s, the 1940s slang term hipster began being used in North America to describe young, well-educated urban middle class and upper class adults with leftist, liberal, or libertarian social and political views and interests in a non-mainstream fashion and cultural aesthetic. While definitions vary, hipsters are often associated with alternative music, "indie" culture (independent rock and independent film), and other non-mainstream products, such as vintage clothing. Hipsters may dress in a campy or ironic manner, pairing expensive vintage clothes with working-class clothing. The social scene in some major cities is centered in a gentrified downtown area where DJ clubs, fair-trade coffee cafés, and organic restaurants sit side-by-side with thrift stores and working class taverns.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] 1940s-1950s

See also: Hipster (1940s subculture) and hip (slang)

"Hipster" derives from the 1940s word "hip" or "hep", which jazz musicians used to describe anybody who was "in the know" about the emerging, mostly African-American sub-culture, which revolved around jazz.[1] The members of the subculture were called "hepcats", a term which then morphed into the word "hipster." The first dictionary to list the word is the short glossary "For Characters Who Don't Dig Jive Talk," which was included with Harry Gibson's 1944 album, "Boogie Woogie In Blue." The entry for "hipsters" defined it as "characters who like hot jazz." [2]

The 1959 book Jazz Scene by Eric Hobsbawm (using the pen name Francis Newton) describes hipsters in terms of using their own language, "jive-talk or hipster-talk," he writes "is an argot or cant designed to set the group apart from outsiders." Hipster was also used in a different context at about the same time by Jack Kerouac in describing his vision of the Beat Generation. Along with Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac described 1940s hipsters "rising and roaming America,...bumming and hitchhiking everywhere...[as] characters of a special spirituality"[3]

[edit] 1990s and 2000s

In the 1990s, the term became a blanket description for the trend in the "alternative", "anti-fashion" fashion of middle class and upper class urban, young people moving into "regentrified" or soon to be "regentrified" neighborhoods in city centers. Often hipsters came to these poorer neighborhoods from well-to-do suburbs of major cities. In youth culture, the term hipster usually refers to young people who may have an appreciation for independent rock, a campy or ironic fashion sense, or an otherwise "bohemian" style. They are typically associated most closely with alternative culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock and independent film.

Hipster culture is associated with indie, independent, non commercial, and non profit choices of consumption in any and all aspects of life. This includes listening to independent rock or any form of non-mainstream music, thrift store shopping, eating organic, locally grown, vegetarian, and/or vegan food, drinking local or brewing beer, listening to public radio, etc. Hipster scenes are associated with vintage clothing and vinyl records, and magazines like Vice and Clash and website Pitchfork Media.

Contemporary hipsters are largely associated with leftist or liberal social and political views and sometimes a general appreciation of intellectual pursuits, with an ironic appreciation of lowbrow or lower class culture and subculture. In 2003, Robert Lanham's satirical humor book The Hipster Handbook claimed that hipsters are young people with "...mop-top haircuts, swinging retro pocketbooks, talking on cell phones, smoking European cigarettes,...strutting in platform shoes with a biography of Che [Guevara] sticking out of their bags." [4]

The term is also used in a pejorative fashion, to assert that a person may be superficially following recently mass-produced, homogeneous, urban fashion trends, overly concerned with their image and the contradictions of their identity. Often in its negative connotation, 'hipsters' are considered apathetic, pretentious, and self-entitled by other, often marginalized sectors of society they live amongst, including previous generations of bohemian and/or "counter-culture" artists and thinkers as well as poor neighborhoods of color.

In New York, "hipster" has the additional pejorative connotation of describing an unemployed, or "ironically" underemployed, young person living off his parents, i.e. a trust fund toddler. Because of their upward influence on rent levels in formerly bohemian neighborhoods such as the East Village and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, they are generally despised.

[edit] Philosophy

Hipsters tend to associate themselves with liberal, libertarian and/or anti-capitalist political ideology. This could be as concrete as espousing socialist philosophies, or simply being a supporter of a certain political party. Socially, this means support of women's rights and gay rights, especially since one hipster stereotype is being perceived as ambiguous or bisexual despite one's actual sexual orientation (As there are many hipsters that mainly identify as heterosexual, homosexual, and lesbian as well.) Hipsters are not usually associated with organized religion and are usually atheist or agnostic, although some embrace Wicca, Buddhism or the Emerging Church. However, this does not mean that they cannot belong to an organized religion or follow some religious ideology, such as liberation theology.

The overall aesthetic has elements of a liberal ethos. The vintage clothing and thrift store appearance of hipsters in a modern liberal context reveals a wish to consume ethically, combined with a desire to superficially evade their privilege; to avoid purchasing new clothes from large corporations accused of unfair working conditions, such as Gap and Nike. This choice usually manifests itself through refusing to purchase items such as clothing from large corporations, but also extends to a preference for bands who are not signed to major labels and/or who do not offer their creative output for use by the advertising industry.

The hipster aesthetic of irony is often associated with the appropriation of elements of lowbrow or working class culture. Low-brow culture from the past, such as sitcoms from the 1970s and 1980s like Three's Company and The Facts Of Life may be enjoyed in an ironic fashion. Similarly, elements associated in a clichéd sense with working class culture. The modern hipster culture appropriates some signifiers of working class identity in an ironic fashion, such as Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.[5]

A very popular growing trend among the hipster subculture is the organic farm movement. In Allen Salkin's article for the New York Times, "Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat," the author explores two hipsters who moved to Tivoli, N.Y. to work on an organic farm. Hipsters are generally known for a sense of hyper awareness of environmental and social causes; Salkin's article illustrates it well. Though hipsters may not have such access to large farmland, the trend is growing in backyards and patios across America. Hipsters are gathering at the local co-op to exchange seeds and ideas while gaining an identity with a greater sense of irony. [6]

[edit] Criticism

Elise Thompson, an editor for the LA blog LAist argues that "people who came of age in the 70s and 80s punk rock movement seem to universally hate 'hipsters'", which she defines as people wearing "expensive 'alternative' fashion[s]", going to the "latest, coolest, hippest bar...[and] listen[ing] to the latest, coolest, hippest band." Thompson argues that hipsters "... don’t seem to subscribe to any particular philosophy...[or]...particular genre of music." Instead, she argues that they are "soldiers of fortune of style" who take up whatever is popular and in style,"appropriat[ing] the style[s]" of past countercultural movements such as punk, while "discard[ing] everything that the style stood for." [7]

In Mac Montandon's New York Times article, "The Beard: Hip, but Hot," the author explores the fad of the Riker-style facial beard (in reference to a Star Trek character), which is popular among hipsters living in the Williamsburg and Lower East Side areas. The author argues that hipsters follow fads until the trend falls out of fashion or becomes widely unpopular. The idea of riding a trend out is contrary to the hipster's general love for all things "countercultural", but it may contribute to the irony sought out by hipsters. [8] Canadian Globe and Mail style columnist Russell Smith poked fun at hipster fashions when he asked his readers "aren't you... bored with the artistic hipster uniform of superskinny jeans, canvas Converse high-tops and beard?"[9]

Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York claims that metrosexuality is the hipster appropriation of gay culture. But for Lorentzen, the modern hipster drinks in underground culture with a heavy dose of irony and insincerity. He writes that "these aesthetics are assimilated — cannibalized — into a repertoire of meaninglessness, from which the hipster can construct an identity in the manner of a collage, or a shuffled playlist on an iPod."[1] Put simply, any ideological connotation is stripped away and discarded leaving only a look and a pose. Hence irony could be seen by some as an excuse for hypocrisy.

[edit] See also

[edit] Related publications/websites

Several humorous websites that poke fun at the hipster scene include Hipster Hunter - Guide to understanding hipster scene and Hipster Bingo.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Harry The Hipster Autobiography
  2. ^ This short glossary of jive expressions was also printed on playbills handed out at Gibson's concerts for a few years. It was not a complete glossary of jive, as it only included jive expressions that were found in the lyrics to his songs. The same year, 1944, Cab Calloway published "The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary of Jive," which had no listing for Hipster, and because there was an earlier edition of Calloway's Hepster's (obviously a play on Webster's) Dictionary, it appears that "hepster" pre-dates "hipster."
  3. ^ Kerouac, Jack. "About the Beat Generation," (1957), published as "Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation" in Esquire, March 1958
  4. ^ Robert Lanham, The Hipster Handbook (2003) p. 1.
  5. ^ Portland Oregonian.
  6. ^ Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat. NY Times.
  7. ^ Why Does Everyone Hate Hipsters Assholes? LAist Special Projects Editor Elise Thompson February 20, 2008 http://laist.com/2008/02/20/why_does_everyo.php
  8. ^ The Beard: Hip, but Hot. NY Times.
  9. ^ Russell Smith. "Like a rhinestone club guy". In Globe and Mail. May 24, 2008