Redefining 'Hipster'

As you all may know, my CreComm buddy Jacob has a blog called Jacob Defends Hipsters.  It's an interesting read, and it inspired this blog post.

Jacob's blog is interesting because it got me thinking of the exact definition of the word 'hipster'.  Today, people use it to describe the D.I.Y., American Apparel-esque subculture that emerged throughout the 2000s.  Yet it seems strange that people would apply the word 'hipster' to a subculture.  To me, 'hipster' in the original sense is someone who is overly concerned with being 'cool'.

In the 1940s, 'hipster' meant something else.  In 1948, Anatole Broyard published this essay on hipsterdom in the '40s.  Broyard painted the picture of a 'hipster' as someone obsessed with jazz culture.

The following passage from Broyard is particularly interesting:

                                    Jive music and tea were the two most important components of the

                                    hipster's life. Music was not, as has often been supposed, a stimulus to  

                                    dancing. For the hipster rarely danced; he was beyond the reach of         

                                    stimuli. If he did dance, it was half parody—"second removism"—and 

                                    he danced only to the off-beat, in a morganatic one to two ratio with 

                                    the music. (source)

'Jive music' isn't exactly the kind of music that comes to mind when I think about hipsters and hipster subculture today.  For the longest time, I always thought 'hipsters' only listened to bands like Radiohead, The Shins, Spoon, and anything that Pitchfork Media praised.  But cultural definitions are changing, and thus, my judgments are entirely based on what I read on the Internet.  How would I define what a hipster was if I didn't visit this famous blog? 

But it's important to remember that you can't spell 'hipster' without 'hip'.  Yet to understand the word 'hipster', we need to know what is 'hip', and in what context do you define what is 'hip'? Do you define individualism as being 'hip' or being part of a subculture as being 'hip'? Ifwe  think of 'hip' of being the former, I can consider myself to be a hipster.  I've ventured into the thickest canyons of music web sites like rateyourmusic.com to find some of the most obscure music possible, and I don't identify with any kind of clothing brand.

I will argue, though, that the only thing 'individual' about a person is the way he or she experiences things. Tastes in music, movies, books, and television do not make us 'individuals'.  One can discover the most obscure music possible, but at the end of the day, at least five other people will be listening to it.  Subconsciously, I am part of a sub-culture.  I just don't have a membership card.

The concept of 'individualism' is not without virtue, but when 'individualism' becomes a label for people to assign themselves to, there are repercussions.  In trying to be 'individuals', we dull worldly experience.  The effort of trying to fit into such a box equals a miserable life, and at the end of the day, a person only declares him or herself to be 'individual'  by rejecting what a consumer culture defines as the opposite. 

The power of the supermarket is to create and reinforce dichotomies and labels.  Individualism vs. collectivism.  Hipster vs. square.  As consumers, we make the effort to trash conformity and embrace individualism.  But the very act of ascribing to the label of 'individualism' is just as conservative as conforming because every person on this earth engages in the practice of 'self-labeling'.  And by rejecting the act of labeling, I am labeling myself as someone who does not label.

You just can't beat them in the end.  Uniqueness is a dead thing when you reduce such a concept to mere molecules and atoms.