MyÜberLife

The Socio-Economics of Cool

                        The Socio-Economics of Cool

Today I was awaken by a thought.  My subconscious mind had brought me back from a place; a place where the judgments of people, my sense of self and the excitement of acceptance all collided within the confines of a five-floored building:  My High School. Once again, being brought back to adult life from dream state, I, for a moment, had the ability to traverse my ego and access my memories of my ‘not-so-far-but-far-former’ teenage self.  As I walked to the shower, recalling the details of said travel, and in an attempt to unravel the deeper meaning of my dream, I began to analyze what the underlying significance could be.  What I extracted was a reoccurring and revolving theme that haunted my psyche and self esteem; since my [teenaged] years, this thematic state has been my prime subconscious concern:  The Holding On To My Ephemeral State of ‘Coolness.’  The state of ‘cool’ has dominated my intuitive rational since my mid-90’s adolescence and since then I have sat in divine reverence to the Godly ‘cool.’  Today, I have decided to investigate my obsession: What is ‘cool,’ how is ‘cool’ relatively defined and exemplified in America and Europe, currently and historically? Why is ‘cool’ so revered?  And what makes ‘cool’ such a valued socioeconomic cultural asset?  I have decided to approach ‘cool’ from its metaphorical roots to its hyper-cool frost-bit branches.

In my attempt to explore the ‘cool,’ I began exploring its definition.

Etymology of  Cool:  According to the English Oxford Dictionary ‘cool’ is defined as calmness; composure, the quality of being fashionably attractive or impressive.  In the American Merriam-Webster Dictionary cool is defined as a steady dispassionate calmness and self-control; marked by deliberate effrontery or lack of due respect or discretion.  From the globally crowd-sourced Wikipedia, their English language interpretation of ‘cool’ is described as an admired aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance and style, influenced by and a product of the Zeitgeist. The word Itutu, which translates as ‘mystic coolness,’ is one of three pillars of a religious philosophy created in the 15th century by Yoruba and Igbo civilizations of West Africa. ‘Cool’, or Itutu, contained meanings of conciliation and gentleness of character, of generosity and grace, and the ability to defuse fights and disputes. Itutu also was associated with physical beauty. In a Time Asia article “The Birth of Cool” authored by Hannah Beech, describes ‘cool’ in Asia as “a revolution in taste led by style gurus who are redefining Chinese craftsmanship in everything from architecture and film to clothing and cuisine” and as a modern aesthetic inspired both by a Ming-era minimalism and a strenuous attention to detail. The word cool from the Gola people of Liberia, defined it as the ability to be mentally calm or detached in an other-worldly Godly fashion from one’s circumstances; to be nonchalant in situations where emotionalism or eagerness would be natural and expected.  Synthesising these global definitions, one can determine cool is in the range of calculated calmness to a contrived nonchalance.

This summation brought clarity to the present definition, but in order to understand the ‘cool,’ I had to analyze cool’s relative historical interpretations.  My analysis focused on the American and European [Western] historical point of view(s).

The Early Modern Period Cool (15th century -17th century):  During this period, the word sprezzatura, loosely interpreted as ‘Aristocratic cool,’ had existed in all of Europe in the 1400’s, particularly when relating to amorality, love or indulged illicit behind [closed] doors pleasures.  Sprezzatura, was coined by Count Baldassare Castiglione, an Italian courtier, who described it as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.” Sprezzatura applied to both virtuous and vice-like activities.  At the time, an ideal courtier had to keep the good favor of his King and Queen.  In doing so, the courtier was to be skilled in various aggressive activities to the likes of weaponry and athleticism and while equally skilled in more graceful activities such as music and dancing.  A master courtier had to display these graces with mastery, while making a conscious effort to hide the effort and time that went into learning them.  A courtier’s sprezzatura made him seem to be fully at ease in court and be liken to someone who was “the total master of self, society’s rules, and even physical laws, and his sprezzatura created the affect that he was unable to err.”  An example of sprezzatura is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.”  The sprezzatura of the Mona Lisa is seen in both her smile and the positioning of her hands and are intended to convey her grandeur, self-confidence and societal position.  Through out the ages Mona’s ‘cool’ sprezzatura has not ‘thawed.’  Sprezzatura was synonymous with being cultured and being cool.

Modern Period Cool (18th century –  Early 20th century):  The modern period was significant in the evolution of the ‘cool.’  From the [Early Modern] period through the Victorian era and the end of the Gilded age (1901), the ‘cool’ was solely licensed to the aristocracy, nobility and bourgeoisie. The Gilded age introduced to a new class of people the opportunity to be ‘cool.’ The Gilded age was fueled by rapid American industrialization, and was the mother of the Second Industrial Revolution (1850), which brought with it the tools for shifting the existing aristocratic paradigm of the ‘cool.’  The Industrial revolution created a new segmentation in the class structure of both America and Europe.  Rapid industrialization, enhanced by Laissez-faire capitalism, opportunities for upward social mobility, education, wealth creation, and a new [middle] class structure, developed a new definition to the ‘cool.’  The Industrial revolution met more of society’s physiological and survival needs, through [new] wealth creation; which, in-turn, allowed for a new class of people, newly educated, newly economically stable, to reexamine their self esteem in relation to society.  Now that a formerly disenfranchised portion of society had their basic needs met, their was more time to contemplate and aspire to climb the social ladder to high society.  The lower classes did not have had a use [or access] for the ‘cool’ prior to the Modern Period due to lack of capital.  According to Abraham Maslow’s Theory of Human Motivation and Hierarchy of Human Needs; human beings who are economically disenfranchised are likely to be more concerned with physiological and survival needs.  As these basic needs are met, they begin to concern themselves with the psychological needs and esteem of belonging to certain social group(s) and the validation from said societal groups.  This social class reexamination demystified the aristocratic ruling class and their concepts of social power; the cool had begun to mutate, away from sprezzatura.  A new class of people outside of aristocracy and the bourgeoisie had arrived.

The Modern period established a new paradigm of ‘cool’ that was forced and forged by these new classes of people; one such type was the avant-garde artist.  The avant-gurade artists achieved prominence in the aftermath of the First World War, most notably the Dadaists.  Dadasists such as Arthur Cravan and Marcel Duchamp, and similar groups of the time, approach to the ‘cool,’ was often self-consciously revolutionary.  This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form, work and thought which birthed narratives of the rejection of tradition.  Dadasists had “a determination to scandalize the bourgeoisie by mocking their culture, sexuality and political moderation.”  Marsden Hartley, fellow Dadaists, included in his essay on “The Importance of Being ‘Dada’’:

“Dada smells of nothing, nothing, nothing.

It is like your hopes: nothing.

Like your paradise: nothing.

Like your idols: nothing.

Like your politicians: nothing.

Like your heroes: nothing.

Like your artists: nothing.

Like your religions: nothing.”

In the beginning of the 20th century, the term “avant-garde” became the label of the Dadaist movement (until the word “modernism” became favorable).  Modernism [avant-garde] rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment Age thinking and the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator God in favor of the abstract, unconventional, largely uncertain ethic brought on by modernity, initiated around the turn of century by rapidly changing technology and the horrific consequences of World War I.  The avant-garde was societal challenge, a direct ‘yang’ to the ying of all the periods predating, attempting to rebuke and refute all pre-existing norms.  The avant-garde psyche became the philosophy of those who embraced the ‘cool.’  Mr. Hartley and his ‘cool’ contemporaries proclaimed, “If I announce on this bright morning that I am a ‘Dada-ist’ it is not because I find the slightest need for, or importance in, a doctrine of any sort, it is only for the convenience of myself and a few others that I take up the issue of adherence. […]  Art is then a matter of how one is to take life now, and not by any means a matter of how the Greeks or the Egyptians or any other race has shown it to be for their own needs and satisfaction.  If art was necessary to them, it is unnecessary to us now, therefore it is free to express itself as it will.”  These bohemian rebels against the then current normality and majority, tested the definition and the very personification of what the basis of ‘cool’ was by refuting and challenging establishment.  For the first time, a class outside the bourgeoisie was viewed as powerful. Prior to this era, power was defined by the very same bourgeoisie, and their display of said power was the ‘cool.’ Now after this era, to be avant-garde in thinking was now ‘cool.’

During ‘The Great Depression’ (1929- early1940s), there was also a catalyst of a new term: The Lost Generation. The term Lost Generation was used to refer to the generation that came of age during World War I.  The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who credited the phrase to Gertrude Stein.  Stein, in telling Hemingway a story on this Lost Generation stated,”[Lost] is what you are. That’s what you all are…All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”  This generation included distinguished avant-garde artists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Waldo Peirce, Alan Seeger, and Erich Maria Remarque.  These artist propagated the messages of ‘cool’ through their various mediums which reached the eyes of millions of young people.

The writer Saint Simonian Olinde Rodrigues in his essay, “L’artiste, le savant et l’industriel,” (The artist, the scientist and the industrialist, 1825) contained the first recorded use of ‘avant-garde’ in its now-customary sense.  Rodrigues called on artists to “serve as [the people’s] avant-garde.”  This captivating Lost Generation of leftist-avant-guarde heroes became increasingly glorified; through the new forms of media (radio/TV), while at the same time, their personas were vilified by the right-traditional ruling classes.  The vilification by these ruling classes, fueled the power of these ‘misfits’ because the very act of being ridiculed by the ruler, signaled the importance and the arrival of the movement.  This ridicule was in itself the rallying call of the avant-garde movement.  The avant-guarde became a new psychological device; a powerful mechanism to reexamine, if not overthrow, the existing status-quo.  This seductive power, gravitas in its nature, was alluring to all the newly developing classes.  The avant-garde became heroes and their newly founded power became the modern ‘cool.’

The Contemporary Period (1945-Present): Many of these glorified heroes participated in the second World War.  The Second Great War brought the populations of Britain, Germany and France into direct contact with Americans and American culture.  The war brought hundreds of thousands of ‘GIs’ whose relaxed, easy-going manner was seen, through new forms of media, by young people as the embodiment of liberation; and with them came Lucky Strikes cigarettes, nylons, swing and jazz—the American Cool.  To be ‘cool’ or hip meant to go even further left of the avant-gardes; to be ‘hanging out,’ pursuing sexual liaisons, displaying the appropriate attitude of narcissistic self-absorption, and expressing a desire to escape the mental straitjacket of all ideological causes developed by the older right-traditional ruling classes.  One of these groups further to the left were, Hipsters, described by Jack Kerouac in the 1940s as “rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere [as] characters of a special spirituality.”  In his essay “The White Negro,” Norman Mailer characterized hipsters as American existentialists, living a life surrounded by death — annihilated by atomic war or strangled by social conformity — and electing instead to “divorce [themselves] from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.”  This ‘cool’ liberated temperament increasingly became mystified through their lack of due respect and their sense of intellectual rebellion. The term Hipster came about during the jazz age, when “hip” emerged as an adjective to describe aficionados of this growing rebellious scene.  Although the adjective’s exact origins are disputed, some say it was a derivative of “hop,” a slang term for opium, while others believe it comes from the West African word “hipi,” meaning “to open one’s eyes” and see the injustices of the [bourgeoisie] oppressor.  The word “Hip” eventually acquired the common English suffix -ster (as in gangster), and “hipster” entered the language.  Jack Kerouac introduced a new phrase “Beat Generation” in 1948, generalizing from his social circle to characterize the underground, anti-conformist, cool ‘hipster’ youth gathering in New York at that time.  The phrase came up in conversation with the novelist John Clellon Holmes who published an early ‘Beat Generation’ novel, Go (1952), along with a manifesto in The New York Times Magazine: “This Is the Beat Generation.”  The adjective “beat” was introduced to the group by Herbert Huncke, though Kerouac expanded the meaning of the term. “Beat” came from underworld slang—the world of hustlers, drug addicts and petty thieves, where Ginsberg and Kerouac sought inspiration. “Beat” was slang for “beaten down” or down-trodden, but to Kerouac and Clement Greenberg, it also had a spiritual connotation as in ‘beatitude.’  Kerouac felt he had identified (and was the embodiment of) a new trend analogous to the influential ‘cool’ Lost Generation of World War I.

In “Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation” Kerouac wrote:

“The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late Forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way—a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word “beat” spoken on street corners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America—beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction. We’d even heard old 1910 ‘Daddy Hipsters’ of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer. It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn’t gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization[…]  “It is because I am Beat, that is, I believe in beatitude and that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son to it… Who knows, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?”

From the late 1940s onward, this brand of ‘cool,’ through the adoption of these beatitude philosophies and clothes (The Beat generation and Hipsters all wore suits or black jeans with ankle boots and checkered shirts) became the popular culture that influenced young people all over the world, to the great dismay of the ‘paternalistic elites who still ruled the official culture.’ The French ruling intelligentsia were outraged, the British educated classes displayed a haughty indifference that was a hint of [Sprezzatura] the older aristocratic cool; The Old World temperaments were looked as being ‘square’ and ‘un-cool.’ 

During the Modernist to the Contemporary periods, the definitive statements from the avant-garde of the early 20th century and the post-World War I ‘Beat-Hispters’ were to become central themes of the vanguard generations to come. The avant-garde had been opposed to ‘high’ culture and the ‘Beat-Hispters’ rejected the artificially synthesized mass ‘mainstream’ culture that had been produced through [ironically] industrialization.  In the essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch by New York art critic Clement Greenberg, Greenberg used the German word, kitsch, to describe the antithesis of avant-garde culture; mass culture was indicative of a bogus culture which was constantly being manufactured by a newly emerged culture industry (comprising of commercial publishing houses, the movie industry, the record industry, the electronic media).  Greenberg referred to these forms as kitsch to emphasize their attempts to appear ‘cool’ and authentic by stealing ideas from vanguard culture.  Greenberg felt each of these mediums were a direct product of Capitalism—substantial industries—and as such, they were driven by the same profit-fixated motives of other sectors of manufacturing, not the ideals of true art and vanguard culture.  For instance, during the 1930s, according to Greenberg, the advertising industry took visual mannerisms from [avan-garde] surrealism, which attempted to co-opt the ‘cool’ style of the vanguard but lacked the vanguard substance.  One attempt of such a co-option was the Beatnik.  The Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation.  The Beatnik stereo referenced the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s with violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the Beat as in Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical fiction.  The selling of ‘cool’ became increasingly big business and caused Kerouac to speak out against this detour from his original concept.

Greenberg pointed out that the rise of this pseudo-vanguard industry meant that artistic excellence was displaced by sales figures as a measure of worth.  A novel, for example, was judged meritorious solely on whether it was a best-seller, and music succumbed to ratings charts and the blunt commercial logic of the Gold disc.  In this way, the autonomous artistic merit, so dear to the vanguardist, was abandoned and sales increasingly became the measure and justification, of everything.  Consumer culture now began to challenge the vanguard culture and the battle between authenticity and kitsch co-option of ‘cool’ ensued.

The New York critic, Harold Rosenberg, in the late 1960s, trying to strike a balance between the insights of Renato Poggioli and the claims of Clement Greenberg, suggested that from the mid-1960s onward, progressive [vanguard] culture ceased to fulfill its former adversarial role.  Since then, progressive [vanguard] culture has been flanked by what Greenberg called “avant-garde ghosts” to the one side, and a changing mass culture on the other; both of which it interacts with to varying degrees. These varying degrees have seen vanguard culture become, in his words, “a profession one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it;” in other words, pretense of ‘cool.’

Many social theorist and economist have suggested that this was a sign that ‘cool’ culture has entered a new period, a new post-modern age, when the former modernist ways of thinking and behaving have been rendered redundant. ‘Cool’ had now become the central ideology of consumer capitalism. 

The Post-Modern Period Cool (1960’s-Present):  In order to understand Post Modern Cool, one must understand Postmodernist ideas.  Postmodernist ideas as a philosophy, analyzes the context and relationship of culture, society and power. This analysis drives social consciousness which moves the paradigm and expands the concept of ‘cool.’  Postmodernist ideas—re-evaluated the entire Western value system (love, marriage, the relationship of traditional and avant-garde culture, the shift from industrial to service economy) that took place since the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of 1968.  These ideas became a point of departure for works of literature, architecture, and design, as well as the new themes in [marketing] business and the academic interpretation of history, law and culture.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary Post Modernism is defined as: “a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions.”  The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as: “Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing [reappropriating] traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to absurd extremes.  Understanding the concepts of post modern thinking is important in understanding many, if not all, aspects of the current day interpretations of ‘cool.’ 

Postmodernism, as a philosophical movement, evolved in reaction to [avant-garde] modernism and the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth.  Postmodernist thought was an intentional departure from the previously dominant modernist approaches. The term “postmodernism” comes from its critique of the “modernist” scientific mentality of objectivity and the progress associated with the Enlightenment.  Postmodernism postulates that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs and are therefore subject to change.  It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations in the formation of ideas and beliefs.  In particular, it attacks the use of sharp binary classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial; it holds realities to be plural and relative, and to be dependent on who the interested parties are and the nature of these interests.  Postmodernist claim that there is no absolute [objective] truth and that the way people perceive the world is [subjective].  This applied to the previous periods and their rivalry for cultural dominance.  A postmodernist discredits both traditional [bourgeoisie] culture and counter [vanguard] culture.  Postmodernism and its complete disregard for any set of rules, irregardless of ‘left vs right rhetoric, has a profound impact on the culture of ‘cool.’

Postmodernism, particularly as an academic movement, can be understood as a reaction to modernism in the Humanities.  Modernism and postmodernism are understood as cultural stances or sets of perspectives.  Modernism is primarily concerned with principles such as identity, unity, authority, and certainty; whereas, postmodernism is often associated with difference, plurality, textuality, and skepticism.  Post modern thinking is skeptical to all truth claims, and rejects not only classic culture, but even aspects of the former ‘cool’ modern and contemporary cultural constructs; the rejection of one narrative, making post-modern cool fragmented. 

The Post Modernist philosopher and critic Jean Baudrillard in the book Simulacra and Simulation.  In Simulation and Simulacra, Baudrillard introduced the concept that reality or the principle of the “real” is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose communicative and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies.  Baudrillard proposed the notion that, in such a state, where subjects are detached from the outcomes of events (political, literary, artistic, personal or otherwise), events no longer hold any particular sway on the subject nor have any identifiable context; they, therefore, have the effect of producing widespread indifference, detachment and passivity in industrialized populations.  He claimed that a constant stream of appearances and references without any direct consequences to viewers or readers could eventually render the division between appearance and object indiscernible; resulting, in the “disappearance” of mankind in what is, in effect, a virtual or holographic state, composed only of appearances.  This thinking has made ‘cool’ less of a moral issue and more as a mechanism of living.  Baudrillard claimed that people often confuse reality with cinema in such cases, for example, as with the sound of gun fire, where the sound of a fired pistol on a screen is interpreted as real versus the sound in real life being interrupted as fire works.  Another case of this confusion, or misappropriation, are where people reference cinematic blood as the way blood ‘should look’ irrespective of the ‘real thing.’  Baudrillard refers to this reinterpretation as the Hyper Real.

Baudrillard makes four points on Hyper Real: (1) basic reflection of reality, (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum [hyper real], which “bears no relation to any reality whatsoever.”

One present day example is the Mohawk: (1) Mohawk is the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. (2) Most people believe that the Mohawks, like some indigenous tribes in the Great Lakes region, sometimes wore a hair style in which all their hair was cut off except for a narrow strip down the middle of the scalp from the forehead to the nape, that was approximately three finger widths across.  However, this is not correct and the idea that Mohawks had “Mohawk hairstyles” came from Hollywood, and more specifically, “Drums Along the Mohawk”  (3) Punk kids wore unconventional spiked [Mohawk] hair styles as a signifier to the world of their allegiance to rebellious (avant-garde movement).  This hair style was frowned upon by the modern day bourgeoisie (corporate types). (4) Today [post modern] the Mohawk and its cousin, Fohawk, are adopted by mainstream society in a reductive manner as accepted form of dress, bearing no psychological correlation to the rebellious and counter culture of the 3 stages past.

Another example of [Post Contemporary] nihilism was Andy Warhol’s approach to art. Warhol developed a media-oriented, mechanical strategy that was consistent with the strategy of the system, but the production of his art, through his silk-screening process, enabled him to produce art faster than the system itself.  Warhol did not dispute the established system of making art, but pushed his art to the point of absurdity, by overdoing its transparency.  Baudrillard stated the problem with the Avant-Garde movement was:  “Abstract Expressionism was still a kind of avant-garde.  Avant-gardes are subversive, and abstract Expressionism was still a form of gestural subversion of painting and representation.  Subversion refers to an attempt to transform the established social order, its structures of power, authority, and hierarchy.  After that [period], we’re no longer talking about the avant-garde.  It’s still possible to come up with something new, but this is merely ‘posthumous representation.’ It’s beyond the destruction of representation. What’s more, this creates a very confused world, because all forms are possible.  In this sense it may be true that beyond the avant-garde you simply have kitsch.  Pop is kitsch… In the early days of Pop there was still an ironical, critical dimension.”  Andy Warhol redefined this [critique] paradigm of what was considered vanguard culture by going further left than the critical avant-garde and blurring lines of logic to the point of absurdity, taking with him the concept of what it meant to be in the vanguard of [cool] culture.  For Andy, examining culture and portraying it to the point of absurdity without any special moral context or explicit critique in any form was ‘cool,’ critically countering culture was not.  This approach of absurd transparency became the prime example of Post-Modern nihilistic hyper ‘cool.’

Why is hyper real important to ‘cool’ today?

Some sociologist make reference to this hyper real in context to a new post modern cool; the hyper cool.  One such example is the current day ‘hipster phenomenon.’ (1) Hipsters were introduced during the 1940’s during the Contemporary Period  (2) Hipsters [Beats] were portrayed through mainstream media as Beatniks. (3) Cool kids of the today’s Post Modern Period start to re-appropriate past periods of vanguard culture and hyper fuse it into a set aesthetic. (4) This reductive set aesthetic, adopts the name Hipster, with no present day correlation to (1).  Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York wrote that “these Hipsters and their 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 as on an iPod.”  He argued that “hipsterism fetishizes the authentic elements of all of the fringe movements of the postwar era—Beat [Contemporary hipsters], hippie, punk, even grunge, and draws on the cultural stores of every un-melted ethnicity and gay style, and then regurgitates it with a winking in authenticity.”  The July 2009 Time article states that everything about current day hipsters is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.” The critique of ‘hipsterdom’ and its ‘hyper cool,’ is that hipsterdom is 100% desperate, contrived, overly eager, cool which is constructed only on the basis of cool clothes that are viewed as “superior.” The article states that Hipster knowledge compensates for economic immobility in today’s economic environment through the re-adoption of powerful historic symbology as a matter of survival.  Norman Mailer explained, within a Social Darwinian context, that “Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.”  Mailer was referring to the ability for one to appear as one wished to seem, which was to appear powerful, upwardly mobile despite depressed economic realities.  The history of ‘cool’ is so rich with visual symbols; and now, as opposed to before, one has the ability to access, at will, the historical examples of ‘cool’ through new [Internet] media and apply it to ones life within a nihilistic, post modern context, irregardless of the prior period’s visual context.  This hyper discovery allows for quick adoption of ‘cool’ as a means to social [economic] survival. 

Connection of Hipster Cool to Capital? Why The Obsession With Cool?  

Mark Greif, an assistant professor at the New School, puts the term “hipster” into a socioeconomic framework rooted in the petty bourgeois tendencies of a youth generation unsure of their future social status. The cultural trend is indicative of a social structure with heightened economic anxiety and lessened class mobility due to economic contraction. Greif, a founder of n+1 in a New York Times editorial, states that “hipster” is often used by youth from disparate economic backgrounds to jockey for social position and economic survival. 

Rob Horning developed a critique of hipsterism in his April 2009 article “The Death of the Hipster” in PopMatters, exploring several possible definitions for the hipster.  He declares that a hipster might be the “embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics,” or might be “a kind of permanent cultural middleman in hyper-mediated late capitalism, selling out alternative sources of social power developed by outsider groups.’  These cultural middleman are identified by marketing companies who use theories like Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point as justification to target these proprietors of cool, making a correlation to their ability to influence mass society.  It is important to note, that in former periods of the ‘cool,’ the approach to act as brokers of ‘trend-to-mass’ culture was a cool ‘no-no’ as compared to [post modern] today where the opposite is implicitly understood.  These proprietors of cool are now hunted, and incentivized with social or fiscal capital by companies who ask select members of the ‘hyper-cool’ to become ambassadors and conduits of branded ideas, products, and services. 

The marketing gurus Zeynep Arsel and Craig Thompson argue that in order to segment and co-opt the indie marketplace, mass media and marketers have engaged in commercial “mythmaking” and contributed to the formation of the contemporary discourse about hipsters.  Their argument is that the contemporary depiction of hipsters is generated through mass media narratives with different commercial and ideological interests much like the Beatniks of the Beat [Contemporary Period] Generation.  In other words, hipster is less of an objective category, and more of a culturally and ideologically-shaped mass-mediated modern mythology that appropriates indie consumption and eventually turns it into a form of stigma.  Arsel and Thompson interviewed participants of the indie culture (DJs, designers, writers) to better understand how they feel about being labeled as a Hipster.  Arsel and Thompson’s findings demonstrate three strategies for dissociation from the hipster stereotype:  Aesthetic discrimination, symbolic demarcation, and proclaiming sovereignty.  These strategies, empowered by one’s status in the indie field (or their cultural capital), enable these individuals to defend their field-dependent cultural investments and tastes from devaluing hipster mythology.  Arsel and Thompson explain why certain people of the indie field or vanguard culture who ostensibly fit the hipster stereotype profusely deny being one: identifying with hipster mythology devalues their tastes and interests and thus they have to socially distinguish themselves from the cultural Hipster category.  To succeed in this hipster denial, while looking, acting, and consuming like one, these vanguard indie-credible-individuals de-mythologize their existing consumption practices by engaging in rhetoric and practices that symbolically differentiate their actions from the hipster stigma.

Corporations and Cool.

In today’s Post Contemporary world, cool is often assigned economic value as a means of displaying a corporation’s cultural relevancy.  Corporate cultural relevancy implicitly states to the people (marketplace), that the corporation identifies with the current version of cool.  The incentive for corporations to co-opt cool, is to implicitly signal to a desired audience that they identify with the audience’s value system and their particular idea of cool.  This type of calculation is typically made because of the realities of age and human mortality; for example in 1960, a Coca Cola drinker who was age 20 would now be 72 and may not be a Coke drinker anymore?  This reality of age forces the corporation to refresh and refill their customer base from the older patrons to a younger audience, who each have different versions of cool.  Many marketers argue that younger audiences are active consumers. Marketers sell to the younger audience’s specific interpretation of cool in order to gain their attention, years of customer loyalty and ensure, in theory, the economic survival of the marketer’s corporation.  There has been a long history of corporations adopting (see Beatnik above), repacking and marketing cool to the mainstream for profit, making it harder to make a genuine distinction between the vanguard and the masses.  Many cool purists say the way to distinguish the vanguard cool and everyone else is to determine if their version of cool has been assigned economic value or not. 

Nihilism:  Other sociologists make the argument that this proposed and obvious contrived cool, which differs from former interpretations of the demurred historical periods of cool, is a form of nihilism and not only a powerful device, but a necessary one for innovation and economic survival today.  Some say this form of obvious deconstruction will take us away from the confines of history and approach completely, although seemingly insane, out-the-box approaches to discovery and that these antics are just a momentary case of generational flux.  Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch where the hyper real pulls the subject out of history without the realization that they have engaged in co-opting a part history.  In other words, the subject has no incentive to use history within a historical context because the subject’s only concern is to be perceived a certain way by members of their [online and real world] surrounding environments.  Currently, nihilistic approaches are ‘cool,’ and if not, are at least being considered cool.  One example of nihilism is Rapper Tyler the Creator of OFWGKTA, due to his lyrical style of content, which have garnished both main stream and indie accolades.  OFWGKTA [Post Modern Nihilism] approach is to completely ignore, as much as legally possible, any sense of [Pre Modern] ethics which is influencing the current paradigm of ‘cool.’  

A Cool Conclusion:  Going through a hundred years of culture, I discovered many answers to What makes cool such a valued socioeconomic cultural asset?  Going through all the historical references, the underlining theme that emerged is that the ‘coolification’ of a culture always was a rebuttal to the ‘conditions’ of a subjective time, whether to fight an oppressive status quo or to ensure personal economic survival.  The cumulative societal view on spirituality, philosophy, sociology, socioecomonics, economics and business in relation to one’s existence shape societies’ definition and representation of ‘cool.’  Cool seemed to be used to create distinction between chaos and order; between those who have figured out life enough to manipulate social and economic outcomes versus those who have not.  Cool seemed to be a signifier of power within a civilized world and with it comes influence, admiration, and opportunity; the opportunity to secure valuable social and fiscal positions, making cool a cultural asset.  It seems, as long as society has conflict, the cool, subjective in syntax, will always be revered even as the definitions and connotations vary.  As we move to the future, the ‘cool’ phenomena and people’s intuitive understanding of it’s benefits, will further be enhanced and fragmented as we further develop technology. With these developments and economic need, comes rapidly increasing complex and competitive social/societal structures, calling for ‘cool’ to be the measure.  With all the schools of thought on cool, I conclude that cool will continue to be a symbol of a kind of god-like power; a barometer of order in a world of chaos, granting the beholder and the beholdee the emotional reward of escapism, hope, faith and the comfort of purpose.  Economically what is unique to cool, whether in definition or connotation, is that cool will continue to be used as an expression of admiration or approval, measuring clout and power to differentiate and identify these god-like individuals in our complex global society where attention leads to financial and social gaines.

As we see, the ‘cool’ now has both the associations of old world aristocratic composure and self-control, mixed, unevenly, with the necessary youthful anarchism used to deviate from traditional forms and navigate a hyper-real dynamic multi media-ed world to new innovations and economic prosperity.  The cool will be our compass.  I ponder if the etymology of cool will evolve in definition as the realities of living in a healthy sustainable environment becomes more of an issue?  Seems the biggest issues today is human economic preservation along with planetary sustainability?  I know for sure being alive is COOL and the ability to do what you love is even cooler.

                                                     -fin-

posted by Jey Van-Sharp of MyUberLife and feel free to share your thoughts.

special thanks to Wikipedia, countless magazines, James Boobar, and many long talks with friends on this topic (over & under drinks)… xo