Self-righteous voices of true counterculture have begun the mantra “kill the hipster!” Beware! They are the bohemian undead; they are zombies; they will claim your ultracool sub-culture trash, reprint it with soy ink on an American Apparel shirt, and make you feel old. Today, I read a disturbing prophecy—that the hipster (as an archetype and mode of living) represents the end of Western civilization. Rather than a Visigoth-like breed of invader, the vapid, shoulder-shrugging attitude of the hipster is about to slink our way of life thoughtlessly, but fashionably, to the brink of destruction.
Yet another silent killer. First hydrogenated oil, now this.
Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, my Midwestern upbringing instilled in me a rather vague understanding of cultural stereotypes. In the US, I knew there were Californians, East Coast Types, and Midwesterners. These categories recapitulated in a roughly parallel way at my high school consisting in jocks, the rich kids, and the rest of us. I knew that historically speaking there were some other general categories of people. My teachers encouraged us to wear black and snap our fingers on poetry day (harkening back to beatniks). I became aware of hippies by way of beanbags, school notebook covers that read “Flower Power” and after a certain point, when our local Kmart only seemed to sell bellbottoms. When the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air communicated rap to our very hip-hop free town, my brother got a box haircut, and my mother allowed me to save up for Hammer pants. Alas, when grunge became cool, I was surprised to have been ahead of the curve. It was a happy coincidence that a limited income and thrift stores had early-on outfitted me in old men’s flannel and tired looking jeans.
But all of these tokens of nonconformity were fakes. I wasn’t beat, hippie, remotely hip-hop in my flower print Hammer pants, nor was I properly grunge. Perhaps, at best, I was a bit untidy.
The death march of the hipster, then, has taken me completely by surprise. Certainly, there are young professionals who pay far too much for stupid haircuts and buy second-hand looking punk clothes at full price. Recently I noticed that JC Penny has ripped off The Breakfast Club and sells Nirvana T shirts to tweeners. But there have always been people far too willing to blow good money to look foolish, and The Breakfast Club wasn’t so much countercultural as a profitable, popularity fairytale. Twelve-year-old kids are just about as Seattle grunge as I was when I wore their shirt to DARE meetings and bought Teen Spirit deodorant.
As my father might suggest, it’s all the same crap with a new price tag.
The great threat of hipsters is said to be the group’s willingness to buy into subversive style, but failure to reject the mainstream. They hold down good jobs; they do drugs but not as a symbol of any deeper, radical agenda; they look messy, but really shower. They buy according to labels, but reject the moniker of “hipster.” I can’t say I blame them. If asked to define myself as “drug seeking, consumeristic, apocalyptic jerk,” I might admit to some hesitation.
Their most dire sin, then, is unoriginality. Sure, hipsters simply replicate cool, without the subversive attitudes that normally predicate genuine coolness. They are shopping to fit the part, whatever part has been best advertised to them. But these hipsters are doing what most of the country has done for a very long time—except rather than Midwesterners replicating the trends on the coasts, a population of New Yorkers went hipster, crowding the place with fake cool. I grant this must be annoying, but not the downfall of human civilization (Western or otherwise).
Despite possessing rather pathetic habits and an unappealing group name, hipsters did not arrive on the planet, fully formed, and straight out of the book of Revelation. Rather, the hipster naysayers might do well to warn of themselves.
It seems we may have become too easily inclined to scan clothing habits for revolutionaries. Finding a population wearing iconic clothing but lacking a real agenda, it has somehow become reasonable to assume human society will meet its doom. There are no beats/hippies/punks/rappers/grungers to keep us honest. We’re therefore done for.
It’s surprising how greatly subversion depends upon a uniform.
I will for now accept the premise that unbounded consumer culture is functionally a failed system (in a world of limited resources, growing population, and far too many people with whom those resources are not already being shared). If we take that point as given, should we really waste time bemoaning the hipster? Granted, the love of new tights and non-prescription glasses is regrettable, but should we assume such silliness is our last hope? Or that a counterculture to consumption would be best identified by their snazzy outfits?
A group of people who ape mainstream cultural values (no matter how dorky they dress), do not a countercultural movement make. Social critics who look no deeper than fashion trends are likely not the best equipped to make sound predictions concerning anything much, except perhaps next season’s chicest colors.
In an age in which the impact of our way of life has become so powerfully clear, it is not the hipster zombie who is to be feared. It’s the shopper zombie, the journalist zombie, the broad-categorization-zombie that is worrisome. Triviality wraps itself in any number of suits. And an agenda of thoughtful responsibility does not require a new haircut.
If our way of life is threatened (and I would contend, threatening), the last thing we all need is to solder, sew or buy new duds to do the work. Although lacking the ease of external identification, evaluation of internal cultural dialogue should hopefully require a level of insight and depth beyond a brief glance at clothing and kitsch.
