Hipster (contemporary subculture)

Template:Globalize/US In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the 1940s slang term hipster began being used to describe young, well-educated urban middle class and upper class adults with leftist and/or liberal social and political views and interests in a non-mainstream fashion and cultural aesthetics. Actually defining what a hipster is can be a difficult task considering the idea that hipsters are thought to exist as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior[s]." Nonetheless hipsters are often associated with non-mainstream music and film and other products such as second-hand and or vintage clothing.

History

1940s-1950s

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

"Hipster" derives from the 1940s word "hip" or "hep", which are derived from the early 1930s slang for opium or "hop". "Hepped up" or "hopped up" were common terms of the era relating to drug use. Contemporary musicians of the time cite that "hip" was jazz code for heroin use, which is known to have affected many performers. This was kept private to some extent, so when someone was overheard being called a "hep cat" he was assumed to be nothing more then a laconic, relaxed jazz musician. White youths, uninformed of this exclusive culture, then tried to emulate the musicians while being unaware of the origin of the term. When they saw how much whites liked being "hip" and buying their records, savvy black entertainers of the era were quick to embrace the new marketability of the term.

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."

The 1959 book Jazz Scene by Eric Hobsbawm (using the pen name Francis Newton) describes hipsters 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."

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 gentrified 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 riding bicycles, listening to audio cassette tapes, 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."

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. Indeed many who would be defined as hipsters by the surrounding society look upon the term as derogatory and consider themselves to be individuals, rather than part of the "labeled" hipster subculture. Therefore hipster is often a term used by a second party to define a specific individual, rather than one embraced by those who fit the hipster mould.

In 2005, Slate writer Brandon Stosuy noted that "Heavy metal has recently conquered a new frontier, making an unexpected crossover into the realm of hipsterdom." He argues that the "current revival seems to be a natural mutation from the hipster fascination with post-punk, noise, and no wave”, which allowed even the “nerdiest indie kids to dip their toes into jagged, autistic sounds”. He claims that hipsters became interested in heavy metal as a way of doing an "...investigation of a musical culture that many had previously feared or fetishized from afar.”

In 2008, Utne Reader magazine writer Jake Mohan described the rise of “Hipster Rap”. He states that “hipster rap, as loosely defined by the Chicago Reader, consists of the most recent crop of MCs and DJs who flout conventional hip-hop fashions, eschewing baggy clothes and gold chains for tight jeans, big sunglasses, the occasional keffiyeh, and other trappings of the hipster lifestyle.” He notes that the “old-school hip-hop website Unkut, and Jersey City rapper Mazzi” have criticized mainstream rappers who they deem to be poseurs or “…fags for copping the metrosexual appearances of hipster fashion.” Prefix Mag writer Ethan Stanislawski argues that there are racial elements to the rise of hipster rap. He claims that there "...have been a slew of angry retorts to the rise of hipster rap," which he says can be summed up as "white kids want the funky otherness of hip-hop... without all the scary black people."

Philosophy

The vintage clothing and thrift store appearance of hipsters reveals a wish to consume ethically, combined with a desire to superficially evade their privilege. 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 music for use in advertising.

The hipster aesthetic of irony is often associated with the appropriation of elements of lowbrow or working class identity in an ironic fashion.

A recent trend among some hipsters is the organic farm movement. In Allen Salkin's article for the New York Times, "Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat," the author explores the experiences of two hipsters who moved to Tivoli, N.Y. to work on an organic farm. Those without access to farmland are growing vegetables in their backyards and patios. Hipsters are gathering at the local food co-op to exchange seeds and ideas while gaining an identity with a greater sense of irony.

Criticism

Some city dwellers are not fond of young hipsters.

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."

Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York claims that metrosexuality is the hipster appropriation of gay culture. 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."

Lorentzen argues that “hipsterism fetishizes the authentic” elements of all of the “fringe movements of the postwar era—Beat, hippie, punk, even grunge,” and draws on the “cultural stores of every unmelted ethnicity” and “gay style”, and then “regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity” and a sense of irony. He claims that this group of “18-to-34-year-olds”, who are mostly white, “have defanged, skinned and consumed” all of these influences “into a repertoire of meaninglessness”.

See also

• Kitsch

• Yuppie