Speculations: ‘hipsters’
There are ideas floating out there that ‘hipsters’ are the contemporary manifestation of ‘hippies’. I’m not quite sure if this is a proper fit, however. If one were to think about what a ‘hipster’ is and why it is there is so much vitriolic disdain for ‘hipsters’ it is perhaps because the ‘hipster’ is oftentimes imaged as a parasitic figure that attempts to commercialize certain ‘alternative’ or ‘sub’ art, music, film, literature etc. cultures. Still, I wonder if the more apt resemblance could be the ‘yuppie’ of the late 1970s, early 1980s. I am not talking about the end of the ‘yuppie’ generation which simply saturated mass media by-way-of films such as Wall Street and television such as Family Ties. You can perhaps think of the mid-80s on as the last gasp of ‘yuppie’ as they became even less relevant than what they had self-consciously attempted to be in the first place (young upwardly mobile professional). We can perhaps think of the the mid 2ks in the same light for the dinosaur figure that is the ‘hipster’. Constantly ridiculed, yet consistently coveted by those forty and fifty year olds who run mass media (NY Times, Time magazine, Vanity Fair, etc.), ‘hipsters’ have been incredibly successful at what ‘yuppies’ could not do in the late 1970s. Unlike ‘yuppie’ culture, which attempted to be both relevantly cultured through the ‘disco’ art/music scenes, and accumulate massive wealth through corporate speculation, ‘hipsters’ have been able to merge both the ‘hipness’ of alternative music/art/fashion/film with their own capitalist desires. Capitalizing from the hyper-neoliberalist notion of modern social being as ‘homo economicus’ that has become hegemonic, if not practically mainstream, the ‘hipster’ can not only accrue what is called ‘cultural’ capital as well as the good old filthy type of ‘capital’ that can buy almost anything (usually more ‘cultural’ capital). Unlike for ‘yuppie’s’ whose duality between ‘professional’ and ‘youth-culture’ scenes seemed heterogenous to each other, the ‘hipster’ has no such problem dealing with these contemporary antagonisms. After all, the best mode of disavowing such violent contradictions, is always the embrace of narcissism.
Some inspirations for this speculation include:
Whit Stillman’s amazing ‘yuppie’ trilogy of films, especially “Last Days of Disco”
“Alternative” ‘dance’ or ‘party’ music and music scenes that ‘hipsters’ love and make money from, including MGMT, Passion Pit, Cut Chemist, Robyn, Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, numerous Diplo projects, Diplo, Empire of the Sun, Justice, Girl Talk, Neon Indian etc.
“Alternative” ‘party’ photo blogs like Cobrasnake
Vampire Weekend
