Wednesday, September 24, 2008
HIPSTERSSS!!!!
-http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
-http://www.emergingthoughts.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=320&Itemid=57
One thing that frustrates me is that there seems to be an almost romanticized view of previous 'counter-cultures'. This articles seems to ignore any substantive movements for the 'rebellions' that seem to dominate this historical view of a certain period - all of which are young white 'sub'-cultures dictates by wealthy youth escaping a certain type of privilege. What about the black panthers? What about the riot grrl movement? What about the queer revolutions of the late sixties? What about the rise of hip-hop in the early nineties? These are, in my opinion, examples of movements that, while maintaining a certain aesthetic, also provided a contextual challenge to a specific status quo injustice. Hipster is a label that you don't seem to be able to define, although looking at the examples you lay out, it is rich, mostly white, people in parties in New York. Although this is already a problematic starting point for criticizing a term that is applied to everything from chanel-wearing models to 'conscious' hip-hop, you don't even provide a context for these kids, which could very well provide some type of definition that challenges what you seem to take for granted as a general term for white kids in urban outfitters-esque clothes. A lot of what you are saying here is relevant to a certain type of people who identify as 'counter-cultural'. But that doesn't really say anything at all. The school I go to is typically labeled a 'hipster' school. I, being completely unaware of the implications of that title before i came there, found a culture that, although problematic in many ways, opened up a space for self-expression on my part that I had not found before. I think its not only vapid for you to attack the 'hipster' as the end of western civilization, but frankly insulting that you seem to think that you can dismiss any subversive qualities of what clearly means for you anything that assumes itself to challenge normative practices. You seem to me to operate on a bitter desire to distance yourself from a term that YOU have associated with a group of people I would find disgusting. to spread that to a critic on all youth who wear skinny jeans is easy, unintelligent, and, frankly, unfounded. Especially since you refuse to look at the parts of culture deemed 'hipster' that are productive of not only many subversive cultural practices but carry weight in social change - feminist/queer punk, global hip-hop/electro, new forms of pan-africanism that are emerging under the label 'hipster', third-world solidarity movements, among others. I'm sorry that you can only see the rich white remnants of a title that seems to encompass anything that assumes as its goal the challenging of dominant culture, but many others, including myself, find this attack to broad, undefined, and almost cliche in its presentation of the 'counter-culture'. And, by the way, hippies and punks were also white, mostly male-centered movements by rich young adults who had the 'privilege' of living some sort of 'free' life. FUCK YOU.