Thursday, June 16, 2005
A Prayer For The Hipsters
So much hatred for hipsters. I've tried to heal the rift by reaching out to Aimee Plumley at the New York City Anti-Hipster Forum. I've tried making friends with the little yellow Brooklyn Kickballers. Yet still, the most common Google search terms that lead people to this blog are "i hate hipsters".
One of the strangest things about this phenomenon is the fact that many of those most fervent in their denunciation of hipsters are people who, to any outside observer, would qualify as hipsters themselves. Self-loathing, or some mixture of denial and projection, seems to be integral to the hipster ethos. No one wants to admit to thinking of himself or herself as a hipster, or if they do admit it, they have to publicly denounce that part of themselves as inauthentic: "phony", as Holden Caufield, Original Hipster (OH), would put it.
I've been thinking about how to capitalize on this trend or, preferably, to get people to lighten up about it. I don't particularly think of myself as a hipster (I'm in fucking law school and I wear fucking business casual to work), but I do live in Greenpoint and wear Elvis Costello glasses and play drunken kickball in the park, so whatever. I thought it might be funny to make and sell t-shirts with pro-hipster messages around Williamsburg: "I (heart) hipsters", or "I want to be a HIPSTER!!!", or "Want to be a HIPSTER? Ask me how!", or what have you. You know, kind of like the overly earnest explorations of the Hippy movement in the sixties, with square journalists going out and writing about "happenings" and "free love" and what it means to be "groovy". I have a kind of admiration for those efforts to "get it", insofar as they were something other than an attempt to commercialize an authentic cultural movement. I kind of want to subvert the whole hipster ethos -- which seems to be inherited from Bohemainism or, more generally, from exclusive subcultural movements through history -- that "if you have to ask, you'll never know". Hipsterism sees itself as a kind of Heisenbergian phenomenon whose nature changes as soon as it is observed: once the squares notice something, it's no longer hip, or as Indie Rock Pete would say, "Nothing is any good if other people like it". There's something valuable here -- moving targets are harder for commercial culture to co-opt -- but what about things that are genuinely good and life-affirming despite their simultaneous role as cultural signifiers of trendiness/commercially-exploited pop culture? I like playing kickball with my friends, regardless of whether everyone else is doing it. I am a nerd, with the electrical engineering degree from MIT to prove it, and I like being a nerd regardless of whether the hipsters have adopted Devo or Sid Vicious as that month's stylistic referent. I strive for earnest athleticism, regardless of whether it makes me look like a frat boy or a dork or a tool; I don't limit myself to hipster sports like bike-riding and kickball. I like kung fu: it's not funny, or ironic, or some kind of cultural reference with sideburns and afros and dubbed dialogue; it's a serious discipline and a way of life. Certain cultural signifiers attach to it, and they can be funny or nostalgic or aesthetically interesting or whatever, but they're only incidental to my reasons for studying there. To a pure hipster, the cultural signifiers are the core of an experience.
I think Aimee Plumley is right to denounce hipsterdom inasmuch as she identifies it with consumerism and a focus on cultural signifiers to the exclusion of actual experiential value. She and I both seem to be responding to the shallowness and, more, the meanness that permeates Williamsburg hipster culture. When Bohemianism/hipsterism stops being a political position -- a defense of living culture against commercial exploitation -- and starts to become a mechanism for enforcing social hierarchies around an arbitrary valued characteristic (trend-spotting), then it becomes toxic. The celebration of trend-spotting as the sine qua non of the hipster means that as soon as something is identified as hip, it ceases to be hip; thus the refusal of hipsters to admit to being hipsters, and their absurd game of pointing at fellow players in the trend game and calling "Hipster!".
This phenomenon seems closely related to art and fashion. The artist tries to bring new expressions into the world; the authentic thrill of these novelties is often what draws people into the hipster scene, which exists at the periphery of the world of the artist. Sometimes current art movements are denounced as retrograde, flawed, or simple-minded by emerging movements for ideological or aesthetic reasons; the hipster apes the artist in denouncing current trends, but the denunciation is divorced from any rationale -- it is denunciation as a pure status game. The fashion world seems to engage in this contest unabashedly, celebrating its arbitrary aristocracy and cruelly denouncing its incumbents. But the fashion ethos differs from the hipster ethos in that fashion at least has a vocabulary, design principles, and formal movements that rise and fall together; the hipster operates under a vow of silence as to his motivations, aesthetics, and ideals, and therefore finds himself completely alienated and in a state of constant anxiety over his social status.
Anyway. I think I now have a better idea for what I want to sell. I want to hand out prayer scrolls people can put up in their apartments, written up by the Hasids in Williamsburg to ward off the "artisen". From Harpers Magazine, March 2004 (translated from the Hebrew by Steven I. Weiss):
One of the strangest things about this phenomenon is the fact that many of those most fervent in their denunciation of hipsters are people who, to any outside observer, would qualify as hipsters themselves. Self-loathing, or some mixture of denial and projection, seems to be integral to the hipster ethos. No one wants to admit to thinking of himself or herself as a hipster, or if they do admit it, they have to publicly denounce that part of themselves as inauthentic: "phony", as Holden Caufield, Original Hipster (OH), would put it.
I've been thinking about how to capitalize on this trend or, preferably, to get people to lighten up about it. I don't particularly think of myself as a hipster (I'm in fucking law school and I wear fucking business casual to work), but I do live in Greenpoint and wear Elvis Costello glasses and play drunken kickball in the park, so whatever. I thought it might be funny to make and sell t-shirts with pro-hipster messages around Williamsburg: "I (heart) hipsters", or "I want to be a HIPSTER!!!", or "Want to be a HIPSTER? Ask me how!", or what have you. You know, kind of like the overly earnest explorations of the Hippy movement in the sixties, with square journalists going out and writing about "happenings" and "free love" and what it means to be "groovy". I have a kind of admiration for those efforts to "get it", insofar as they were something other than an attempt to commercialize an authentic cultural movement. I kind of want to subvert the whole hipster ethos -- which seems to be inherited from Bohemainism or, more generally, from exclusive subcultural movements through history -- that "if you have to ask, you'll never know". Hipsterism sees itself as a kind of Heisenbergian phenomenon whose nature changes as soon as it is observed: once the squares notice something, it's no longer hip, or as Indie Rock Pete would say, "Nothing is any good if other people like it". There's something valuable here -- moving targets are harder for commercial culture to co-opt -- but what about things that are genuinely good and life-affirming despite their simultaneous role as cultural signifiers of trendiness/commercially-exploited pop culture? I like playing kickball with my friends, regardless of whether everyone else is doing it. I am a nerd, with the electrical engineering degree from MIT to prove it, and I like being a nerd regardless of whether the hipsters have adopted Devo or Sid Vicious as that month's stylistic referent. I strive for earnest athleticism, regardless of whether it makes me look like a frat boy or a dork or a tool; I don't limit myself to hipster sports like bike-riding and kickball. I like kung fu: it's not funny, or ironic, or some kind of cultural reference with sideburns and afros and dubbed dialogue; it's a serious discipline and a way of life. Certain cultural signifiers attach to it, and they can be funny or nostalgic or aesthetically interesting or whatever, but they're only incidental to my reasons for studying there. To a pure hipster, the cultural signifiers are the core of an experience.
I think Aimee Plumley is right to denounce hipsterdom inasmuch as she identifies it with consumerism and a focus on cultural signifiers to the exclusion of actual experiential value. She and I both seem to be responding to the shallowness and, more, the meanness that permeates Williamsburg hipster culture. When Bohemianism/hipsterism stops being a political position -- a defense of living culture against commercial exploitation -- and starts to become a mechanism for enforcing social hierarchies around an arbitrary valued characteristic (trend-spotting), then it becomes toxic. The celebration of trend-spotting as the sine qua non of the hipster means that as soon as something is identified as hip, it ceases to be hip; thus the refusal of hipsters to admit to being hipsters, and their absurd game of pointing at fellow players in the trend game and calling "Hipster!".
This phenomenon seems closely related to art and fashion. The artist tries to bring new expressions into the world; the authentic thrill of these novelties is often what draws people into the hipster scene, which exists at the periphery of the world of the artist. Sometimes current art movements are denounced as retrograde, flawed, or simple-minded by emerging movements for ideological or aesthetic reasons; the hipster apes the artist in denouncing current trends, but the denunciation is divorced from any rationale -- it is denunciation as a pure status game. The fashion world seems to engage in this contest unabashedly, celebrating its arbitrary aristocracy and cruelly denouncing its incumbents. But the fashion ethos differs from the hipster ethos in that fashion at least has a vocabulary, design principles, and formal movements that rise and fall together; the hipster operates under a vow of silence as to his motivations, aesthetics, and ideals, and therefore finds himself completely alienated and in a state of constant anxiety over his social status.
Anyway. I think I now have a better idea for what I want to sell. I want to hand out prayer scrolls people can put up in their apartments, written up by the Hasids in Williamsburg to ward off the "artisen". From Harpers Magazine, March 2004 (translated from the Hebrew by Steven I. Weiss):
For the Protection of
Our City of Williamsburg
From the Plague of the Artists
Master of the Universe, have mercy upon us and upon the borders of our village and do not allow the persecution to come inside our home; please remove from upon us the plague of the artists, so that we shall not drown in evil waters, and so that they shall not come to our residence to ruin it.
Please place in the hearts of the homeowners that they should not build, God forbid, for these people, and strengthen their hearts so that they can withstand this difficult test and so that they will not sell for the lure of money.
Please, our Father God of Mercy, have mercy upon our generation that is weak, and remove this difficult test from these people, these immoral antagonists that by their doing will multiply, God forbid, the excruciating tests and the sight of the impurity and immorality that is growing in the world.
And here we live in fear that owing to the encroachment of these individuals upon our community we will not be able to teach our sons and daughters according to the methods of Israel.
Please, our Father of Mercy, for the sake of our fathers and our sages who gave their lives to allow religion to remain upon the lowly American soil, and for the sake of their merit, preserve the residence, do so for your love of those who came from the dust. Please, our Father of Mercy, do not give the aggressor the portion that you have acquired and that you have freed from slavery with your great strength.
And we know also, we know that we have no strength other than our mouths, and if we have brought on a decree from you, please repeal this harsh decree, because we lack strength and may not be able to withstand this difficult test, God forbid.
