Why Hip is No Longer Hip

From CounterPunch:

For example, an online dictionary defines hip as

Hip: Also hep adj. hipper also hepper, hippest also hippest. Slang
1. Keenly aware of or knowledgeable about the latest trends or developments.
2. Very fashionable or stylish.

This could hardly be further from the use of the term in the 1940s and 1950s when its early use was at a peak.

In this case, the shift is not merely a historical curiosity but revealing of changes in the culture of younger Americans in the two periods.

For example, one definition of the earlier meaning noted:

Hipster, as used in the 1940s, referred to aficionados of jazz, in particular bebop, which became popular in the early 1940s. The hipster adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic humor, self-imposed poverty, and relaxed sexual codes.

In other words, a culture of alienation instead of one of fashion and style.

And

With the end of the Vietnam War, America soon found itself without a counterculture or - with a few exceptions - even a visible resistance by societal draft dodgers. The young -- in the best of times the most reliable harbinger of hope; in the worst of times, the most dismal sign of futility -- increasingly faced a culture that seemed impermeable and immutable. The establishment presented a stolid, unyielding, unthinking, unimaginative wall of bland certainty. It looked upon pain, aspiration and hope with indifference, and played out false and time-doomed fantasies to the mindless applause of its constituency.

The unalterable armies of the law became far more powerful and less forgiving. The price of careless or reckless rebellion became higher. Bohemia was bought and franchised. Even progressive organizations required a strategic plan, budget, and press kit before heading to the barricades. A school district in Maryland told its teachers not to include creativity or initiative in a student's grades because they were too hard to define. Hipness became a multinational industry and no one apparently thought twice about putting a headline on the cover of a magazine "for men of color" that declared "The Rebirth of Cool," exemplified by 50 pages of fashions by mostly white designers.

Today the closest thing to the former definition of hip is punk culture. Perhaps a little too manic in its music and aggressive in its fashion statement to please a Miles Davis or Jack Kerouac, but miles closer to that earlier definition of hip.

What difference does it make? Only this: America will most likely gain a new life when the young break dramatically away from the system that has left them in this miserable state. A fashionable rebellion is an oxymoron.

More here.

Does punk really exist in that sense anymore? Maybe it does somewhere, but as far as I can tell, punk, like everything else these days, has been totally commodified, just another look and attitude for weekend posing, just another store at the mall. One thing hipsters of the forties and fifties have over the alienated of today is that they weren't being drowned in the warped and distorted trappings of their antiestablishmentarianism by the corporate pop culture machine. That is, your leather jacket and blue jeans may very well mean you're cool, or your leather jacket and blue jeans may very well mean you're a plastic corporate tool with no taste or opinions--another thing going for the disaffected in bygone eras was that they knew each other, to some extent, by how they looked.

Back when I was a teacher, I was very conscious of the concept of "cool." I mean, that's a good idea when you're dealing with mobs of angry teens. Thanks to decades of the social conditioning known as advertising and mass media, teens are hip to being "cool." I knew that there was no way I could compete with any teen notions of "cool," so I just didn't try. For that matter, I had no desire to compete with such notions; generally, teen "cool" is tantamount to what they see on MTV, and emulating those carefully crafted corporate images is surely a sign of immaturity. Or stupidity. Instead, I just stuck to my own sense of aesthetics, and tried to appreciate theirs. My unapologetic iconoclasm paid off, I think, in that I feel I had the respect of most of my students, as both an educator, and as a fellow human being. That is, I was respected for being an individual, and appreciated for respecting my students' own individualities.

But that was back in the day. Since then all my former students have moved on into a world that offers little in terms of self-fulfillment. Some went to college and have been trained to be systems managers for the corporate state. Others went to work in the shitty service sector. A few of the lucky ones got good jobs in the local petrochemical plants, but those who stayed in Baytown have to suffer, along with their children, a toxic environment that has created a statistical blip in terms of local birth defects. All of them are probably a bit nervous about keeping their jobs and maintaining or improving the lifestyles they've built since high school. All of them have to live in a political reality in which the people they vote for don't give a shit about them. The good life is watching DVDs and reality shows and playing video games, maybe a trip to Padre or something if you've saved some money, but credit card bills are always pressing.

You can divide my former students into two groups, the disaffected, and those who haven't figured out yet that they are disaffected. Indeed, you can divide most Americans into these two groups. The modern corporate consumer state can take or leave us; it really doesn't matter. We don't matter. Just amuse yourselves, work hard, and shut up. Nobody cares what you think. And that's life in 21st century America. Kind of meaningless. Think I'm exaggerating? How many people do you know who are on medication for anxiety and/or depression? How many people do you know who ought to be on meds? Anxiety and depression are just industry-speak for alienation and disaffection. The corporate state is treating us all increasingly like rats in a cage. And we are behaving accordingly.

By that standard, we should all be hipsters in the traditional sense.

But the corporate state has denied us even that. The relentless cultural onslaught of the gigantic mass media machine rolls over all genuine grass roots culture. There is no refuge from it. No insulated cultural space from which to contemplate our drastic lot in life. No meaningful way to dress or speak or behave in terms of rebellion. All ideas from the past are sanitized, distorted, repackaged, and rammed down our throats. All potential ideas to be had are muted by the orgy of consumerism, or seized by the culture corporations and processed like the old ideas, as products. Cool now means square. So everything is square.

How can you resist such a society when rebellion itself is continually eaten up and made into a vital part of the very society against which you are rebelling? This is a world Fonzie never imagined.

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