Word: hipsters
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This semester’s mass-class, Professor Menand’s Art and Thought of the Cold War, included Anatole Broyard’s 1948 article “A Portrait of the Hipster,” the title of which conveys the gist of the remaining six pages. Examination, dissection, analysis, and historicization of cultural movements is hard to do, as they are unfolding and moving from individual to collective manifestations. Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” however, is the most popular cultural text by which we can begin a discourse...
...modern Hipster has no set definition, consistent with its legitimacy as an active cultural trend. The one near-universal symptom of Hipsterdom is the scorn with which it is treated by those most associated with it—be they the NYU-educated bakers and bike-messengers of Brooklyn (non-locals), or the documentarians of the scene itself, bloggers, journalists, musicians, and other productive agents. The refusal to self-identify is almost as crucial a feature as this: The singular societal entity that does not loath the Hipster as a manifestation of narcissistic pretention is the multi-national corporation...
...good way to establish a working definition of the contemporary Hipster is through comparison to past social movements that we now identify as counter-cultural, because that is how Hipsterdom understands itself and how it is marketed. The genealogical basis of today’s Hipster is in the Beat Generation. The Beat-Hipster’s legitimizing counter-cultural features were the unconventionality of their semi-nomadic lifestyle, the sexual openness, and commitment to expression freed from formal technique. The music, appropriated from Black Americans, was bebop. Most importantly the Beat-Hipsters were sincere...
...contemporary Hipster has a definite spatial prerogative involving dependable access to amenities required for a comfortable, relevant existence. The outplay of this has been a new wave of gentrification in American cities. There is gender and sexual flexibility in the metropolitan Hipster scene, but this comes with the relative safety of increased mainstream and corporate acceptance of queer identities, which the Beats did not have. The music of Hipsters is the mash-up, which rather than putting forth an original and challenging new style of music, plays off the popularity of different mainstream elements that produces something...
...tacos weren't even his idea. (A former co-worker's sister-in-law, Alice Shin, had read about a homemade version on a food blog and, as Kogi's publicist, helped hype them through masterful Twitter and website work, which turned the truck's mysterious whereabouts into a hipster happening.) Choi's amazing food has become one of the movement's signature successes. Kogi made $2 million in revenue in its first year, on checks averaging $13 per person. It has given rise to a number of copycat Korean-taco trucks and inspired the Baja Fresh chain...