To hip or not to hip

In August, culture-jamming publication Adbusters released the cover story, “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” an article that, since its release, has received more than 2,300 online comments – a lot more than most Adbusters cover stories.

At the heart of the article’s argument lays the claim that because hipsters find it so hard to define “hipsterism,” or even claim it as an identity marker, there is nothing beneath the surface of what can be argued as an emerging counterculture.

The article got my roommates and I into a vigorous discussion about the legitimacy of Adbusters, what it means to be a hipster and whether or not hipsters are taking part in creating a cultural movement.

All of these threads of discussion are challenged, however, by the fact there is a certain shying away from the term “hipster,” as it brings with it branding, stigma and misrepresentation.

Thus, there is an enormous blur between the hipsters of deconstructed living and the hipsters of adopted style and aesthetic inquiry.

In order to look closer at the hipster movement, one must undertake the dangerous task of examining the subculture’s initial stylistic iconography and what it might say about its ideology.

In true devil’s advocate style, the common identity markers of hipsters to those on the outside are many: neckerchiefs, ’80s vintage and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Now, one must look beneath the surface of these markers and deconstruct their meaning.

In researching these trends, I discovered that in 2002, the Pabst Brewing Company became confused but pleasantly surprised when extremely low sales of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer skyrocketed on the West Coast because of an increase in its appeal to indie and hipster scenes.

The low-priced beer, it is believed, developed into a symbol for urban, eclectic and, most importantly, sub-mainstream ideologies among these consumers, linking a stylistic choice in beer to a subversive political belief.

This is the most prominent ideological marker of a hipster that I can come up with – a deconstructed individual living as brandless as possible.

This idea, naturally, has become perverted by corporate stylists who know that the surface sells and that for every unique individual, there are four waiting to buy a product that resembles unique and call themselves hipsters. Thus, we see where the blur originates and where it can be deconstructed.

What I found most shocking about the article’s denunciation of the emerging counterculture was its disregard for the cultural moment.

One of my roommates pointed out that, like any cultural or artistic movement, you cannot decide what the outcome will be when you are examining the movement within its present status.

The term, “impressionism” was coined as a derogatory remark on Monet’s “Impression” series, but the dismissive critics of the time failed to realize that the impressionist movement opened up an entire toolbox of modernity for emerging visual artists.

Likewise, it is completely impossible to dismiss an all too hard-to-define artistic and social counterculture in the present when their ideologies are moving and their art is just on the horizon. It is too soon to decide whether the hipsters were vapid and pointless or a strong subversive force against our times.