Adbusters claims hipsters to be the Death of Western Civilization. Hyperbole, yes, but also navelgazing BS. Even though they may wear different clothes and sneer across lunch tables, Adbusters and Hipsters are cut from the same cloth. The culturejamming content the mag praises is lauded by the very hipsters they deride.
The thesis of the Adbusters argument is as follows: Ever since the end of WW2, Western subcultures have worked to subvert dominant paradigms and their oppression of art/love/race etc. As the power of punk and hip-hop lost their true pluck, the aesthetics of rebellion mashed up to create The Hipster. Alas this Hipster whirlpool is sterile like a mule, unable to create new content/Meaning, zombies subject to trends and adverts. Thus Western Civilization is toast, faced with “a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.”
Some truth there, but the sky aint falling.
Since we now live in the quickening of an instant era, anything that catches as cool will spread as fire. Unavoidable and certainly leads to repetition in NYC. But if we burn our fort, what does Adbusters truly expect us to do? Go East/3rdWorld and jack ‘culture’? Make the post-colonial claim that foreign lands are so much more authentic/ pure/real? Do something meaningful, be like Bono and um, ‘save’ Africa?
Just as ‘Alternative’ music became mainstream rock, “Counterculture” (as evinced by The Hipster) is now folded into mainstream culture. The singular Hipster aesthetic has ossified and is now no different from the uniform of a preppie/jock/hiphopper etc.. But the costume of tight jeans and a Keffiyeh is simply a collection of visual cues that signify membership to a group, just like baggy pants or pearl earrings. So Counterculture aint dead, it just might now be looking different.
Both the West and The World are currently living in an unprecedented state of remix and creation. There are more tools of authorship, identity and distribution than ever before – and these tools bring forth new sub and countercultures, ones that may have been ignored not only by the mainstream, but also by the dominant counterculture. Possibly even by Adbusters, who close their article with this strangled swan song.
We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
Good Heavens. Rather than cueing dirges, I wanna know why Adbusters is looking at the hipster to signify the progress or failure of Western Civ. Makes me think that the mag is well out of touch, lapping at the pool of cool irony and now indistinguishable from those they once tried to bust.
