The hipster’s origin story is much the same as the many other counter-cultural movements that have arisen in the last few decades. As such, most of the relevant history has already been examined in detail in other research. Jake Kinzey (2010, pp. 10-13) traces the hipster’s origins back to the Bohemians, who grew out of Paris after the French revolution. They were shaped by the sudden expansion of capitalism and, crucially, by the way that it drastically altered the economics of making art, shifting it away from the patronage system and into a competitive market economy. Like hipsters, the bohemians were frequently poor and cultivated an image of being “mad geniuses” who were apart from mainstream society. Next in Kinzey’s genealogy come the Avant-garde, who evolved in response to the further expansion of capitalist monopolies and imperialism, championing an approach that emphasised the importance of the real and the authentic, and sought to “eras[e] the boundaries between everyday life and art”. In the 1940s the word ‘hipster’ first entered the public lexicon as a name for African-American Jazz enthusiasts, who, much like the Bohemians, attempted to set themselves apart from society as a method of achieving status in a world that would otherwise grant them none (Broyard, 1948). The authenticity of Jazz music (particularly bebop, which was more cerebral and complex) was used as a currency to secure this status, but was ultimately co-opted by white hipsters who sought to experience its authenticity for themselves. Directly following this (and including many of those white hipsters) is the most important of the hipster’s ancestors, the Beat Generation. The Beats are crucial not because there is any real link between them and the contemporary hipster, but because hipsters have deliberately adopted the Beats10 as their progenitors. Kinzey explains accurately11 why the Beats fit so well into this role:
The Beats wanted nothing to do with the 1950s suburbanised hell-hole that America had become after world war II. Amidst McCarthy-Fordist-conformism they let it be known through their writing and lifestyle that they were rejecting the main steam and seeking “authenticity” which, from the 1950s onwards, became a dominant theme within subculture. The Beats began as a group of writers in New York City. Like the bohemians (and much of the Avant-garde) the Beats did not mind the gritty and dirty. (p.16)
10 Some members of the Lost Generation are also cast in this role, in particular F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Anatole Broyard (1948) refers to the original jazz hipsters as “the illegitimate son[s] of the Lost Generation”.
11 Kinzey fails to make note of the Beats’ singular importance to the hipster, indicating that their specific significance may be a relatively recent development. Kinzey’s book was published in 2010.
41 The real importance of the Beats has to do with two things: the body of work that they produced in a readily accessible language (and yet with plenty for the educated reader to discover) and the time in which they lived. The Beats, whose major figures were all American writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, produced a large body of work that transgressed the boundaries and offended the tastes of the “suburbanised hell-hole” of mainstream society in the search for that crucial authenticity. These books and poems, despite their age, are key texts in the contemporary hipster’s library, and many have recently been made into major films12 deliberately targeted at the hipster audience. The time period that the Beats inhabited is important because, in spite of the Beats’ negative reaction to its realties (the hipster obviously leaves things like McCarthyism out of their nostalgia), it is also the time period for which the hipster is most nostalgic.
The Beats therefore serve as a historical stand-in for the hipster, doing what the hipster likes to imagine that he or she might have done given the opportunity. The Beats’ criticisms of society are easily transferred to the present day, where many of the same problems apply, and can thereby be ignored in their historical context.
Various movements have arisen since in the same model – based around a key authenticity and the desire to escape or reform a corrupt society – the most obvious example of which would be Beats direct and more widespread successor, the hippie movement, but also including others such as punk, hip-hop and grunge. All of these are of interest to the hipster because they have a core of authenticity to be accessed and understood, but none appear to be regarded as direct ancestors in the way that the Beats are. The possible exception to this is if we view the hipster’s recent history as being tied to indie rock music13, in which case grunge can be considered to resemble an early hipster scene.
Although this thesis argues that the contemporary hipster refuses geographic specificity, it is also important to mention Williamsburg, New York, as a crucial incubator for hipster culture in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s (Kinzey, 2010). Because hipsters tend to raise real estate prices and gentrify neighbourhoods, Williamsburg is no longer especially relevant, having become too gentrified to be of interest to young hipsters, but other areas such as Bushwick, New York are now serving a similar purpose (Greif, 2010), although they are no longer strictly necessary in the way that Williamsburg once was. Hipsters began to appear in something resembling their current form in this area in the late 90’s.
This earlier model appears to have attracted little attention at the time, but began to gain momentum around the new millennium with an aesthetic that appropriated (ironically or otherwise) elements of
12 Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl was the subject of a 2010 film, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road was made into a film in 2012, and Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs’ And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks was adapted into Kill Your Darlings in 2013. All of these films starred major actors.
13 This approach may have had some merit in the past, but hipsters have generally decoupled themselves from the indie music scene in recent times. Although there is plenty of overlap, the two are distinctly separate.
42 white-trash and skate-punk culture. Since then the hipster has adopted and discarded a range of new influences and aesthetics, but has remained functionally the same, continuing to grow in influence.
1.8 Conclusion
It might not be unfair to say that, as with the flâneur, there is no accurate translation for the word hipster. The hipster is a specific reaction to the world that is driven by an outlook of sociology and semiotics, and which longs to view the world as a text to be analysed as such. Our idealised hipster, William Gibson’s fictional Cayce Pollard, gives us a sense of how it is to live in a world where semiotics is not only a theoretical approach but a physical force with a very real impact, and also shows us how the hipster wants to live. This worldview is inherently tied to a background that is most likely to be white, American and middle class, and a longing to find meaning in the history that this background offers. The hipster remains an evolving concept that refuses to name itself and refuses any attempt at a practical definition. Still, we can say a lot about the people who engage with it and advance its aims, and that is what this section was an attempt to do. These definitions are a snapshot in time, and while they are true at the time of writing, this may be the only time that they are true. Hipster culture detests stasis above all else. As such, we will now begin to look at the more structural elements of hipster culture, in the hopes of finding something more permanent.
43 Chapter Two