INTERESTING? Peruvian Limeno Hipsters

"Hipsterism - and it's immediate byproduct, hipster antipathy - is now a global phenomenon. "

One of the chapters of the book I am referring to a lot in my research ("What was the hipster? Sociological investigation") is tilted "Vampires of Lima". It basically says about the creation of a Peruvian hipsters, something that happened no longer than 2/3 years ago (as author says, the phenomenon is so new only because internet seems to be slower and more expensive over there).

Interesting . . .

HIPSTERS vs. INTERNET

Widespread use of the Internet is one the things that appears in the hipster criticism. It is being blamed for unification of fashion, different kinds of trends, culture in general;

"(Hipster is) linked to the widespread internet use, and the dwindling time in which a fashion moves from an expression from individual style to something photographed, blogged, reported on, turned into a trend, marketed and sold..."

What was the hipster? Sociological investigation.

"I think it goes way further than that," he says, "if you think of the sociological impact of the internet, which has led to this uniformity of taste, this homogenisation of a certain kind of coolness. It's scary because it spreads like a virus and it's hard to define yourself against. I think the very notion of the suburbs in the old-fashioned sense – that homogenised sprawl of corporate housing and malls – is like a metaphor for something much bigger."

Arcade Fire's Win Butler, The Observer, Sun 28 Nov

what is a modern HIPSTER

There are three definitions of a modern HIPSTER according to "What was the hipster? Sociological investigation."









All of them seem to have a few things in common;

term HIPSTER is always PEJORATIVE, this isn't a term people would apply to themselves;

"If subcultures always known snobs, and collectors, and connoisseurs, the character of the hipster's claim to knowledge may be somehow different."

What was the hipster? Sociological investigation.

the idea of PRIORISM - The hipster, both in black and white incarnations, in this essence had been about superior knowledge.
Anatole Broyard

This superior knowledge serves hipsters either as a self-assertion or as compensation.

"... hipster is actually identifying today a subculture of people who are already dominant. The hipster is that person, overlapping with declassing or declassifying groupings - the starving artists, th starving graduate student, the neo-bohemian, the vegan, the bicyclist or skate ounk, the would-be blue-collar or post-racial individual - who in fact aligns himself bith with rebel subculture and with dominant class, and opens up a poisonous conduit between the two."

What was the hipster? Sociological investigation.

"Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear t-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care."

Time, July 2009

"you know it when you see it"

Modern hipster is definitely characterized by a play of surfaces, a game of outward signification (“you know it when you see it”) and can be described by the following keywords;

skinny jeans

trucker hats

undershirts called wife beaters worn as outwear

the aesthetic of basement pornography (flash-lit Polaroids + fake wooden paneling)

aviator glasses

tube socks

the late Johnny Cash album produced by Rick Robin

tattoos

Vice magazine, (which moved from New York to Montreal in 1999)

American Apparel and Urban Outfitters, the boutique chains (that now sells lomo-cameras as a fashion accessory) that started in 1999

the hipster branding-consultancy-sneaker store called Alife, which also started in 1999

and Wlliamsburg as an example of urban neighborhood that has been taken over by the hipsters and the hipster aesthetic – that previously "belonged to" by so-called un-meltable ethnics -

Visual Victims - genesis of the HIPSTERISM

HIPSTER in the late 1940s was a black subcultural figure, who "liked hot jazz"

- best described in an essay published in 1948 by Anatole Broyard

- it is also being mentioned Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"



HIPSTER in the 1950s was a white subcultural figure, aspiring to achieve the "coolness" of black Americans

- "The White Negro" by Norman Mailer published in the 1957

- the 1959 book titled "Jazz Scene" by Eric Hobsbawm (Francis Newton)

- "Howl" by Alan Ginsberg -> Beat generation of 1950s San Francisco



HIPSTER post-1999:

a person that belongs to a SUBCULTURE that is already DOMINANT (“the starving artist, the starving graduate student, the neo-bohemian, the vegan or bicyclist or skate, the would-be blue collar or post-racial individual – who in fact belongs to both rebel subculture and the dominant class, and opens up a poisonous bridge between the two.”)

- "The Hipster Handbook" by Robert Lanham published in 2003

- 2010 "What was the hipster? A sociological investigation" by n+1 Foundation