TRIBOS URBANAS
Tribos com barbas
Lucy Pepper
26/10/2014 / OBSERVADOR
Em Portugal, é impossível não perceber que as aparências são muitíssimo
importantes. Os olhares que começam nos pés, sobem até à cabeça despenteada, e
voltam aos pés -- são óbvios e constantes.
Na Grã-Bretanha,
o forasteiro pode levar algum tempo até perceber que as aparências são
importantes porque nunca sabemos se alguém está a olhar para nós…. É bom não
esquecer que nós, os britânicos, nunca nos olhamos nos olhos uns aos outros.
Desenvolvemos talentos especiais para olhar sem olhar. É uma espécie de olhar
ninja, e alguém mais distraído pode passar a vida acreditando que na
Grã-Bretanha ninguém liga à sua aparência. Mas, sim, ligam, e são tão severos a
julgar como em qualquer outra parte do mundo.
Em Portugal, é
impossível não perceber que as aparências são muitíssimo importantes. Os
olhares que começam nos pés, sobem até à cabeça despenteada, e voltam aos pés —
são óbvios e constantes.
O “scan” da
pessoa permite deduzir a idade, como está penteada ou não, e a que grupo
pertence, ou melhor, a que tribo. Nos dias que correm, já não é tão fácil, como
há cem anos, definir com toda a certeza a classe social ou a riqueza de uma
pessoa — o que, aliás, é bom. Hoje, no entanto, é fácil perceber a que tribo a
pessoa pertence. A tribo não indica a origem da pessoa, mas aquilo que ela
gostaria de ser.
Identificar as
tribos femininas é mais difícil do que identificar as tribos masculinas, porque
nós, as mulheres, temos imensas maneiras de nos vestirmos: casual ou informal,
vestido ou calças, mini-saias ou mini-calções, penteados bem penteados ou não,
colares, óculos, echarpes, malas e sapatos — tantos factores dos quais
deduzimos muita coisa sobre uma mulher. Quer ela ser vista como poeta feminista
a sério, ou alguém que só liga às compras? Pretende passar por boémia ou
limita-se, submissamente, a seguir os mandamentos divinos da moda deste ano,
fique-lhe bem ou mal? É sensata ou doida? Artística ou aborrecida com a vida? Tantas
tribos, e tanto tempo necessário que é necessário para perceber uma mulher. Se quisermos perceber.
Os homens são mil
vezes mais fáceis. As suas tribos são poucas. Por todas as razões
evolucionárias e sociológicas, os homens limitaram-se, para se exprimirem, às
calças, camisas e pelos na cara.
Uma das tribos
masculinas está neste momento a eclipsar todas as outras nas grandes cidades da
Europa. Conseguiram eclipsar os “betos”, com os seus chinos cor de creme, as
camisas azuis claras e os loafers (o uniforme de verão do “beto”). Estão até a
eclipsar os rapazes das calças a cair do rabo (no outro dia, vi-me atrás de um
senhor, dobrado para pegar numa caixa: fiquei muito grata por as cuecas dele
terem escrito “underwear”, senão não teria percebido). Sim, esta tribo está a
eclipsar também os meninos de t-shirts de bandas de música, com calças largas e
auriculares permanentemente enterrados nos ouvidos. Está, inclusivamente, a
eclipsar os homens de fatos brilhantes e sapatos bicudos.
Eles são os
“hipsters”. Os “hipsters” pretendem ser diferentes de todos os outros, mostrar
a todo o mundo que estão num caminho muito próprio, muito pessoal,
pós-industrial, pós-moderno, pós-irónico, muito maluquinhos, muito giros,
contra todos os establishments, futuristas, vanguardistas, artísticos. É isso
que parecem representar, em vez de qualquer causa, música, política ou ética
específicas…
E como exprimem
esta diferença?
Vestindo-se todos
da mesma maneira. Deixam crescer a mesma barba, usam as mesmas gangas skinny,
os mesmo óculos, pintam-se com as mesmas tatuagens, e rapam as cabeças ou têm a
mesma popa com a mesma risquinha irónica ao lado. Parecem uma banda de beatniks
dos anos 50 que entraram numa máquina de tempo, passaram o António Variações e
o WG Grace a caminho, ficaram todos inspirados para ter barbas maiores, mais
horríveis, como ninhos, e acabaram nos anos 2010s sem nada para dizer, a não
ser “somos diferentes!! adorem-nos! somos adoráveis!!!”
Acontece que não
os adoro. Irritam-me. Talvez porque aparecem sempre em nuvens de “hipsteria”. De
facto, é raro ver um só de cada vez, e os seus números estão a crescer como um
vírus. Irritam-me talvez por causa do seu ar de desprezo por quem não é
“diferente” como eles. Ou mais provavelmente, irritam-me porque me dão ideia de
que a coisa no mundo mais importante para eles, absolutamente acima de tudo, é
seu aspecto… Ora, o aspecto não é assim tão importante…
Já agora, onde
está a minha escova do cabelo?
(traduzido do
original inglês pela autora)
oh gosh ... now that hipsterdom is over ... what the
hell am I going to do with all these tattoos !?
O “post” seguinte foi publicado em : http://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.nl/2014/06/oh-gosh-now-that-hipsterdom-is-over.html
 |
A hipster on the streets of London
The end of the hipster: how flat caps and beards
stopped being so cool
Now
that cocktails in jam jars have made it to EastEnders, what's next for those
who would be 'alternative'?
Morwenna Ferrier
The Observer, Saturday 21 June 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/jun/22/end-of-the-hipster-flat-caps-and-beards
Meet Josh. Josh is a 30-year-old
artist/chef who lives in a converted warehouse in Hackney, east London
On paper, Josh is the archetypal hipster –
just don't call him one: "I don't hate the word hipster, and I don't hate
hipsters, but being a hipster doesn't mean anything any more. So God forbid
anyone calls me one."
At some point in the last few years, the
hipster changed. Or at least its definition did. What was once an umbrella term
for a counter-culture tribe of young creative types in (mostly) New York 's Williamsburg
and London
So what happened? Chris Sanderson,
futurologist and co-founder of trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory,
thinks it's simple: "The hipster died the minute we called him a hipster.
The word no longer had the same meaning."
Fuelling this was a report last month from
researchers at the University
of New South Wales
Sanderson thinks it's more a case of
evolving than dying. Talking to the Observer last week, he suggested there are
now two types of hipster: "Contemporary hipsters – the ones with the
beards we love to hate – and proto-hipsters, the real deal." And herein
lies the confusion.
"Historically, proto-hipsters have
been connoisseurs – people who deviate from the norm. Like hippies. Over the
years, though, they inspired a new generation of young urban types who turned
the notion of a hipster into a grossly commercial parody. These new hipsters
want to appear a certain way, to be seen to be doing certain things, but
without doing the research. So they appropriated the lifestyle and mindset of a
proto-hipster."
It's a definition neatly summarised in the
song Sunday, by Los Angeles
The problem is that it is now almost
impossible to differentiate between the two. "Hipsters are more interested
in following; proto-hipsters are more interested in leading. Yet they look the
same, so how are people to know the difference?"
This lack of visual disparity has probably
led to society's fondness for hipster-bashing. As Alex Miller, UK
It's an age-old scenario. In Distinction,
his 1979 report on the social logic of taste, French academic Pierre Bourdieu
wrote that "social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted
against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat". So our
inability to define a hipster merely fuels the enigma.
"And as you can imagine, this is
greatly exasperating to proto-hipsters," says Sanderson.
It hasn't always been like this. While the
definition of hipster hasn't altered vastly over the years, there was a time
when it was considered to be something both meaningful and specific.
The word was coined in the 1940s to define
someone who rejected societal norms – such as middle-class white people who
listened to jazz. Then came a reactive literary subculture, realised through
the work of beatniks such as Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. It was Norman
Mailer who attempted to define hipsters in his essay The White Negro as postwar
American white generation of rebels, disillusioned by war, who chose to
"divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that
uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self".
A decade later, we had the counter-culture
movement – hippies who carried their torch in a fairly self-explanatory
fashion, divorced from the mainstream. The word mostly vanished until the
1990s, when it was redefined so as to describe middle-class youths with an
interest in "the alternative".
In the "noughties", hipsters
became the stuff of parody, via Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's satire
Nathan Barley, which earmarked the "twats of Shoreditch". Nowadays,
though, anyone can appear to be a hipster provided they buy the right jeans.
From the twee Match.com adverts featuring hipster-style couples to the
cocktails served in jam jars at the trendy incomer bar the Albert in
EastEnders, "the idea of the hipster has been swallowed up by the
mainstream", says Sanderson.
Luke O'Neil, a Boston-based culture writer
for the online magazine Slate, says it is the same in the US
But while Miller agrees that hipster has
morphed into a negative term, it is less about the word and more about what it
represents: "Growing up, we just used other words – 'scenester' at
university, 'trendies' at school – and they mean the same. Hipster has simply
become a word which means the opposite of authentic."
 |
Double filtered flat-white coffee — because
single-filtering is for people who like Jim Davidson. Photograph: Carl
Court/AFP
Not everyone agrees. At Hoxton Bar and
Grill in east London , 24-year-old graduate Milly
identifies with hipsters: "I mean, that's why we all live in east London
Manny, a 28-year-old singer who has lived
in Dalston for more than five years, likes the sense of community: "Young
people haven't got jobs or work and they need it. It's like a tribe, like
goths. I hope hipsters aren't dead, because I just signed a year lease on my
flat."
Miller adds: "We've never written
about hipsters as a subculture at Vice because I don't think hipsters are a
subculture. However, I do appreciate that people like the idea of belonging to
something, so I suppose on that level the idea exists." As O'Neil
explains: "Whoever said [hipsters] wanted to be unique? I think it's more
about wanting to belong."
So what next? "I think hipsters will
have an overhaul. There will be a downturn in this skinny-jean, long-haired
feminised look over the next few years owing to the rise of the stronger female
role model," says Chris Sanderson." And in its place? "A more
macho look, almost to the point of caricature, in a bid for men to reinforce
their identity."
Perhaps this explains the phenomenon of
"normcore", a term coined by New
York
It sounds like a joke but, says Sanderson,
it might actually might be a thing: "It's the opposite of what people
think is hip now, but it's also very masculine – which ties in to the return to
blokeiness."
But for many, including Josh, the desire to
categorise people is infuriating. Arvida Byström is a Swedish-born,
London-based artist, photographer and model. Though sometimes identified as a
hipster aesthetically speaking, her work, which focuses on sexuality,
self-identity and contemporary feminism, would suggest she is much more than
that. Sanderson would describe her as "someone who leads not
follows".
She balks at the idea of being a hipster:
"I haven't been aware of people calling me a hipster. I certainly don't
identify as one. What is a hipster, anyway? It is such a general term. I don't even
know if they exist any more."
But as Josh says: "I don't see why you
can't just be a guy in east London
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
We’ve
reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a
self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all
prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality.
Douglas Haddow, 29 July 2008 / https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
I’m sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in
the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in the heart of the city’s
heroin district. In front of me stand a gang of hippiesh grunge-punk types, who
crowd around each other and collectively scoff at the smoking laws by sneaking
puffs of “fuck-you,” reveling in their perceived rebellion as the haggard,
staggering staff look on without the slightest concern.
The “DJ” is keystroking a selection of MP3s
off his MacBook, making a mix that sounds like he took a hatchet to a
collection of yesteryear billboard hits, from DMX to Dolly Parton, but mashed
up with a jittery techno backbeat.
“So… this is a hipster party?” I ask the
girl sitting next to me. She’s wearing big dangling earrings, an American
Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm
wool coat.
“Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of
the people here are total hipsters!”
“Are you a hipster?”
“Fuck no,” she says, laughing back the last
of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.
Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into
submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture
movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive
decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight
to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.
But after punk was plasticized and hip hop
lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of
“counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic
melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally
indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”
An artificial appropriation of different
styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western
civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to
create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While
previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their
elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the
doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
Hipsters
Take a stroll down the street in any major
North American or European city and you’ll be sure to see a speckle of
fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of
predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings,
fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh – initially
sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with
Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché
fashion accessory.
The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst
Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or
revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of
meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst
would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have
become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their
own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the
working class.
This obsession with “street-cred” reaches
its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the
fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have
brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.
Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are
connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global
vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of
creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog
cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke
parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits,
usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another
Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the
hipster almost universally loathed.
“These hipster zombies… are the idols of
the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory
real-estate agents,” wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article
entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.’ “And they must be buried for cool to be
reborn.”
With nothing to defend, uphold or even
embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is
this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a
global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western
counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of
individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from
their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate
other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.
Standing outside an art-party next to a
neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify
hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and
wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she
replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of
menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s
just…”
“Offensive?”
“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why
then you just shouldn’t even use it.”
“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight
after this party?”
“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”
Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice,
who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary
architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes,
whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over
a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.
“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is
used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t
getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids
for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he
says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”
Punks wear their tattered threads and
studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and
cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce
themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is
rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a
proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your
existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.
Hipsters
“He’s 17 and he lives for the scene!” a girl
whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall
in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He’s got a flipped-out,
do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee
and some popping high tops.
“Shoot me,” he demands, walking up,
cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different
angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I
show him the results.
“Rad, thanks,” he says, re-focusing on the
music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he
resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.
The dance floor at a hipster party looks
like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop
all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the
dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent
thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux
shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates
a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The
dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they
shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.
Perhaps the true motivation behind this
deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the
ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks,
flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone
worth momentarily immortalizing.
Noticing a few flickers of light splash out
from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking
part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off
their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It’s all
grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches,
“You’re not some club kid in New York
Hipsters
In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by
hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the
photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and
immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary,
they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find
their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.
What they may or may not know is that
“cool-hunters” will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they
dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to
co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters
are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged
cultural livelihood.
Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to
be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to
constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift
their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer
group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But
the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it
is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any
cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.
An amalgamation of its own history, the
youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The
cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation
and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated
maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s
well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal
failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain
existence and start over.
“If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a
fuck!” chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the
power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.
Dawn breaks and the last of the
after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling
out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back
from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs,
while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a
nearby condo development.
The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding
monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a
bright pink keffiyeh and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we
carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead
we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending
demise.
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.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário