There Is No Spirit In the Brightness of Your Clothes

Submitted by Wen on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 14:19

I went to a visual art party with my girlfriend Angela last weekend where a bunch of hipster looking kids in American Apparel V necks, tight jeans and bright colored t-shirts circled in the middle of the room, holding beers and cigarettes in hands. Their vision was fixed on some mysterious spot of the ceiling or the walls, as if they were already tired of the whole situation or that their blood alcohol level was so low that they couldn’t wait to go the after-party. One girl in an American Apparel grey dress, yellow cotton spandex stockings and red flats, insisted the vegan burger she wanted from the guy who was responsible for the barbeque, and ate it with only two pieces of lettuces back in her hipster circle. I told Angela, “That girl matched bright yellow with bright red! She’s brave!” Angela, who identifies with the metal scene, has always had certain bitterness and hostility towards the hipster music scene which relies mostly on computer-based techno mixing and sounds like Nintendo video games. One day I wore a fluorescent green t-shirt and a pair of white Keds, and was immediately accused by her, “You’re turning into a hipster! It scares me!” You know what? It scares me too.

We are living in a consumer culture that lacks of originality. This hipster subculture which was once based on the ideology of socialism and represented the spirit of anti-corporate and liberalism has been entirely consumed by capitalism. What have been left are the excessive individualism and the fashion-obsessed youth culture. In any street of the major cities in North America, you can see these hipsters who are marked by their tight jeans, cotton spandex leggings, vintage clothes, fake glasses and fixed-gear bikes, which is the only acceptable transportation form. This fashion style emerged from the middle-and-upper class, urban, largely white youngsters in the 90s. The V-neck shirts and Pabst Blue Ribbon which once symbolized the working-class spirit have been targeted by the consumer market, lost its original meanings in its excessive duplication. While the punk and hip-hop subcultures were already consumed out by the mainstream cultures, the youth culture in our generation has been replaced by the hipster subculture that lacks any political meanings. Underneath these seemly bright clothes there are really the corporate re-packaged reproductions of the old subcultures. Hipsters live for parties and after-parties, and after-after parties. They love to be photoed in the drunken dancing scene and portray the ultimate indifference but secretly cannot wait till the pictures being uploaded on the interned and have a perfect MySpace profile picture. I mean, who gives a shit about animal rights or queer activism when you have more than five thousand visits on your blog every day or more than 500 MySpcae friends? They are jobs for those losers who can’t get laid! The mainstream culture emphasizes too much on glamour, fashion, tanning salons, unearned wealth, and inflated egos. The continuous technology inventions focus on creating the perfect world of entertainment that circles around the individual—multi-functional cell phones, Wii, iPod…Entertain ME, oh yes. MySpace. The consumer culture instigates the youth to buy empty rebellions with capitals. Even the mainstream queer culture has become assimilationists’ performing stage. Gay male fashion-obsessed entertainment TV shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” are all giving out the message that: If you consume appropriately, who cares that you like sucking dicks!

We are in a generation that whatever we make look like mimics, whatever we do will be criticized, but we can’t stand to just sit watching. There was a white guy came to a QPOCA meeting last quarter and asked if he could stay for the discussion. While each of us was talking about our cultural identity as part of the introduction, he said he identified with the “biker” and “indie-music” cultures in Seattle with some subtle, very subtle, pride. I knew what made me uncomfortable at that moment was the unspoken white privileges. In this country people of color own almost none of these popular subcultures, besides the exotified “ethnic” foods and the over-fantasized Japanese consumer culture. We all know that there are a lot of good things about the bike communities and the so-called “indie-music,” but what we have to recognize is the class and racial privileges built within these trendy subcultures. While drinking too much in the parties or accidentally having crushes on some hipster girls, it is easy to forget the potential risks underneath the fashionable, fluorescent clothes.