Hangin’ ‘Round Hipsters

My friends and I have begun a psuedo book club. I say “psuedo” because we discuss more than books and in fact have yet to discuss. Rather, our topics have included, justifying the absence of god to methodists, deconstructing environmentalism from a purely biological viewpoint, and discussing Douglas Haddow’s “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization.” (Read it here.)

We ultimately decided that Haddow’s attempt to dismiss the hipster culture by following the cues of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” (1979). Unfortunately, he is not the writer Thompson is, nor does his attempt at New Journalism strengthen his article; in fact, his relaxed use of journalistic convention hurts his piece.

Haddow relates the culture’s aesthetic as worthless, advocates senseless violence, and innexplicably includes a quote from Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes which undermines the point he is trying to make. He quotes McInnes as saying, “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…I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”

Lou Reed’s Hangin’ ‘Round (Transformer; 1972) does well to to highlight a group of people who as McInnes says, “smell of agenda,” or perhaps Reed is the one who smells of an agenda. Instead of enjoying the current culture mileau he feels the need to attack it in a manner that makes him blind to the positives of the current culture - environmental awareness, general acceptance, and unbridled self fulfillment through social interaction. Not to mention the positive effect the consumerist culture that hipsters (as Haddow limitedly defines them) has on the economy.

Of course, the song could be interpreted in a manner that would put Reed in the shoes of Haddow. However, I like to think of it in a manner that Reed is speaking from the viewpoint of someone inside a given culture. And their desire to be left to their own devices rather than having others attempt to insert their own values, or the values they believe any social “movement” (I’m using the term liberally here) should have.

Lou Reed - Hangin’ ‘Round

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