HIP: The History
By John Leland
 illie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Kurt Cobain were all hip - can you spot
the similarities? The historical hip - as they are now - were self-declared glamourpusses who were wont to be spoiled brats, smug in the knowledge of their own golden fabulousness. At least, according to another self-serving hipster, John Leland, who has delivered the almighty word on what, if anything, Hip means.
In case you're wondering what all the fuss is about, this author has spun fashionable answers on hip's history for Spin, Details and the New York Times, and now, with the release of his book, 'Hip: The History', he probes deeper for a historical analysis that goes beyond the usual trendite studios, magazine racks and the latest hipster hangouts. Leland does in fact seem to know much about hip. He's read all the books, listened to all the music, seen all the movies. What more do you want?
The book's adjudications tone is set by its first chapter, an intro that reverberates with a mournful sense of the story of hip but is primarily about racial mixing - the key to the modern concept of hip. Hip, according to Leland, is a history of an American obsession, starting in West Africa, with the Wolof word "hepi" meaning "to open one's eyes" was at first a word used by Negro slaves to denote knowledge of things the white man didn't know about, and it came by whispers and gestures.
Leland's narratives put us in the middle of some of the most provocative scenes: minstrel shows, the beats and early hip-hop, making us hunt for meaning through the thicket of vague and confusing allusions and imagery. Yet, the book just ambiguous enough that on a quick read it sounds all precious and elitist. To Leland, cool and style are mere contributory aspects of hip that mingle and become metaphors for one another.
'Hip' is so thorough that it barely has to wave its hipster foundation under our noses, and we crave more. Hip, leland asserts, permeates mainstream daily life at the level of language, music, literature, sex, fashion, ego and commerce. Hip has shaped the way millions of us talk, dress, dance, make love or see ourselves in the mirror. Only a small fraction of the population at any time lives in full commitment to hip; for most of us, work, school, family or the alarm clock gets in the way.
The crowd-pleasing index reference, in which Leland tells us to check to see if our name is there, and apologizes if it's missing: "Somehow," he says, "it fell through one of the many holes in this book." He's not being so ironic, but merely stating the obvious in that cool and style are mere contributory aspects of hip, a much broader cultural phenomenon.
Hip manages to track hip through many manifestations, from Harlem and Raymond Chandler to Betty Boop and Bugs Bunny. "Hip rationalizes poor life choices; it squanders money, love, talent, lives," Leland writes, and the line conjures any number of icons such as Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Kurt Cobain. Hip operates on the margins of society and among its outcasts and outlaws -- poets, gays, blacks, Jews, gangsters, gangstas and drug addicts.
What's hip today is absorbed and becomes tomorrow's fashion - not just in the sense of punk's ripped jeans or hip-hop's XXL t-shirts, but in cultural and intellectual trends as well. Hip sells cars, soda, snowboards, skateboards, computers, booze, drugs, and cigarettes, CDs, shoes, shades and home accessories. Hip shapes how we drive, whom we admire and transforms forbidding neighbourhoods into unaffordable zones.
"We wouldn't think of Bugs Bunny as the classic hipster," Leland says of the Looney Tunes legend. "I think he taught so many Americans how to be hip. He switches genders, he sasses authority. Bugs does everything that we would tell our kids not to do." – B.J. | HIP: The History
More Hot Products
Couldn't find any other products |
Voice your opinion! Submit a reader review for HIP: The History. Click here |
|
|
|
MBO Toronto :: Products
