Cool, The Underground and the Lifeblood of Capitalism
The pursuit of cool begins before we even remember thinking about cool. Thinking back to the earliest days of school and memory everyone remembers the cool kids. Often these kids were the older kids, the ones who were bigger, held more power and knew more. Cool is what everyone wanted to be. As people grow older the notion of cool becomes more refined and complex. The definition of coolness is tied strongly to counterculture which today is embodied by the vague but useful term “underground”. While coolness, counterculture and the underground tend to be defined in many ways by being the antithesis of mass society and the capitalism it represents, in many ways it is this very antithesis, this very rage against the machine that is the lifeblood of capitalism as we know it today. Cool might be at the bottom of everything we view as capitalistic today. Cool might be at the bottom of the counterculture movement that changed our society forever and the underground that serves as our mainstream alternative today. Yet it is difficult to say what exactly cool is. Cool is a unique and unquantifiable abstract that is forever changing colors and forms while still maintaining its status. Its definition does not rely on size, wealth, age, knowledge or any other more easily measured form of status. Yet in present society cool may have more to do with status than anything mentioned in the previous sentence. What is cool is ever changing. Once a person attains what is cool it is probably no longer cool. Cool is defined by those who are cool. Those who are cool are cool because they know what is cool. They are forever one step ahead of the masses that are continually playing catch up, continually making more purchases. To be cool is to be inside a specialized circle of knowledge, to be inside this circle without appearing to be in pursuit of the knowledge needed to be inside. Cool is a paradox, a maddening paradox of taste, trendsetting and the ever present conflict between reality, appearance and attitude. The common view of coolness is that of a dichotomy between hip and square as outlined by Norman Mailer. “The choice was clear for Mailer, as it would be for the rebels of the 1960s and the admen of the 1990s: ‘one is Hip or one is Square…, one is a rebel or one conforms” (Frank, 12). It is a logic that is simple yet very influential. Even though what is cool may change faster than can be kept track of the abstract notions of what is cool hold true even fifty years after Mailer outlined his own conceptions of being cool. Cool, or hip, includes sin over the square salvation, self over society, nihilism over authoritarianism, and even interestingly enough includes black over white. Norman Mailer’s idea of hip is essentially a myth, a created symbol of resistance, but that does not marginalize its importance. In fact, the mythical quality of hip ideals probably strengthened its influence as “the Hipster, an ‘American existentialist’ whose tastes for jazz, sex, drugs, and the slang and mores of black society constituted the best means of resisting the encroachments of Cold War oppression” (Frank, 12). Even though the superficial aspects of cool have changed over the decades, and even the weeks, “the deep structure of cool as rebellious nonconformity provides us with a surprisingly stable and enduring set of guidelines” (Heath, 193). In essence, coolness has become ingrained in our national psyche similar to the ideas of social mobility, inalienable rights and the pursuit of happiness. In fact, it could be said that cool “has become a social institution” (Heath, 193) that ties together and even enables all the other American ideals.
