Awkward, poorly drawn, sloppy and childish images adorn an astonishing array of film posters. I have collected some examples here, and I'm sure there are many others. Perhaps it started with Napoleon Dynamite? The poster depicts a human hand literally bringing to life the tragically infantile background upon which our characters pose. The sky, a chunky mess of blue swatches, the grass, a mono-chromatic sea of pea-green. Nunchucks, a boy's bicycle, a Pegasus, and of course the infamous "Liger" all grace the scene, though are colorless. The scratched contours of their misshapen forms betray no allusion apropos realism.
Examining this stylistic trend across an array of popular culture, it seems omnipresent. I think of it like an explosion of junior high school notebook doodles across the width and breadth of that admittedly ill-defined and amorphous blob known as hipster culture. T-shirts, film posters, DVD boxes, Taco Bell applications, Hannah Montana board game boxes and tattoos all betray this single-minded obsession with the iconic doodles of junior high school. Stars, guitars, skulls and cross-bones, trees, lightning bolts, clouds, animals... An endless parade of clumsy art thrown like splatter paint against the inner eye of our collective hipster unconscious.
Ok, but isn't this just snobbish finger-pointing? Yes. But the difference here is that I'm not trying to make a qualitative judgment about this trend. I think it needs to be understood, and while I admit to turning my nose up to stuff like this much of the time, I will not do that here (this is a lie). So, when I use words like "awkward," "childish," "sloppy," etc., I do not mean them in their popular sense as derogatory, but in their literal sense as being intentionally aesthetically clumsy, evocative of childhood, and purposely ill-conceived and executed. I recognize that it looks like crap, but that it's
supposed to look like crap, and that that is kind of the point.
The hipster aesthetic looks like shit. That is, the hipster takes the rules of "sensible" fashion and art and flips them around as if to say, "hey, look at this! I am not obeying the commonly accepted visual rules of our society!" Ok. Let's wear wide horizontal striped apparel of contrasting colors. Let's wear skinny jeans that ride too low and cripple our posture. Let's bring back all those hideous extravagances of the 80's and bedizen ourselves in flamboyant spandex, eye bugging thick rimmed glasses, brown academic corduroy sweaters and so forth. Like every subculture, the hipster says "this is what I am" by essentially saying "this is what I'm not." I'm not like you. I will not look "good" for you, and further, I will demonstrate to you that the whole concept of "looking good" is a hegemonic fallacy. It is a tool of oppression used by rich white yuppie folks for whom the equally outrageous polo-shirt and Yukon Xterra is somehow deemed immune from public scorn. I will show you these things by being ugly. I will rub in your face my ugliness and reclaim it as beautiful. I will reappropriate the markers of powerlessness in the name of independence and free expression. I wear skinny jeans hear me roar.
So, ugliness is revolutionary. Nowhere is this better seen than in the spate of indie romantic comedy movies. What these movies have in common, beyond the aforementioned stylistic similarities of their movie posters, is that they feature the love-coupling of ugly people. The hipster indie movie decries the vulgar beauty standards of the A-list celebrities in favor of the more folksy and disarming physical appeal of more natural (and naturalized) bodies. Granted, Sandra Oh may be considered hot by most standards, but she is still an aberration in a film industry that only sexualizes young, predominantly white and blond, women. Old people are not shown having relationships in movies, and when they do it is hardly ever sexy. This goes doubly for old and
ugly people. In the movie
Happiness, for instance, the courtship of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Camryn Manheim is a remarkably uncomfortable one, and purposefully so. Their bodies simply should not exist as romantic leads in a film.
The ugliness of romantic leads mirrors the ugliness of the indie film poster generally. The indie movie poster is ugly because it does not follow the rules of convention. We are not supposed to be inundated with pinks, peaches, and pea-greens. Our color palates have been acclimated to strip mall America, and blanded down to only the most unoffensive spectrum of hues. Movie posters should be slick and glossy. There should be giant fucking explosions rocking our nuts off while big-breasted sluts bust out of their sweat-stained shirts for rippling piles of muscly man-flesh! At the very least, posters should look "nice." Grandma should be able to walk past and say, "hey, that looks like a good moving picture show. I think I'll pick me up a pack of Werthers Originals and catch the matinee." In sum, movie posters should be either the aesthetic equivalent of a term life-insurance commercial, or an ad for Mountain Dew. There are rules to follow and to not follow those rules marks you off as a rabble rousing punk upstart.
The crude and childish hipster movie poster disobeys another unspoken rule of the industry: "don't let your marketing show." Hey, this movie poster is drawn on a notebook! Look at that font, look how simple those drawings are, this isn't very professional! The title and tagline are done is chicken scratch or a pre-teen girl's looping cursive! There's not a team of graphic designers, taste makers, cool hunters, trend-spotters etc. involved in this production! It's just a simple little innocuous piece of yum yums for my taste buds to wrap themselves around. Yes. Perhaps it is a piece of yum yums. And perhaps it is sweet. But would it be overly paternal of me to suggest that this crap will rot our gums?
The crude, childish, cartoonish hipster movie poster says that it is just like me. It is uncontrived. It is
authentic. This claim of authenticity lies at the heart of the hipster zeitgeist. It claims for itself an authenticity that comes from an eternal childishness, a refusal to play by the rules. It says "I am not an authority. Look at this crummy movie poster I made."
But the very refusal of authority such tactics suggest actually imbue hipster culture with an extremely pervasive set of rules to follow. These prescriptions and methods of behaving are evident in the movie posters themselves, as well adorning the bodies and informing the opinions and tastes of those we commonly refer to as hipsters. One must eschew authority at all costs and in all its forms. That is why irony, satire and sarcasm fit the hipster so well. They are afraid to take a position on anything because doing so undermines the entire culture upon which they are built.
Authors like Douglas Haddow have argued that this is make makes hipsters the
"dead end of Western civilization." Unlike previous subcultures, the hipster will not consolidate their ephemeral tastes into a real oppositional posture. They borrow and replicate endlessly, but cannot produce something of their own. When something does come around that is singularly neat and original, it is best to simply copy, reproduce and reinterpret. There is nothing new under the sun after all, why bother looking?
These are nefarious portents of doom to be sure! I disagree with this assessment for the most part, but I do see the merits of Haddow's argument. The hipster does seem to be very shallowly obsessed with the ideas of childishness, powerlessness, simulation. Does this mean that a hipster will kick my dog down a flight of stairs, or stab grandma in the face with an icicle? Perhaps not, but it must mean
something right?
In lue of a nifty conclusion I'd just ask for your feedback. Is the hipster obsessed with childishness? Is this all a futile search for an authenticity that doesn't exist? Or, perhaps worse, is this a whole-hearted embrace of the idea that culture is an empty vacuum, simply there for the most shallowly reflexive referencing? Does this explosion of doodles mean anything at all? Am I just supremely annoyed by young folks in general? Do the aisles of my local Kohl's infest my head with rotting maggots of discontent that must be expunged periodically? Or maybe I'm just jealous. That's it. Tell me I'm just jealous. I am a fat guy after all and I'll never fit into those goddamn skinny jeans.
Examining this stylistic trend across an array of popular culture, it seems omnipresent. I think of it like an explosion of junior high school notebook doodles across the width and breadth of that admittedly ill-defined and amorphous blob known as hipster culture. T-shirts, film posters, DVD boxes, Taco Bell applications, Hannah Montana board game boxes and tattoos all betray this single-minded obsession with the iconic doodles of junior high school. Stars, guitars, skulls and cross-bones, trees, lightning bolts, clouds, animals... An endless parade of clumsy art thrown like splatter paint against the inner eye of our collective hipster unconscious.
Ok, but isn't this just snobbish finger-pointing? Yes. But the difference here is that I'm not trying to make a qualitative judgment about this trend. I think it needs to be understood, and while I admit to turning my nose up to stuff like this much of the time, I will not do that here (this is a lie). So, when I use words like "awkward," "childish," "sloppy," etc., I do not mean them in their popular sense as derogatory, but in their literal sense as being intentionally aesthetically clumsy, evocative of childhood, and purposely ill-conceived and executed. I recognize that it looks like crap, but that it's supposed to look like crap, and that that is kind of the point.
The hipster aesthetic looks like shit. That is, the hipster takes the rules of "sensible" fashion and art and flips them around as if to say, "hey, look at this! I am not obeying the commonly accepted visual rules of our society!" Ok. Let's wear wide horizontal striped apparel of contrasting colors. Let's wear skinny jeans that ride too low and cripple our posture. Let's bring back all those hideous extravagances of the 80's and bedizen ourselves in flamboyant spandex, eye bugging thick rimmed glasses, brown academic corduroy sweaters and so forth. Like every subculture, the hipster says "this is what I am" by essentially saying "this is what I'm not." I'm not like you. I will not look "good" for you, and further, I will demonstrate to you that the whole concept of "looking good" is a hegemonic fallacy. It is a tool of oppression used by rich white yuppie folks for whom the equally outrageous polo-shirt and Yukon Xterra is somehow deemed immune from public scorn. I will show you these things by being ugly. I will rub in your face my ugliness and reclaim it as beautiful. I will reappropriate the markers of powerlessness in the name of independence and free expression. I wear skinny jeans hear me roar.
So, ugliness is revolutionary. Nowhere is this better seen than in the spate of indie romantic comedy movies. What these movies have in common, beyond the aforementioned stylistic similarities of their movie posters, is that they feature the love-coupling of ugly people. The hipster indie movie decries the vulgar beauty standards of the A-list celebrities in favor of the more folksy and disarming physical appeal of more natural (and naturalized) bodies. Granted, Sandra Oh may be considered hot by most standards, but she is still an aberration in a film industry that only sexualizes young, predominantly white and blond, women. Old people are not shown having relationships in movies, and when they do it is hardly ever sexy. This goes doubly for old and ugly people. In the movie Happiness, for instance, the courtship of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Camryn Manheim is a remarkably uncomfortable one, and purposefully so. Their bodies simply should not exist as romantic leads in a film.
The ugliness of romantic leads mirrors the ugliness of the indie film poster generally. The indie movie poster is ugly because it does not follow the rules of convention. We are not supposed to be inundated with pinks, peaches, and pea-greens. Our color palates have been acclimated to strip mall America, and blanded down to only the most unoffensive spectrum of hues. Movie posters should be slick and glossy. There should be giant fucking explosions rocking our nuts off while big-breasted sluts bust out of their sweat-stained shirts for rippling piles of muscly man-flesh! At the very least, posters should look "nice." Grandma should be able to walk past and say, "hey, that looks like a good moving picture show. I think I'll pick me up a pack of Werthers Originals and catch the matinee." In sum, movie posters should be either the aesthetic equivalent of a term life-insurance commercial, or an ad for Mountain Dew. There are rules to follow and to not follow those rules marks you off as a rabble rousing punk upstart.
The crude and childish hipster movie poster disobeys another unspoken rule of the industry: "don't let your marketing show." Hey, this movie poster is drawn on a notebook! Look at that font, look how simple those drawings are, this isn't very professional! The title and tagline are done is chicken scratch or a pre-teen girl's looping cursive! There's not a team of graphic designers, taste makers, cool hunters, trend-spotters etc. involved in this production! It's just a simple little innocuous piece of yum yums for my taste buds to wrap themselves around. Yes. Perhaps it is a piece of yum yums. And perhaps it is sweet. But would it be overly paternal of me to suggest that this crap will rot our gums?
The crude, childish, cartoonish hipster movie poster says that it is just like me. It is uncontrived. It is authentic. This claim of authenticity lies at the heart of the hipster zeitgeist. It claims for itself an authenticity that comes from an eternal childishness, a refusal to play by the rules. It says "I am not an authority. Look at this crummy movie poster I made."
But the very refusal of authority such tactics suggest actually imbue hipster culture with an extremely pervasive set of rules to follow. These prescriptions and methods of behaving are evident in the movie posters themselves, as well adorning the bodies and informing the opinions and tastes of those we commonly refer to as hipsters. One must eschew authority at all costs and in all its forms. That is why irony, satire and sarcasm fit the hipster so well. They are afraid to take a position on anything because doing so undermines the entire culture upon which they are built.
Authors like Douglas Haddow have argued that this is make makes hipsters the "dead end of Western civilization." Unlike previous subcultures, the hipster will not consolidate their ephemeral tastes into a real oppositional posture. They borrow and replicate endlessly, but cannot produce something of their own. When something does come around that is singularly neat and original, it is best to simply copy, reproduce and reinterpret. There is nothing new under the sun after all, why bother looking?
These are nefarious portents of doom to be sure! I disagree with this assessment for the most part, but I do see the merits of Haddow's argument. The hipster does seem to be very shallowly obsessed with the ideas of childishness, powerlessness, simulation. Does this mean that a hipster will kick my dog down a flight of stairs, or stab grandma in the face with an icicle? Perhaps not, but it must mean something right?
In lue of a nifty conclusion I'd just ask for your feedback. Is the hipster obsessed with childishness? Is this all a futile search for an authenticity that doesn't exist? Or, perhaps worse, is this a whole-hearted embrace of the idea that culture is an empty vacuum, simply there for the most shallowly reflexive referencing? Does this explosion of doodles mean anything at all? Am I just supremely annoyed by young folks in general? Do the aisles of my local Kohl's infest my head with rotting maggots of discontent that must be expunged periodically? Or maybe I'm just jealous. That's it. Tell me I'm just jealous. I am a fat guy after all and I'll never fit into those goddamn skinny jeans.
Don't forget (500) Days of Summer :] This was a very well-thought out blog and I definitely agree with a lot of your points. I'm actually working on a paper for a rhetorical communication class on the culture of indie as seen in (the previously mentioned film). Would you mind if I referenced you?
ReplyDeleteStumbled across this on facebook, sorry if it's a bit late.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it's an obsession with childishness necessarily, but it does seem like a rejection of current cultural norms. I'm still not sure they're rejecting or embracing cynicism, but perhaps they're doing both?