Bricolage.

Today in our Television Genre lecture, Ms. Lecturer showed us examples of bricolage in the post-modern moment.This refers to the way in which cultural entities today appropriate and rearticulate signs from former movements.

In greater English sense, taking a whole bunch of popular culture and sticking it all over yourself. Examples of this phenomenom are Lady Gaga, the punk movement, MacGyver and the modern-day hipster.

I couldn't help smiling to myself. When hipster was mentioned, the audience began to murmur almost knowingly, and most of us bowed our heads in shame. We all know how the saying goes - if the  dress shirt fits , wear it.


                            Or something like that.

Geometry Lesson

A local conspiracy theory has found its way into Cape Town's after-dark warehouse of live music, Discotheque Fridays and cool-searching youth.


According to the claims of Facebook group Open Your Minds SA, the owners of popular nightclub The Assembly are members of the Illuminati, a secret society thought to be seated in the wings of powerful corporations and governments.

Using the club as a business front for otherwise conspiratory dealings, the rascals continue to sell two-for-one Zamaleks to bespectacled electroheads and imprint sublimial codes into their promotional posters as they hungrily pursue New World Order. 

Looks like an opportunity for another Dan Brownesque bestseller is on the way.

>Click to expand: Illuminati symbols of the pyramid and all-seeing eye often appear in the Assembly's stage set-up and promotional posters. And here I was thinking it was just the generic 'hipster triangle'...

Further reading: Mahala.co.za has a stab at it

The New Cool Kids' Table

We-are-awful

Finally, after years of pretentious hipsterism infecting the city bowl from the bowels upwards, there has been a come-uppance. And it's all in the name of charity, so it's 'nice' enough to avoid a tantrum from disgruntled city trendoids who take themselves far too seriously.

Just when the hipsters thought they could dictate the meaning of 'cool' to every a-store junkie from Kloof to Neighbourhood, some cheeky bastard started a spin-off website. Yes, Cape Town. Now YOU have a say. You get to decide what constitutes cool, and for the website's sub-24 hour run it's not doing too badly. Now you can laugh out loud at the hobo garb of hipsterdom, instead of sniggering to yourself behind your screen every time we-are-awesome 'features' a street kid with zero cred.


           The infinite search for cool has just gotten bigger.

Getting too Old for this

 

hipster drag

this photo proves that anyone can adopt the body and attitude of a hipster, if he or she tries hard enough. after all, trying too hard is what the hipster does best.

all you need to do is get a pair of non-prescription spectacles (bet your eyes aren't even bad enough for prescription lenses, you angsty bastards), cut your fringe or bangs in a most unflattering style, make a whole load of vain, douchey friends and get on the mailing list for untamed youth sessions at fiction. maybe get photo-whored by these scavenging 'social' photographers who seem to be infesting the scene like fruit flies to marmalade, 'making art' out of anti-art itself.

oh, and don't smile in photos. i did. but then again, i tried too hard.

exalt

this article was written back in 2009, when the cape town hipster possy was at its prime. Dylan Muhlenberg (whoever he is, he should run for Pres) exposes the pretentious douchery of our city's subverted youth, who bask in irony and live to 'emit vibe long enough for their poses to get flashed in the we-are-awesome famebulb.' they may as well throw parties in the bin, says one comment. this poison makes cevron look docile.

guerilla promotion? chip-shouldered loser complex? pure genius? whichever. it made me laugh quite a bit.

A is for Ageing

for now, i am going to remain on the rim of the city bowl and chuckle to myself at all this pretentious nonsense that remians the predominant discourse of trust-fund kids with spurred tattoo jobs and identity crises.

it boils down to this - or something like it.

                                                                original article here

jeans should be 'well tailored but unpretentious'

the laid-back 90s revived at paris men's week, 2009. the skinny jean of the mid-2000's has been ousted by the modest trouser of yesteryear, lazily paired with vintage shirt and washed linens. shows you that a man can be cool without dressing in skin-tight pants that leave little of the awkward male physique to our wandering imaginations.

what will the raging skinny jean club have to say about this?

hipster: a kind of trouser that sits on one's hipbones, often quite tight around the leg and butt.