"Cool" used to mean unique, spontaneous, compelling. The coolest kid was the one everyone wanted to be like but no one quite could, because her individuality was utterly distinct. |
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| Then cool changed. Marketers got
hold of it and reversed its meaning. Now you're cool is you are not unique
- if you have the look and feel that bears the unmistakable stamp of AmericaTM.
Hair by Paul Mitchell, Khakis by The Gap. Car by BMW. Attitude by Nike.
Pet phrases by Letterman. Politics by BIll Maher. Cool is the opiate of
our time, and over a couple of generations, we have grown dependent on it to maintain our
identities of inclusion. Legitimately cool people instinctively understand that the psychology of subservience - getting corporately seduced - is a chicken-ass way to live. Today, such people are an endangered species. What's cool now? Same as always: It's cool to rebel. But a lot of people who think they're rebelling, actually aren't. It's quite a trick the Culture Trust has pulled off, to offer, as The Baffler editor Tom Frank puts it, "Establishment and Resistance in one conveneient package." We think we're buying anarchy when what we're actually buying is just corporate-crafted conformity. We're buying a rebel template instead of creating our own. Let's face it: When you dress to the nines, drive to the max and order a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that costs more than a weekend in New England, you're just showing off. And, as Harvard economist Juliet Schor pointed out in the Overspent American, showing off in this way is, ultimately, a political act. An increasing number of people are growing uncomfortable with the gulf between the world's rich and poor. Ostentatiously splashing your money around simply draws attention to the disparity, and to your own position on the lucky high ground. It suggests a callousness, an inhumanity, a let's-just-rub-their-noses-in-it arrogance. Inegalitarianism and exclusiveness are not cool. "First" World opulence is not cool. A culture that keeps hyping people to consume is not cool. AmericaTM is not cool. And the people who fall for the hype are the worst kind of uncool: They're suckers. |
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The New Activism 01, July/Aug. 1999 Adbusters - credited to Kalle Lasn the way I read it, excerpted from Culture Jam - The Uncooling of AmericaTM. more at www.adbusters.org |
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