(2 of 8)
In its infinite pliancy, capitalism proved itself well suited to absorb whatever it was in hip that might fascinate consumers, while discarding the uncomfortable parts. For every counterculture, there emerged a corresponding sales counterculture. The appurtenances of hip -- Ray-Bans, leather jackets, this or that haircut -- are constantly sent scattershot across America, blurring the lines between the hip and the square. It was only a matter of time before espresso moved from Greenwich Village bongo bars to McDonald's. And did Ollie North really think he could summon up a lotus land of weirdos by claiming men wear earrings in the Clinton White House? He should check out the N.F.L.
But when hipness is embraced from the mainstream, much of the life gets squeezed from it. If the signs of hip -- goatees, pierced nipples and calf tattoos -- are everywhere, what's so hip about them? If the attitudes of hip -- the implacable cool, the insider's ironies or the in-your-face mania of the wild men and women possessed by their own truth -- are officially sponsored by the major media, what's so special? The sense that hipness has got to be a little shopworn can lead to a cross-generational discomfort, one shared by both the baby boomers trying to stretch out the adventure of youth by driving a Jeep Wagoneer and by the twentysomethings who wonder whether they are being led by their nose rings from one bogus trend to the next.
To be sure, there are still large stretches of pop culture for which hipness is beside the point: The Bridges of Madison County, The Lion King, almost anything by Wynonna Judd. And to be sure, the corruption of hipness does not mean that creativity itself is in any peril. In every other American garage there is a band plotting the next revolution; in every other American basement a desktop publisher is turning out a private magazine for her personal niche market. For the imaginative, in fact, hipness has always been irrelevant anyway. Such self-conscious artifacts of the hip sensibility as Bret Easton Ellis' novel Less Than Zero or Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, date badly in no time. If such writers as T. Coraghessan Boyle, such artists as Jenny Holzer or such choreographers as Bill T. Jones are hip, it's because they are attuned to rhythms deeper than the latest beat.
But at a time when the pavements are worn thin by Doc Martens, when every open door admits a file of backward baseball caps and soul patches, when jocks sell attitude and all of rock is supposed to be alternative -- hipness is bigger than General Motors. So big, in fact, that at this moment of triumph, when the ironies of Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman occupy the best time slots on television, and even the President's daughter is named after a Joni Mitchell song, hipness is giving off an arthritic creak. It's true that nothing is more difficult to pin down than the sensibility of an era, and nothing harder to trace with certainty than its rise and fall. But in a society so adept at distributing the very latest thing and bestowing an edge upon the most unremarkable consumer fodder -- Miles Davis wore khakis! -- it's impossible not to recognize that hip is losing its force, muddling its message, becoming just another sales pitch. Or a decoration on the edges of the most conventional ways of life.