"Cool" is a word that appears very well in the current cultural context. But the interpretation of "cool" culture has always been superficial, and there is little eye-catching research. Recently, Canadian scholar Joel Dynastein published a new book, The Origin of Cool.
In this interesting book, he has a detailed review of the "cool" context. As the book points out, the "cool" culture itself is closely related to the changes in modern Western society, politics and culture. For the most part, it all plays a role in a force that comes from the margins or is off-mainstream.
The "cool" culture that exists in many current cultural circles is mostly in the limited recognition of consumerism. Those stars who are trained in Korean trainee companies may know how to pose "cool"; and in the rap circle, a group that is considered to know "cool", we find the spread of aggressive masculinity and their symbolic use of "cool" culture; in various "cool men and cool women" such as Douyin, Kuaishou or Xiaohongshu, rather than showing their own personality and temperament, it is better to say that in these highly commercially beneficial mass platforms, "cool" culture has long been on its back. It has become a cultural model for mass production in the era of mechanical reproduction. And what we know about it is always across a screen and caught up in its need for likes.
In the current bizarre social media, there is such a conflict. When the former rebellion moves to its opposite, how should we think about the rise, appropriation and reconstruction of a popular culture?
Written by | Shigeki
A contemporary image of "cool"
The modern "cool" culture of the West eventually spread rapidly to other cultures with globalization and the developed cultural industry in the West, and is often popular with many young groups because of its charming qualities. The intimate relationship between "cool" and young people is mostly determined by the position of the two in the mainstream social culture and structure, and the orthodox culture itself contains a strong patriarchal image, so we will see the very distinct "father-killing" complex hidden in the "cool" culture.
In the 1955 film Rebel without Cause, the melancholy, sensitive, and always ostracized Jim, played by James Dean, largely assumes the typical image of alienation from family and society, and foreshadows the dissatisfaction of these young people with their overly serious, orthodox, and domineering "fathers." Dynastan calls the cultural image created by James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis "American rebellious cool."
Jim, played by James Dean (left) in Rebel Without Cause (1955).
Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972).
In the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the coolness of youth first implied rebellion, confrontation with the system and cultural system constructed by tradition— the fathers — in the hope of creating a new personality and image of their own, individual; this pursuit of new personality reached its peak in the "hippie generation" that followed, and became the most central temperament in the "cool" culture that followed. In 1961's "Love in Paris," American youth fleeing on the banks of the Seine imagined life "elsewhere" (Rimbaud), and interestingly, French existentialist philosophical thought itself contained important elements in the construction of the "cool" culture that followed.
Stills from Paris Madness (1961).
In Camus's existentialist thought, Sisyphus is his most classic image: the individual's sense of the absurdity of the circumstances of existence, and the tragic resistance that opens up to it, which is infinite and seemingly doomed. Compared with the rebellious coolness of young Americans in the 1960s, Camus, who lived through World War II and played an important role in the Resistance, still appears heavier and more melancholy, just like the image he left behind in the black and white images he left for posterity: his eyebrows are deeply locked and his face is serious. But even so, to some extent, they can still find the core that connects with each other, that is, the yearning and pursuit of individual freedom and individuality.
Camus
The "cool" culture constructed by young people in the West in the 1950s and 1960s has since changed with the new social and cultural status quo, but at its core has always been the main reason why it has been welcomed and accepted by young people, especially those who are not in the West. And when these cultures appear at a special moment, it often quickly becomes the ideological resources and living styles that young people are fascinated by, such as the young groups at the beginning of the reform and opening up in the last century, who imitated Western dress, hairstyles and hobbies to show a new possibility of life and personality that was different from their parents, thus making the art, rock and roll and literature of that time, which were closely related to young people, appear new.
A "cool" culture of cross-cultural flow
In 2002, Chunshu, a girl who dropped out of school, published a novel called Beijing Doll, subtitled "Confessions of Cruel Youth of a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl." On the cover of his novel, the girl with the short hair cut sits on the legs of Erlang, looking at the reader proudly and very confrontationally; and the whole photo style Pop is very much in line with the temperament she hopes to convey. On the edge of the cover, the English title of the book is "I, Seventeen, Badness Girl"... The entire novel, from its design and binding to its content, reveals a strong subversive temperament, and perhaps in order to echo the image of the rebellious and bad girl "Haruki" written by the media, many people treat the novel as the author's autobiography.
"Beijing Doll", author: Chunshu, edition: Motie Books| Yuanfang Publishing House, May 2002
Chunshu is arguably the most representative image of the "bad girl" in China at the beginning of the 21st century, in her novels, the girl drops out of school, rebels and is bold in sex and love, and her image is even more subversive of the traditional requirements for girls, rampage in a school full of imprisonment and norms. The image of Haruki in the media is equally avant-garde and fashionable, and the female figure with short pink hair, sunglasses and black leather on the cover of her 2013 poetry collection "The Poetry of Haruki" still continues the punk temperament of her appearance in Time magazine in the United States. Perhaps in order to chase the Japanese "cruel youth" movies and literature that were popular in Japan at that time, Haruki's image in the media and his novels was biased towards "bad girls", but perhaps a more accurate statement should be "cool girl". What Haruka's work and her image reveals is not so much the cruelty of Japanese youth—it tends to carry a more gloomy, restrained beauty of the Orient—but rather her thoughts and lifestyles derive more from Western punk, rock and cool culture. Her anger is outward, blatant and targeted, suggesting an explosion of new and courageous power in this aging social atmosphere.
The image of the spring tree has rarely been inherited since then, or only exists in certain circles and groups. But the main reason behind it is still accompanied by social changes, especially the development of the market economy and the rise of consumer culture, so that cool culture or once quite a rather stubborn cultural form has gradually been commodified or expelled to the margins (such as rock and roll). Han Han, who was once a well-known "bad boy" in the country, has now begun to repeatedly consume the images he constructed and accumulated in his films, and Han Han in the "Triple Door" period is indeed cool, with long hair, dashing dropouts, and many clichés and clichés can often be ruthlessly punctured like the boys in "The King's New Clothes". But this "coolness" itself does not seem to ultimately become the style of its life and thought, or to change with new circumstances.
To a large extent, this seems to be the transformation of the "cool" culture as a cross-cultural flow in a foreign land, that is, our understanding or acceptance of it as a certain life or individual philosophy and style of existence in the West seems to be always in an instrumental or very time-sensitive state.
It seems to be just a growth state born in conjunction with the rebellious period of adolescence, and once this stage is passed or "grown", this "coolness" will disappear and be replaced by a return to the patriarchal lineage, perfectly completing this image and existential transformation. The intimacy between cool and young people is fixed here, and "cool culture" seems to become a culture exclusive to specific young people, while the "cool" of mature people is often seen as disrespectful or excessively frivolous for the sake of old age.
"Cool" became part of the mainstream culture
"Cool" is understood as a performance, a masquerade, a temporary mediation or confrontational tool in response to family, school, or social discipline. This may have something to do with our understanding of "cool". But as Dinastan points out in His Origins of Cool, "cool" itself is an open and complete philosophy, a state of being, and a style of life; and "cool people" themselves are an individual form of existence, not some veil covering the individual. It is only through this understanding that we can better appreciate or recognize what a "hippie" is and what it means to be a "cool person."
The Origin of Cool, by Joel Dynastein, translated by Cong Wang, edition: Zhejiang University Press, March 2022
It is precisely the limited understanding of "cool", coupled with the absorption and re-creation marketing of traditional fringe ideas or styles by consumerism, that makes "cool" appear new changes after the first decade of the 21st century. "Cool" began to become part of mainstream culture, especially in Western Hollywood movies, superhero culture and star images, along with "everything solid" being lightened, become ubiquitous and popular in the tide of consumption, and the melancholy of "cool" culture and the symptoms of social repression began to be replaced by a more positive, light and indifferent temperament.
"Be Cool" means "Hey, don't take it too seriously, don't be too serious", "Why so serious"... Different from the melancholy symptoms of social repression, contemporary "cool culture" changes the perception of social repression, thereby adjusting the way it is handled and coped with.
Stills from Rebellion Without Cause (1955).
And because of this, in the face of heavy, oppressive and institutional problems, young people have begun to choose a more tortuous way to deal with the problems they have caused themselves. They no longer choose to be melancholy or distressed by the awareness of the strength of repression and discipline, and the inability of the individual to do anything about it, and they choose a more relaxed and fun way to fight guerrilla warfare with them. Because only in this way can we avoid the absolute harm of the former to isolated individuals, and at the same time choose to protect ourselves while solving these step-by-step challenges in a more "light" way: Have fun with it!
Stills from The Dark Knight (2008).
These seemingly negative "cool" behaviors and new lifestyles themselves contain great confrontational power, and we can see the power of this new "cool" culture in Nolan's "Dark Knight" clown image. Is the Joker's philosophy of life "Why so serious"? He confronted the traditional order of good and evil and morality with a cynical attitude, and with his nietzschean nihilism, he struck down on our ideas as the cornerstone of civilization and pointed out their hypocrisy and fragility.
The re-creation of "cool"
Compared to the more traditional and typical superhero Batman, the Joker is "cool", and he pushes the melancholy, confrontation and nudge in it to the extreme, resulting in an inevitable nothingness: everything can be "happy", and eventually it will inevitably lead to the darkness of silence. And this is precisely what existential coolness resists and opposes, and the untamed "cool" itself is a means to create a new individual existence and way of life, rather than the dissolution and destruction of the individual and the group life of its inevitable needs.
The Joker is the ultimate of "cool", and he truly shows the meaning of the word "cool" Chinese itself, that is, overflowing, and going to the extreme, which leads to cruelty and tyranny. The contemporary "coolness" we emphasize here is always to show that young people have adopted another way of facing problems compared to their predecessors they admired. The unrestrained and bitter young people in Kerouac's On the Road eventually discover the oppressive nature of the "image of the Father" and thus choose the life they want. And those "cool guys" – especially "cool guys" – are often not the young people we see today in various Rap circles who like to show off their aggressive masculinity, and most of them show their femininity in their melancholy and pain.
"On the Road", author: Jack Kerouac, translator: Chen Jie, version: Big Fish Library| Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, January 2020
It is also this that we find that "cool" itself is a rebellion against traditional hegemonic masculinity, which suppresses the right of men as complete people to enrich their emotions and encounter psychological trauma and need to show and tell, resulting in them finally becoming cold and silent "father images". Interestingly, neither Marlon Brando nor Elvis has ever played the role of having a father on screen, and James Dean, in all three of his films, struggles with a highly repressive and disciplined father, whether the father figure is real or imaginary.
The "cool" culture that exists in many of today's cultural circles is mostly left in consumerism and because of people's limited understanding of it. The stars who are trained at the Korean trainee company may know how to pose "cool" and have a familiar understanding of this image, but often lack lasting core support under their highly performative posture; and in the rap circle, a group that is considered to know "cool", we find the spread of aggressive masculinity and their symbolic use of "cool" culture; in addition, in various "cool men and cool women" such as Douyin, Kuaishou or Xiaohongshu, Rather than showing a certain personality and temperament of their own, it is better to say that in these mass platforms with great commercial interests, the "cool" culture has long since come to its back and become a cultural model for mass production in the era of mechanical reproduction. And what we know about it is always across a screen and caught up in its need for likes.
"Be Cool & Have Fun" may be a slogan for contemporary "cool" culture, but we can't just take it literally. It is not so much a slogan as it is an individual philosophy of existence, a style of life, an idea of new social relations and the world.
In Dynastein's "cool" cultural changes after World War II, we find that from jazz and film noir onwards, the form of "cool" often evolves with the times, but even so, it always symbolizes a kind of alienated and alienated existence. Yet it may be the marginalized, excluded groups that construct the "cool" image and cultural history, which themselves symbolize the symptoms of the socio-political environment in which they live.
Stills from Joker (2019).
In the 2019 Film Joker by Todd Phillips, the "Joker" is not some kind of foreign disaster, but rather a symbolic image of Gotham's system's own problems. The new individual existence and living style created by "Cool" as a marginal group eventually gained its own independent and autonomous status, thus becoming a new cultural force, and being able to show its magnificent and fascinating influence in the subsequent global cultural exchange.