Rules Of The Game #14: The Death Of The Cool

[koganbot]

Latest column. Britney, Bowie, and the unavailability of cool.

The Rules Of The Game #14: The Death Of The Cool

Key sentence: "But where coolness - or any knowledge - stumbles is when it becomes the attribute of a particular class."

So what's been your experience with "cool"? Is there such a thing? What would it be now?

Links to previous columns. (And they've finally added the paragraph breaks to last week's column. Comments didn't make it through, however. LVW got the italics too, but missed them this week, and I'm not going to press the matter.) UPDATE: That link "to previous columns" no longer works, but I've got the whole set here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

(Also, here's a link to that Michael Ventura article I refer to, "Hear That Long Snake Moan," about the African sources of cool, and the New Orleans source of everything. Ventura cannot be accused of understating his case.)

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Around the age of 8 I was determined to be 'cool', however my interpretation of this was terribly skewed into 'having everyone like me'. I say terribly, because I had no idea how to go about this, and as soon as I started trying to be cool, everyone started HATING me (beforehand I had always received either genuine friendship or indifference). I lost what few friends I had and became thoroughly miserable for most of that school year until I stopped caring so much. My method of achieving coolness was deeply flawed: never showing enthusiasm, trying to appear as though nothing affected me for better or worse - this mutated into being highly defensive at all times & not trusting my own judgement. Arrrrrgh. I look back and think of all the grief I could have saved myself. It sounds cliched but as soon as I relaxed and stopped worrying whether people thought I was cool or not, I became much happier.

I don't think I could actively try to be 'cool', and be happy at the same time.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

(ps I really enjoyed this column!)

[koganbot]

Thank you!

[koganbot]

Ventura cannot be accused of understating his case.

(But speaking of hyperbole, I'm the one who wrote: "Now that Paris has been beaten down, Britney seems like the last remaining public figure who's not trying to say the right thing.")

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I would say Lily Allen still says what she wants (rather than what her label wants, or what Max Clifford wants). There's an element of immaturity in both her case and Britney's I think - most of us grown-ups are bound by social rules (be they useful or restrictive) that stop us putting our foot in it/offending potential customers/pointing at someone in the street and shouting 'MUMMY WHY IS HE WALKING FUNNY?'. As cultural icons/opinion-makers/wannabee politicans, pop stars used to have more freedom in what they said and to whom. Now pop stars have to be businessmen/women first, otherwise they lose their precarious position on the ever-shrinking soapbox and have to make way for the label's latest signing. Luckily for Lily, her record sales depend entirely on the quantity of her gobbyness, not what she is actually saying.

[koganbot]

Yup, Lily pretty much says what she wants, so do many others, I'm sure. But I get the feeling from Lily - used to read her MySpace page regularly - that she's spontaneous and warm-hearted, but she has discernment to go along with her warm-heartedness, that she wouldn't go "Mummy why is he walking funny?" and that when she snaps at something, it's 'cause she thinks the target has some power and authority that needs skewering (OK, maybe she's tough on her little brother and certain old grannys, but she correctly sees people like them as using their problems to take advantage of others). I also think she might well be an alcoholic, so the alcohol and her youthfulness and spontaneity get in the way of her judgment. But I think she basically knows the social rules. Should be interesting what she does next, because she's getting pushed into a role that accentuates her outrageousness, and at some point she's probably going to call bullshit on that.

Whereas Britney... as I said, I don't know. I imagine there's some intelligence and wisdom in all her acting out, but also a lot of childishness, and maybe some deeper disturbance. I mean, maybe she just forgot to put on her undies that day. But really, we shouldn't trust anything the tabs are saying.

[koganbot]

Also think Lily's record sales have something to do with her having gobs of talent: sparkle in her singing and beauty in the tunes.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Well there is that, too. However Cassie also has sparkle & beauty, but has sold approx 12 records over here because she hasn't been shouting about it all over town to anyone who'll listen, or made the pages of gossip columns with (clearly fabricated yet still entertaining) stories about spats with Peaches Geldof that of course have 0 to do with her music.

[koganbot]

Yeah, I have sparkle and beauty too, and how's my book doing in the UK? "Only 1 left in stock - order soon." Harrumph.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Clearly you need to start some beef in a trendy London nightspot whilst wearing a vintage dress :)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I still don't quite trust people when they go on and on and on about how uncool they are and how they don't try to be cool and aren't bothered...it seems to be saying "I am very cool indeed" but just using different criteria (subtext: oh look at all those fashion victims who try so hard to be scene, aren't they uncool").

I have too much suspicion, and love/hate relationship with Shoreditch, to be stereotypically London-cool? But people call me a hipster and who am I to argue. I dunno. I think I'm cool, anyway.

The Death Of The Uncool

[koganbot]

Well, yeah, that's another problem, people who think they're being defiantly uncool, which usually translates into drabness and stupidity.

But I wouldn't know how to be uncool any more than I'd know how to be cool.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I agree that people can try too hard to be uncool as well as cool. It's what makes the words redundant (although they are meaningful because so much revolves around them, and not just for teenagers) - whatever you try to be, you must think it's cool or you wouldn't try. Therefore I don't think we should ever criticise people for wanting to be cool, but we can definitely criticise people for having bad taste in their choice of what to see as cool, or for trying to be what other people say is cool rather than what they individually aspire to.

A fan of the Washington Post style section speaks

[koganbot]

My brother, Richard, writes:

Frank, I experienced mid-sixties "cool" the way you did, and reacted the same way, too - I wanted no part of it; it was the refuge of people who had nothing to offer, and who denigrated anyone who tried (successfully or not). I think coolness is still equated with the cutting edges, the put downs. But I don't think it is dead, I merely think it has made its way to the Style pages of the Washington Post. Nan and I regularly bemoan the fact that their movie editors are too cool to like movies. It is not that have such refined sensibilities that a movie has to be truly excellent to earn high praise; it is not that they are tough but fair graders. It is that they give the overwhelming impression of disliking the whole experience of going to movies, so that only the truly outré can move them out of their cool lethargy - they are too cool to care, but sufficiently snide to let us all know how cool they are. They are the "whatever..." crowd.

"Whatever" is the world's most insulting reaction to any of my statements, because it says that no matter what I opine or ask, it is not even worth considering; all my concerns are a waste of time. I don't and didn't see "cool" as grace under pressure, but as a complete reaction against even trying for anything that might be worthwhile - knowledge, involvement, love, passion, fear, failure, integrity, dissent, creation, solidarity, politics, art, empathy. I most specifically saw no aspect of knowledge in the attribute of coolness, other than the knowledge of how to portray indifference with style.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I am a bit behind and still on the column before this one, but I now want to know what my 'cultural class' is?