"By our rebellions we are sometimes best known" |
In Hip: The History, John Leland explains who he believes qualifies as today’s American “hipster”. Some writers whom he lists as the first hipsters include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The reason for this being that, “[t]hese writers set down the intellectual framework for hip. Celebrating the individual and the nonconformist, advocating civil disobedience . . . the writers articulated a vision of hip that we now carry everywhere like an internal compass” (Leland 1). Leland’s idea of an American hipster is centered around several ideals including nonconformity, those who go against the norm and are disobedient to authority. Leland claims Emerson was “the first of major writers to take up [the] challenge” of defining the individual who rejects society (2). Leland explains, “Emerson considered society everywhere to be ‘in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,’ and preached a program of self-reliance and nonconformity” (2). Leland then continues on to explain how Thoreau became a hipster by “celebrat[ing] the individualist who does not keep pace with his companions ‘ because he hears a different drummer’” (3). It is by these writers and a few others that Leland formed his opinion around the American hipster. By his definition, Huck Finn also qualifies as an American hipster. Huck was able to see past the problem of society and past his deformed conscious to see what was right. In describing hipsters Leland writes, “Though we often think of these as discrete responses to the mainstream, they are really an ongoing part of what makes America American. They are footnotes; they belong to the story. By our rebellions we are sometimes best known” (6). Therefore, according to John Leland, the hippest people of America are those who rebel and refuse to conform to our twisted society. |
The "American Rebel Playlist" includes songs relating to Thoreau's original argument as well: