Lost in Translation?

My journalism class interviewe the guy who wrote the Hipster Handbook last night. Since a good portion of the class is foreign, and also unfamiliar with Williamsburg - neither by reputation nor experience, we spent a bit of the time ahead of his arrival talking about what a hipster is. Which, of course, brought out only the most sketchy shorthand - skinny jeans, cool but not cool in the brand name way - a classmate asked me if they were like David Beckham and I could only say that they're kind of the opposite of David Beckham. Except that Beckham has a child named Brooklyn, so maybe this isn't true.

On one level, there was something illustrative about this - and maybe even something that will be useful for the 800 words I write about this guy for our assignment for Tuesday - hipsters, for as much as a certain segment of society (that I unquestionably belong to) has thought about them, felt familiar enough with what they are to use hipster in moderately derogatory terms, the definition - like so many categories of people (like, as I learned in grad school, "women") - is slippery, inexact and pretty tied to a certain cultural moment and perhaps, a few geographic places. Though I can't say that there aren't hipsters in, say, Brazil or France.

On another level - I wondered if maybe no one had done the research to find out what this guy wrote about - he did literally write the book on the topic - so it isn't too hard to find more information about what he is known for writing about by . . . reading what he's written. But, assuming that people tried to do research, but were still kind of baffled - I think we get to the point that always comes up when you do anything in the social sciences - it's hard to know anything about cultural phenomenon that are so obviously outside of your daily experience. And seeking out more information doesn't necessarily mean you win some thorough understanding - if anything, knowing only a little means that you get a full opinion about whether something - and this I think is particularly true of cultural markers that you can wear - is good or bad - whether it's neon spandex or the hijab - and then it's hard to dislodge, even if you realize that you're really interested in whatever you're learning about and try to do the hard work of getting a fuller, more complicated understanding. And for this, I was extremely grateful to the writer, since he was really clear about his own opinion - and about his perspective - which is sort of gently amused with a little bit of a class-conscious bite.

In the end, I have no idea if this translated to people who weren't familiar to begin with, but I think there was a chance that he did. And maybe a chance that social science - even (or maybe particularly) jokey, made up social science - has some value for daily life after all. . .