What is cool? Who is cool? What does it mean to act cool? Be cool? What’s the difference between cool and good? For that matter, what’s the difference between cool and bad? Cool is a value judgment, to be sure, and its relationship to other assessment measures and concepts, such as goodness or badness, is always relative to whom and what are being judged. So it’s subjective. What isn’t? But the invocation of cool is peculiarly powerful. Utterly powerful. And utterly intolerant of another approach. In fact, though fascism isn’t cool, cool is fascist. It is mercurial yet absolute. And it is a commanding socio-economic diagnosis. Cool draws borders between ingroups and outgroups, creating a caste system comprised of symbolic social pressure and what it can buy.
Since we live, create, and communicate symbolically—sharing our sense of reality symbolically—those who can roll with the punches of the constantly changing symbology of cool are seen to be the most adept at splitting the fine hairs of reality. They are, in other words, in tune, in the know. They are also—statistically—young. After all, this is the demographic going through the incumbent system of rebellion that requires its own symbology, or code, so as not to appear as directly confrontational. The stuff of that code is typically the stuff of cool. Of course, the irony is that the very tool of revolution against authoritarian, uncool parents is fascism itself.
But young people grow older. Cool gets co-opted; it mutates into mainstream. An anthem like Saved by Zero that called for material minimalism during the excess of the eighties becomes an advertisement for auto financing options twenty years later. Cool is a cycle, and its lyrics are migraine-inducing repetitive.
Interestingly however, the concept of cool, regardless of specific content or subject matter, has itself been co-opted. In other words, cool and its association with hip insurrection have been completely adopted by our capitalist system in order to make a buck. CAKE sings about this in their song, How Do You Afford Your Rock ‘n’ Roll Lifestyle, with the lyrics, “Excess ain’t rebelling / You’re drinking what they’re selling.” And in Pattern Recognition, William Gibson claims that cool is nothing more than the label given to an observable consumer trend. Certainly all one has to do is walk by the monochromatic uniform offered in any Gap store to see this idea demonstrated in all its lack of creative glory.
The ultimate casualty of fascism will always be creativity. And even the coolest cat would probably agree that’s not cool. So, if Mr. Gibson and CAKE are right, the most effective way to combat cool is to stop throwing money at it. Quite simply: no consumption, no trend. No trend, no cool. Of course, we can’t exactly stop consuming. But it is enticing to aim away from trends and thereby less of the fascism of our youth oriented exchange. Less fascism equals more voices heard. And more voices heard means more of what symbols can do—create uniquely.
Dana Speer 