enRoute


	ENROUTE TV ENROUTE FM MEDIA KIT AIR CANADA LINKS WRITERS' GUIDELINES

THE DEATH OF COOL (p. 2 of 3)

1 | 2 | 3 | JAN

And yes, on this slick surface where ideas skate from point to point, the lightest ideas may be observed to move the most quickly. Democratic freedoms, say, are heavy. But Avril Lavigne’s Wilkesboro Elementary School T-shirt from the "Sk8ter Boi" video may be observed to ripple the international meme pool (and eBay sales patterns) within about 48 hours. Thus do the "small, unique and ultrafashionable" places of the world begin to bear resemblance to one another. The white cube decor of the Kurt Geiger shoe store exactly like my hotel room. The burdifilek redesign of Danier Leather in Toronto strikingly similar to the new Four Seasons in Tokyo. Jim Lambie’s brilliant Zobop floor stripes on display at the Tate Britain strangely echoed in the new Ikea catalogue. "Prepare for the Unböring," quips the catalogue copy – no trace of irony there.

Of course, when everything starts looking the same, "böring" would be the better word for it. And since when did hipsters settle for such sameness? Don’t non-conformity, rebellion and the Dionysian willingness to offend the tastes of the mainstream define the concept of cool? Well, they once did. The trouble is there’s nobody to offend any more because the mainstream and the cool-stream have merged into one cultural soup the temperature of day-old bathwater.

A friend, former Face Magazine contributor and all-purpose culture junkie Adair Brouwer, loves to talk about this topic. "Cool was always previously defined by the separation between a hip underground – ‘us’ – and a very naff, uncool ‘them.’ By the mid-1990s, this entire division had been erased, wiped away, rubbed out."

Part of the reason is access. Technology has made it much easier to find out about new ideas. "You used to really work for coolness," Brouwer reminisces. "You’d have to find some obscure downtown record store that carried some obscure ’zine, which you’d then pore over like a sacred text. The Internet changed that."

But in past times, the mainstream could also be relied upon to be tacky. Olivia Newton-John. Cruise ships. The un-ironic tribute to Hollywood that was the Academy Awards. You could count on these mainstream phenomena to capture what Brouwer fondly remembers as "naffness in excelsior." Now Bryan Adams has a stylist and, God help us, it’s actually cool to be seen at the Academy Awards.

Nowhere in London do cool and naff fuse more evidently than at the Saatchi Gallery, with all its "scandalous" art and storied anti-establishmentarianism. Here you’ll find Damien Hirst’s cut-up pigs and cows, Ron Mueck’s Dead Dad and Marcus Harvey’s portrait of multiple kid killer and nazi/porno fan Myra Hindley, a work that is rendered by the skilful (if chilly) application of thousands of children’s handprints. Charles Saatchi, who built this collection, describes himself as a "neophiliac," one who gorges on the new. And, indeed, he has embraced many unproven artists over the years, just as he has embraced his media image as Patron to Rebels.

1 | 2 | 3 | JAN