schweblog

Quite some time ago, I stumbled upon an article posted on an MP3 blog that decried the “Garden State effect”. For those of you not wanting to wade through an angst-ridden, quasi-philosophical diatribe against popular culture and all of its “evils”, I’ll paraphrase for you:

The Garden State effect originates from the blossoming popularity that many musicians enjoyed after having a song showcased in Zach Braff’s 2004 movie Garden State. Previously resting in musical obscurity, bands like The Shins, Iron & Wine, and Frou Frou all began getting a lot more attention from significantly more people. And the rest…the rest is best quoted:

But if they begin to enter the mainstream, that reason is soon under threat from the new ones presented to you. You can become alienated from your original link with the music far too easily. That explains a fear so common among music-lovers, the same anxiety I felt when I heard Joanna Newsom’s ‘This Side of the Blue’ on a television advert: my precious connection with the song - all the times I listened to it alone at night - was to be threatened. And the great, wonderful, essential part of music is that connection, if you feel it, you want it to last, you want to protect it. So we protect it with distrust, the only weapon we have.

These people–who I’d call proto-hipsters–represent the last great bastion of snobbishness in the world. Unable to establish a break with the uncleansed masses any other way, proto-hipsters relish in their off-the-grid exclusivity: they found the next cultural gem first, dammit, and they alone are entitled to claiming full enjoyment of it. Sure, the band/artist/trend might eventually be accepted into the wider conception of “cool”, but they were the pioneers of cool. They liked something long before it was cool to like it. They staked out a claim that is somehow more genuine and authentic than those after them because, their reasoning goes:

It is easy to get into music for the marketable reasons - that is why they are marketed. Advertising, taken up by a larger audience, makes no room for a personal emotional connection. Therefore, popular reasons challenge personal ones…We hold on very tightly to our connections with our favourite music, and distrust others who seem to love it for different reasons. It becomes increasingly less likely that others will experience the music in such a natural way.

This is where their reasoning gets sticky, though. Their conception of “advertising” (and “natural”) is very contrived–and for good reason. They’d be quick to dismiss the suggestion that a friend’s advice or a cheap flyer printed and distributed by the band are actual advertising. They are advertising, though, albeit in a less centralized, less “corporate” manner. What it boils down to is not the advertising itself, but the source of that advertising. This is the crux of staking that first musical claim, then, as a proto-hipster. You must (a) “discover” a band prior to its adoption into the mainstream and (b) locate the origin of that “discovery” somewhere that is not centralized, not corporate, and most certainly not (*shudder*) popular.

The problem with this approach is obvious and no doubt evident to those employing this claim to cool. But they’ve comfortably forced it into the back of their minds with all-night roadtrips to see a band no one has heard of and snarky smirks at people who admit to owning a CD from a band that enjoys airtime on MTV or ClearChannel radio stations. Regardless, the proto-hipsters’ claim to cool is no more “cool” than anything else. It’s a fad, as much as offshots and rebellion are fads. And really…The Ramones, while “punk” in musical style, were about as risque and revolutionary as Elvis Presley, relatively speaking.

In short, counterculture is an autoantonymous myth–a cultural fountain of youth that has not (and cannot) be found, most especially by those who seek it. Fighting the mainstream has become mainstream. Such is the essence of the very idea of a culture: it is all-encompassing. You cannot escape it. In short, it doesn’t matter if you spend late nights in smokey bars waiting for a band whose van broke down on the way to Boulder or if you religiously follow Shania Twain around the country. You’re all cool. And hip. And doing your part to contribute to what is “popular”, even if you’re trying to subvert it.