The popular press characterize “our children and adolescent as “hyper-consumer,” spending approximately $23.4 billion and influencing an additional $485 billion of household purchases each year“ (McNeal 1999). I think we should be proud of ourself! As a very materialistic generation that gives quite a big importance to money, we have acquired our goal.
It’s true that if we compare the majority of youths today to the specific underground group of the 60s, the result will be that youths today are a lot more materialistic than hippies. But it makes no sense, we should instead compare an underground group to another underground group. Thought the hippies had a major impact on the whole society, they were only about 5 to 10% of the population. The closest example would be to compare hippies to hipsters of today. Hippies were into art, music and fashion; Hipsters are into art, music and fashion.
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| Arcade Fire |
As an art student, I identify to hipsterism and don’t see it as a pejorative term. Part of the movement can be described by people who buy clothes in thrift shops, instead of buying chain produced shirts in profit-obsessed corporations. There’s a great resemblance in the therms that “Wikipedia” uses to describe the fashion of hippies: “Much hippie clothing was self-made in defiance of corporate culture, and hippies often purchased their clothes from flea markets and second-hand shops”. Thought clothes are very material objets, the idea of those two underground movement is to make a concerned choice and not to participate in the madness of industrialization.
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| The Factory |
I still have to admit that the hipsters are a lot more materialistic than the hippies. We are now in a century dictated by the internet, and being part of the world means to be in possession of a smartphone/computer/ipod/television… then I would have to say that yes, materialism is a common part of my life, since I have all that stuff. But, I find that those objets are not just materials, they are a portal to the actual world. In that other dimension, we have unlimited access to music, art, images, articles, friends… Aren’t those the same things that were at the centre of the 1960’s counterculture?
Youths of today have to adapt, in a materialist way, to be part of the cultural innovations. Which means, that artists view have to pass through the computer, for them to have an impact. In other words, the painter’s brush is not important compared to the painting itself.
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