[PREV - COMPOSITION_UNITY_AND_CLUELESSNESS]    [TOP]

HIPSTERISM

                                              December 22, 2002

Philo Vance is portrayed as               
this intellectual effette              
snob, who's discursive,                   GREENE_MURDER
encyclopediac discourse
annoys the more
straight-forward
professional law-men he
hangs out with.

   Pretty clearly, Philo Vance  
   is supposed to be a hipster  
   of sorts, a guy who's up     
   on what's going down.        
                                
      He looks pretty ridiculous   
      by today's standards, but    
      yesterday's hipster always       Possible counter-argument:          
      looks like a self-deluded        Dorothy Sayer's Peter Whimsey, who  
      square by today's light.         holds up pretty well, in comparison.
                                    
                          STYLE_IMPAIRED

Might be interesting to
track the image of the
intellectual in pop                 intellectual?  
fiction, and the way it             hipster?        
mutates over time.                  connoisseur? 
                                    
                                       Maybe if I throw 
                                       enough crude synonyms 
James Bond fits into this              at this a concept 
continuum somewhere.                   will emerge. 

  John Steed and Emma Peel.


Austin Powers is supposed
to be some sort of spoof
of something though it's
hard to say of what.

  The James Coburn role "Flint"? 
     
  Lawrence Block's eternally                  
  wakeful Evan Tanner ("The                Not to be confused    
  Thief who Couldn't Sleep",               with "The Burglar    
  and so on).                              in the Closet"    
                                                         

In the mid-fifties, things 
*change* ... post-beat  
the "hipster" is named "hipster"
and the game goes underground. 




--------
[NEXT - KREBS]