THE HIPSTER SUBCULTURE AND ITS REPRESENTATION IN LENA DUNHAM’S TV SERIES GIRLS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2021.i25.12Keywords:
Hipster, Lena Dunham's Girls, subculture, TV series, millennialsAbstract
Hipsters are considered by specialists as one of the most relevant American subcultures at present. However, they also agree in recognising that the term hipster is notoriously difficult to define and has not received sufficient academic attention, especially when referring to women. Thus, this study tries to reverse this situation by bringing to light information about this prominent cultural phenomenon in the American context. To prove its importance, this theoretical aspect will be complemented by its practical implementation, as this essay includes the evaluation of the representation of the hipster subculture in one of the main cultural products which have reflected it, television, and more concretely in Lena Dunham’s TV series, Girls. This analysis will include reflections on the presence of irony and authenticity—crucial hipster concepts—in the portrayal of this subculture and on its paradoxical use by its creators, with the intention of inferring the reasons that may have motivated it.
Downloads
Metrics
References
ALFREY, Lauren M. “The Search for Authenticity: How Hipsters Transformed from a Local Subculture to a Global Consumption Collective.” Master’s thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, 2010.
ARSEL, Zeynep, and Craig J. Thompson. “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 37, no. 5, 2011, pp. 791–806, doi:10.1086/656389.
BANKS, Mark. The Politics of Cultural Work. Palgrave, 2007.
BAUMAN, Zygmunt. “Identity in the Globalising World.” Social Anthropology, vol. 9, n.2, pp. 121-129.
BAUMGARDNER, Jennifer. “Williamsburg Year Zero.” What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation, edited by Mark Greif et al., N+1 Foundation, 2010, pp. 92-96.
BELL, Katherine. “Obvie, We're the Ladies!” Postfeminism, Privilege, and HBO's Newest Girls.” Feminist Media Studies, vol.13, n.2, 2013, pp. 363-366.
BLACKMAN, Shane. "Subculture Theory: An Historical and Contemporary Assessment of the Concept for Understanding Deviance." Deviant Behavior, vol. 35, no. 6, 2014, pp. 496-512.
BOGOVIĆ, René. “Hipsters: Rebellion Commodified.” Google Scholar. University of Toronto, pp. 1-19.
BOT, Sophy. The Hipster Effect; How the Rising Tide of Individuality is Changing Everything We Know about Life, Work and the Pursuit of Happiness, 2012.
BOURDIEU, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, John G. Richardson, editor. Greenwood, 1986, pp. 241-58.
BRAKE, Mike. The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subcultures. Routledge, 1980.
BROYARD, Anatole. “A Portrait of the Hipster.” Partisan Review, vol. 15, no. 6, 1948, pp. 721-27.
“Cab Calloway’s A Hepster’s Dictionary, a 1939 Glossary of the Lingo (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renaissance.” Open Culture, January 19, 2015. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.
CASINO, Katrina. “Why Lesbians Hang on to the Hipster.” The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, vol. 17, no. 5, 2010, pp. 25-27.
CLAYTON, Jace. “Vampires of Lima.” What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation, edited by Mark Greif et al., N+1 Foundation, 2010, pp. 24-30.
COWEN, Deborah. “Hipster Urbanism.” Relay, Sept./Oct., 2006, pp. 22-23. www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay13_hipster.pdf. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
DANES, C. “The 2013 Time 100.” Time. 18 Apr. 2013, time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/all/. Accessed 28 Jan. 2021.
DANES, Claire. “Lena Dunham.” Interview. 1 Apr. 2012, www.interviewmagazine.com/film/lena-dunham-1. Accessed 28 Jan. 2021.
DUNHAM, Lena. Girls. HBO, 2012-2017.
ELAN, Priya. “How Hipsters Took Over Television.” The Guardian, 10 Sept. 2012, www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2012/sep/10/hipsters-make-perfect-sitcom-material. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021.
ERIGHA, Maryann. “Working Girls? Millennials and Creative Careers.” HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 140-155.
FLORIDA, Richard. Cities and the Creative Class. Taylor & Francis Group, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bibliotecauma-ebooks/detail.action?docID=237437.
GAY, Roxane. “Roxane Gay Talks to Lena Dunham about Her New Book, Feminism, and the Benefits of Being Criticized Online.” Vulture, 2 Oct. 2014, www.vulture.com/2014/10/roxane-gay-interview-lena-dunham-bad-feminist-not-that-kind-of-girl-books.html. Accessed 30 May 2021.
GENZ, Stéphanie. “‘I Have Work… I Am Busy… Trying to Become Who I Am’: Neoliberal Girls and Recessionary Postfeminism.” Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, edited by Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 17-30.
GENZ, Stéphanie. “My Job Is Me: Postfeminist Celebrity Culture and the Gendering of Authenticity.” Feminist Media Studies, vol.15, n.4, 2015, pp. 545-561.
GRANT, Ruby and Meredith Nash. “From Sex and the City to Girls: Paving the Way for ‘Post? Feminism’.” Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, edited by Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 61-74.
GREIF, Mark, et al. What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation. N+1 Foundation, 2010.
HAMILTON, Nikita. “So They Say You Have a Race Problem? You’re in Your Twenties, You Have Way More Problems Than That.” HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 43-58.
“HBO’s Girls Looking for ‘Hipster Types’ of All Races for Second Season, Filming in Brooklyn.” Huffington Post, 18 May 2012, www.huffpost.com/entry/hbos-girls-hipsters-diversity-greenpoint-brooklyn-casting-call_n_1528179. Accessed 27 Dec. 2020.
HEBDIGE, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Routledge, 1979.
HILL, Wes. “A Hipster History: Towards a Post-critical Aesthetic.” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 45-60.
HOARE, Peter. “The 15 Hottest Hipster Actresses.” Complex, 29 Oct. 2012, https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/the-15-hottest-hipster-actresses/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2021.
HUBER, Alison. “Mainstream as Metaphor: Imagining Dominant Culture.”
Redefining Mainstream Popular Music, edited by Sarah Baker, et al., Taylor & Francis Group, 2013, pp. 3-13.
JACKSON, Greg. “Hipster Elegies,” The Hedgehog Review Reader: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Summer, 2019, hedgehogreview.com/issues/reality-and-its-alternatives/articles/hipster-elegies. Accessed 28 Jan. 2021.
JAMES, Kendra. “Dear Lena Dunham, I Exist.” Medium, 26 Aug. 2016, medium.com/@KendraJames_/dear-lena-dunham-i-exist-db4bf3cb7720. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021.
JENKS, Chris. Subculture: The Fragmentation of the Social. Sage Publications, 2005.
JOHNSON, Chloé H. “Dancing on My Own: Popular Music and Issues of Identity in Girls.” HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp.186-198.
KANAI, Akane. “On Not Taking the Self Seriously: Resilience, Relatability and Humour in Young Women’s Tumblr Blogs.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 22, n. 1, 2019, pp. 60-77.
KELLNER, Douglas. “Critical Perspectives on Television from the Frankfurt School to Postmodernism.” A Companion to Television, edited by Janet Wasko, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2005, pp. 29-47.
KELSEY, Henke. “Postmodern Authenticity and the Hipster Identity.” Forbes and Fifth, vol. 3, Spring, 2013, forbes5.pitt.edu/article/postmodern-authenticity-and-hipster-identity. Accessed 4 Feb. 2021.
KINZEY, Jake. The Sacred and the Profane; An Investigation of Hipsters. Zero, 2012.
KOZAK, Anna. “Hipsterception: A Critique of Popular Criticism of the Postmodern Hipster.” March 2013, www.academia.edu/6226829/Hipsterception_A_Critique_of_Popular_Criticism_of_the_Postmodern_Hipster. Accessed 26 Apr. 2020.
LANHAM, Robert. The Hipster Handbook. Anchor Books, 2003.
LELAND, John. Hip: The History. Harper Perennial, 2005.
LEHMAN, Katherine J. “‘All Adventurous Women Do’”: HBO’s Girls and the 1960s-70s Single Woman.” HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp.10-28.
“Lena Dunham Cashes in on Hipster Culture.” Glad2baWoman, 23 Oct. 2017, www.glad2bawoman.me/article/3116/category/achievers/lena-dunham-cashes-hipster-culture. Accessed 27 Jan. 2021.
LIM, Thea. “A Historical Guide to Hipster Racism.” Racialicious.com, May 2, 2012, www.racialicious.com/2012/05/02/a-historical-guide-to-hipster-racism/ Accessed 26 Nov. 2020.
LORENTZEN, Christian. “Why the Hipster Must Die. A Modest Proposal to Save New York Cool.” Time Out New York, 30 May 2007. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.
MAHDAWI, Arwa. “Is Lena Dunham’s ‘Hipster Racism’ Just Old-fashioned Prejudice?” The Guardian, 25 Nov. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/25/hipster-racism-lena-dunham-prejudice. Accessed 12 Feb. 2021.
MAILER, Norman. “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” Dissent, Fall, 1979, pp. 276-93.
MAKARECHI, Kia. “Girls Reviews: New HBO Show and Lena Dunham Face Backlash on Racism and More.” The Huffington Post, 16 Apr. 2012, www.huffpost.com/entry/girls-reviews-backlash-hbo-show_n_1429328. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.
MALLONEE, Laura. “Photos of Brooklyn before and after the Hipsters,” Wired, 8 Sept. 2015, www.wired.com/2015/09/photos-brooklyn-hipsters/ Accessed 2 Febr. 2021.
MALONE, Noreen. “The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright.” New York. 14 Oct. 2011, nymag.com/news/features/my-generation-2011-10/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2021.
MALY, Ico and Piia Varis. “The 21st-century Hipster: On Micro-populations in Times of Superdiversity.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 19, no. 6, 2016, pp. 637-53.
MAU, Dhani. “‘Girls’ Costume Designer Talks Season 4 and Why Hannah's Clothes Fit So Badly.” Fashionista, 8 Jan. 2015, fashionista.com/2015/01/girls-costumes-season-4. Accessed 5 Febr. 2021.
MCCANN, Hannah. “‘A Voice of a Generation’: Girls and the Problem of Representation.” Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, edited by Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 91-104.
MCROBBIE, Angela. Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen. Unwin Hyman, 1991.
---. British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? Taylor and Francis Group, 1998.
---. “Notes on the Perfect”. Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 30, no. 83, 2015, pp. 3-20.
MENGER, Pierre-Michel. “Artistic Labor Markets and Careers.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 25, 1999, pp. 541-74.
MILLER, Laura. “Girls Is Much More Than a Brooklyn Hipster Version of Sex and the City.” Newstatesman, 6 Sept. 2012, www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2012/09/girls-much-more-brooklyn-hipster-version-sex-and-city. Accessed 7 Feb. 2021.
MICHAEL, Janna. “It Is Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field.” Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 15, no. 2, 2015, pp. 163-82.
MULVEY, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, Autumn, 1975, pp. 6–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6, Accessed 7 Feb. 2021.
MURRAY, Dara Persis. “Branding ‘Real’ Social Change in Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.” Feminist Media Studies, vol.13, n- 1, 2013, pp. 83-101.
MURRAY, Margaret Anne. “White, Male, and Bartending in Detroit: Masculinity Work in a Hipster Scene.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 49, no. 4, 2020, pp. 456–480.
NASH, Meredith and Imelda Whelehan, editors. Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
NEWCOMB, Horace. “The Development of Television Studies.” A Companion to Television, edited by Janet Wasko, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2005, pp. 15-28.
NG., Eddy S. W., et al. “New Generation, Great Expectations: A Field Study of the Millennial Generation.” Journal of Business and Psychology, vol. 25, no. 2, 2010, pp. 281–292. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40605786. Accessed 28 Oct. 2020, Accessed 7 Feb. 2021.
NORTON, Abra Deering. “HBO Girls: Hipsterism Gone Awry.” SheKnows. 8 May 2012, www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/959665/hbo-girls-episode-recap-hannahs-diary/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021.
PARK, Heejung, Jean M. Twenge, and Patricia M. Greenfield. “The Great Recession: Implications for Adolescent Values and Behavior.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 5, no. 3, Apr. 2014, pp. 310–18. doi.org/10.1177/1948550613495419.
PEITZMAN, Louis. “‘It Costs a Lot of Money to Look This Cheap’: Send in Your Most High-Priced 'Low-Class' Items.” Gawker, 21 Apr. 2012, gawker.com/5903994/it-costs-a-lot-of-money-to-look-this-cheap-send-in-your-most-high-priced-low-class-items. Accessed 2 Febr. 2021.
PLURALIST. “Lena Dunham Says Goodbye to Brooklyn Hipsters Who Judge Her ‘Infertility and Loneliness’.” 3 Dec. 2018, pluralist.com/lena-dunham-says-goodbye-to-brooklyn-hipsters-who-judge-her-infertility-and-loneliness/. Accessed 4 Sept. 2020.
PONIEWOZIK, James. “Lena Dunham Interview, Part Two: The Personal Factor.” Time. 13 Apr. 2012, entertainment.time.com/2012/04/13/lena-dunham-interview-part-two-the-personal-factor/. Accessed 24 Nov. 2020.
QUENQUA, Douglass. “Seeing Narcissists Everywhere.” The New York Times, 5 Aug. 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/seeing-narcissists-everywhere.html. Accessed 24 Nov. 2020.
RICHARDSON, John G., editor. Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood, 1986.
ROSENBERG, Alyssa. “Girls: Inside the Eccentric Fashion of Lena Dunham’s HBO Comedy.” Daily Beast, 1 Oct. 2013, www.thedailybeast.com/girls-inside-the-eccentric-fashion-of-lena-dunhams-hbo-comedy. Accessed 26 Oct. 2020.
RUÍZ, Nacho. “8 series para hipsters.” El Mundo, 29 May 2017, www.elmundo.es/metropoli/cine/2017/05/24/5925b4ade2704e8b638b4654.html. Accessed 27 Jan. 2021.
SAISI, Boké. “Just White Girls?: Underrepresentation and Active Audiences in Girls.” HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 59-72.
SCHIERMER, Bjørn. “Late-modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture.” Acta Sociologica, vol. 57, no. 2, 2014, pp. 167-81.
SCHWART, Karen. “The Clothes Make the ‘Girls’.” New York Times, 2 Jan. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/fashion/on-this-hit-show-the-clothes-make-the-girls.html. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020.
SCOTT, Michael. “‘Hipster Capitalism’ in the Age of Austerity? Polanyi Meets Bourdieu’s New Petite Bourgeoisie.” Cultural Sociology, vol. 11, no. I, 2017, pp. 60-76.
SEATON, Wallis. “‘Doing Her Best With What She’s Got’: Authorship, Irony, and Mediating Feminist Identities in Lena Dunham’s Girls.” Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, edited by Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 149-162.
SEPINWALL, Alan. “Review: HBO’s Girls Brilliantly Channels Lena Dunham’s Comic Voice.” Hitfix, 12 Apr. 2012, uproxx.com/sepinwall/review-hbos-girls-brilliantly-channels-lena-dunhams-comic-voice/. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.
SIMMEL, Georg. “Fashion.” International Quarterly, X, October, 1904, pp.: 130-155, Rpt. in The American Journal of Sociology, vol.62, no.6, May 1957, pp. 541-558.
SPIEGEL, Alison. “The 22 Most Hipster Foods on The Planet.” Huffpost, 17 Apr. 201, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hipster-food_n_5146632. Accessed 9 Oct. 2021.
STEIN, Joel. “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation.” Time. 20 May 2013, time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2020.
STEWART, Dodai. “Why We Need to Keep Talking About the White Girls on Girls.” Jezebel, 19 Apr. 2012, jezebel.com/why-we-need-to-keep-talking-about-the-white-girls-on-gi-5903382. Accessed 23 Jan. 2020.
STUEVER, Hank. “HBO’s ‘Girls’ Goes Out as the One Thing It Always Wanted to Be: A Good TV Show.” Washington Post, 14 Apr. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/hbos-girls-goes-out-as-the-one-thing-it-always-wanted-to-be-a-good-tv-show/2017/04/13/bf1bda9a-1fc0-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.
SUEBSAENG, Asawin. Girls: “What the Hell Was HBO Thinking?” Mother Jones. 11 Apr. 2012, www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/tv-review-girls-hbo-lena-dunham/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2020.
THORNTON, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
TORTORICI, Dayna. “You Know It When You See It”. What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation, edited by Mark Greif et al., N+1 Foundation, 2010, pp. 122-35.
TOUS-ROVIROSA, Anna, Koldo Meso Ayerdi, and Nuria Simelio, “The Representation of Women’s Roles in Television Series in Spain. Analysis of the Basque and Catalan Cases.” Communication & Society/Comunicación y Sociedad, vol. 26, no. 3, 2013, pp. 67-97.
VANARENDONK, Kathryn. “Hannah on Girls Could Not Have Gotten That Job.” Vulture. April 11, 2017.
WAMPOLE, Christy. “How to Live Without Irony.” The New York Times. 17 Nov. 2012, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/. Accessed 4 Febr. 2021.
WASKO, Janet, editor. A Companion to Television. John Wiley & Sons, 2005.
WEESE, Matt. “Why Hipsters Love to Hate Girls.” HBO Watch, 19 Sept. 2013, hbowatch.com/why-hipsters-love-to-hate-girls/ Accessed 27 Oct. 2020.
WELLER, Wivian. “The Feminine Presence in Youth Subcultures: The Art of Becoming Visible.” Estudos. Feministas, vol.1. 2006.
http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-026X2006000100003&lng=en&nrm=iso. Accessed 12 Oct. 2021.
WEISSMAN, Jerry. “Lena Dunham’s Secret to Success.” Forbes, 8 Oct. 2014. Accessed 27 Oct. 2019.
WEST, Lindy. “A Complete Guide to ‘Hipster Racism’.” Jezebel.com, 26 Apr. 2012, jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racism. Accessed 27 Oct. 2020.
WINCHELL, Casey. “HBO’s Girls: The Hipster-fied Sex and the City.” Minx Society, March, 2012. Accessed 27 Jan. 2020.
WOLFGANG, Marvin and Franco Ferracuti. The Subculture of Violence: Towards an Integrated Theory in Criminology. Tavistock, 1967.
WORTHAN, Jenna et al. “Voice, Vice, Veracity.” The New York Times, vol. 5, February 2017, p. 1.
---. “Where (My) Girls At?” The Hairpin, thehairpin.com/2012/04/where-my-girls-at/. 16 Apr. 2012. Accessed 23 Jan. 2020.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Accepted 2021-11-30
Published 2021-12-20
- Abstract 518
- pdf 371