Los Angeles is the city of angels, where dreams are made, according to John Leland in Hip: The History, “the popular image of California as a land of sunshine and opportunity” (97). But it is also the home of pulp fiction and film noir. L.A. is the perfect setting for these dark and lurid stories and movies.
Heading West:
Many people after World War I and the Great Depression headed west to follow industrial expansion, in the hopes of finding jobs, and creating a new life. The mystic and glamour of L.A. had pulled people as far west as one could get in the hopes of eternal sunshine, economical stability, and fame. They wanted to reinvent themselves, and believed the stories of glamour and the easy life Hollywood portrayed out west.
Reality Sets In:
Once they arrived, and their dreams were shattered by the reality that not everyone makes it big in Hollywood, what was left over was not paradise, instead it was hell on earth. What they encountered was many of the things they had left, urban communities plighted by corruption and brutality. During the day there was a fare share of sun light and ocean breezes, but at night there was crime and disparity, surrounded by desert and dark ocean, entrapping them and discouraging any hopes of escape.
Birth of a Genres:
From this pulp fiction and film noir was born. The cynicism and desperation felt by the larger portion of L.A.’s population was captured by sensationalizing the dark underbelly and reality of the inhabitants. Hollywood depicted L.A. from the day, sunshine, growing suburban families, financial success, while pulp fiction and noir depicted the darkness and self-indulgence of its nights.
Los Angeles made an excellent backdrop for these two genres. And what has changed today? If a writer wants to depict characters living in excess and glamour on the surface but in reality live in disparity and violent lives, wouldn’t the city of angels still make a great setting. People today still move to Hollywood in hopes to live out their dreams of stardom, so Los Angeles continues to collect her casualties.
If you think of hip as the perceptual present, ones identity, and knowledge, does Hemingway’s The Killers equal hip?
In Hip: The History John Leland says about The Killers, “The present that never becomes the past” (75), but he also says about Hemingway, “In the absence of a past, he too, was remaking himself in the present” (74).
Perceptual present – everything we experience is in what we consider our present, even when we are thinking about the past or future, we are doing this in the present.
The Killers:
Time – The time of this story is never clear, what is talked about in the present, killing a man never happens, so it never becomes part of the past.
Identity – For most of the characters their identity is not clear, except for Sam you always know who Sam is, at least him physically.
Knowledge – Everyone in this story seems to be confused about what is going on except Ole Anderson; he knows why the men have come, and what his ultimate fate will be.
Does The Killers equal hip? I think the way Hemingway wrote The Killers, a story about trepidation, where the reader just like the characters never really know what is going on, but we know it must end badly at some point, was creative. I’m not prepared to agree or disagree; I will just sit in the perceptual present and ponder it.
John Leland in Hip: The History indicates that urbanization plays an important role in hip. I would have to agree.
When I think of hip in today’s world I do not think of my relatives living in a small farm town in eastern Washington. Hip is not something that is important to a farmer. Paying their mortgages, putting food on the table, and the health of the upcoming crops are their main concerns. They do not care what the "big city folks" do for entertainment or what they are listening to on the radio. I’ve never seen an entertainment television show playing in any of their houses; I’ve hardly seen a television set playing at all.
Things that are hip today are hip hop, Hollywood, and going green. These are all things that the masses in urbanized areas are partaking in; the city provides a sanctuary for people with the same interests to further identify themselves. With more than half of our population concentrated in urbanized areas hip has a pool to fester in.
Hip can exist or even start from outside the urban setting. Here are three examples of modern day hipness moving from rural or suburban areas to the city:
1.Grunge Music – This phenomena and movement had everyone dressing like a street person, and it came from the suburban garages of the Pacific West Coast.
2.Line Dancing – Don’t pretend that if you were bar hoping in the 90’s you didn’t do a little Achy Breaky Heart with a group of urban two steppers. This movement was born straight out of the barn.
3.YouTube – Sure urban communities have the same connection to the internet as do rural ones, except now those people from small towns can display their hipness and let it spread through the use of the internet. Beiber fever baby!
Leland says, “Hip flourishes during periods of technology or economic changes…..and this produces new freedoms and anxieties” (61). Will we see an emergence of a new standard of hip from what is happening today with the IPad and the unemployment rate? We may indeed see a new movement towards revolutionary hipness. Being of the unhip crowd I cannot imagine what the next new hip thing will be.
What I can still imagine is the power of the Achy Breaky Heart, see video below:
In John Leland’s book Hip: The History, he refers to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman as “the o.g.’s,” he wants us to believe that these men are responsible for hip. I am still working my mind around what the meaning of hip is, but I think Leland is stretching the meaning of "Original Gangster" in his book.
According to my American Heritage Dictionary:
Original means:
Preceding all others; one could argue that Emerson and Whitman were responsible for being the first in many things, including the spread of the Transcendentalism Movement, and questioning both church and state in America.
The same dictionary does not have a definition for gangster but has a definition for gang:
Member of an organized group of criminals, a social group gathered for often criminal purposes. We can assume that “ster” added is in reference of being a specific member of such a group.
This being said were these two gentlemen gangsters?
Walt Whitman
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Or were these two gentlemen gangsters?
Al Capone
Lucky Luciano
We are learning that Emerson and Whitman did many things towards the development of American culture; however I do not think that they were gangsters.
Value yourself and all others, not just your family and friends, put a high value on all living things, animals and vegetables included. As Walt Whitman says in section 48 line 3 of his poem Song of Myself, “Nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is” (link to full poem: http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1900.html ). You are a wondrous creation, live as if you believe this.
Have compassion, know that many people in the world suffer every day, if you can help someone, do it, it’s good for them, and good for your emotional health too.
Value knowledge, academic knowledge is important, but experiencing life and its many streets will bring you knowledge you cannot learn in any school.
Value the truth, it not only sets you free from remembering all the lies you’ve told, it will also allow people to know the real you, andthe real you is enough. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Speech he delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College in 1838 he says, “Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance.” Emerson is saying to grow as a person you must be truthful in everything you do. You should also value truth from others; it is unhealthy to surround yourself with people who are not truthful to you.
Value your health, our body is a vessel and it is the only one we will receive, take care of it.
Be careful of money and material things. Money will not bring you happiness, free yourself from as many money obligations you can, yes you can live with less, and you will find in return you will have so much more. John Leland says in Hip: The History, “pauper today could be a prince tomorrow” (p. 42), the opposite may someday be true for you. My father once gave me some advice, “live below your means, that way when the economy gets tough you won’t feel it as much as the next guy.” If you have extra, show compassion to someone, you may be able to help another in need.
Don’t be in such a hurry, slow down, your haste could cause damage to someone else’s property or may even cause injury or death to another. Respect and protect others as you would for yourself.
Don’t be rude; don’t be mean it makes you ugly.
Question your spirituality, Buddha says you have the freedom to question his words don’t except anything on faith alone. Faith is important, you should have faith in something, but it’s important to know that you have the right and the ability to not except faith at face value. Spirituality does not have to be in a church, it can be anything that relates to the force within you. No one religion is better; having a sense of spirituality may lead you to a more meaningful life.
Walt Whitman in his Preface of Leaves of Grasssays, “Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” Only you can decide what path is right for you, disregard everything that does not sit well with you, you are the only one capable of doing so.
Question everything, especially if you are a writer, wonder is our greatest tool. Specifically question everything I’ve said here today. I don’t have the answers, but I do offer half of a life of experiences, and the worst thing you can do is to live in your past or your future, relish the present, every moment of it.
YouTube video of more “Timeless Quotes from The Buddha:”
