So obviously something horrible happened with the mass shooting in Dallas yesterday. And as I predicted when in my last post, that pretty much meant that my renewed faith in humanity could shrivel up and die. If Micah Johnson proved anything he proved that racist killings are not limited to white people and not limited to cops. Good job dude. I’ve seen a lot of people posting today about how being pro-BlackLivesMatter and pro-Police are not mutually exclusive. Yep. You know I could probably go into a long thing about systemic racism and how this all part of the same cycle and blah blah blah… but I’m too tired and I’ve basically been addressing that in the comments of the other post.
So instead, I want to talk about something else that is of the utmost importance to political protest movements. FASHION!
So I tend to leave CNN on while I’m working. Particular while some newsworthy event like the last couple days is going on. And today, as they were walking around Dallas interviewing #BlackLivesMatters protestors who were present during yesterday’s shooting they came to THIS GUY! I am so glad I caught it because I looked up and thought “Oh my God, that is the hipsterest hipster who ever hipped!”
And of course he was at the BLM protest. I mean look at him. If I were walking around Dallas an hour before the shooting and I saw that guy, my first response would be “dude, why are you not at the BLM protest? You should be there even more than me…. and I’m black!”
In one of comments on yesterday’s post I started talking about semiotic meaning in images briefly. And when I saw this guy I started thinking about Roland Barthes The Fashion System. He epitomizes the codification of style into ideology. Like if you saw this guy walking towards a KKK rally across the street from a BLM rally there would be no doubt in your head which way he was going to turn. If you saw him walking towards a dueling GLADD and Westboro Baptist Church protests, you’d know which way he was going to turn. If there’s an Occupy Wallstreet sit-in right in front of an investment bank and you see him walking towards the front door, if he ignored the protesters and walked in everyone on both sides would say “what the fuck!?!” Dude is advertising where he is coming from.
Part of me wonders what scholars of the 22nd century will think when they look back at our media and see hipsters. What happens when in the year 2056 they make period piece films about protests in the 2010s? This is the uniform that will be represented,. Except it will be turned up to 11. It will be cariacturized in much the same way as the classic hippy of 1969 has become the Hollywood version of what we think of as a hippy that we use today. Except, I can’t imagine what they will even do to exaggerate it. But suddenly there is nothing I want to live to see more.
that dude is already turned up to 11
Oh my god. Does that mean Hollywood will have to take the unprecedented move of turning him up to 12?!?? Think about the ramifications! 12!!! It’s never been done before.
It think turning an 11 up to 11 really gets you a 12.1
Chris Maverick, you never go full 12!
The further out we get, the more confused the fashions will get. Come 2070, 2016 fashion will be represented as a Deray vest, a man bun, and a fedora, and we will be shaking our canes in the corner talking about “that’s not how any of this works!”