Cool (aesthetic)
The word cool may refer to an attitude or style widely adopted by artists or intellectuals, who aided its insertion into popular culture.
This concept was idealized by teenagers, became sought by product marketing firms, and has even been used as a shield against racial oppression or political persecution, seen by many as a source of constant cultural information.
America's mass production of "ready-to-wear" fashion in the 1940s and 1950s established specific conventional outfits as markers of one's unchanging social role in society.
As a result of their disengagement with the establishment, the scope of self-critique was limited because their "mask" filtered negative thoughts of worthlessness, fostering the opportunity for self-worth.
[9] Starting in the 1990s and continuing into the 21st century, the concept of dressing cool left the minority and entered the mainstream, making it a dominant ideology.
The grunge fashion style of the 1990s and 21st century allowed people who felt financially insecure about their lifestyle to pretend to "fit in" by wearing a unique piece of clothing, but one that was polished.
[8] Author Robert Farris Thompson, professor of art history at Yale University, suggests that Itutu, which he translates as "mystic coolness",[12] is one of three pillars of a religious philosophy created in the 15th century[13] by Yoruba and Igbo civilizations of West Africa.
Cool, or Itutu, contained meanings of conciliation and gentleness of character, generosity, grace, and the ability to defuse fights and disputes.
[14] Thompson also cites a definition of cool from the Gola people of Liberia, who define it as the ability to be mentally calm or detached, in an otherworldly fashion, from one's circumstances, to be nonchalant in situations where emotionalism or eagerness would be natural and expected.
[14] However, he finds the cultural value of cool in Africa, which influenced the African diaspora, to be different from that held by Europeans, who use the term primarily as the ability to remain calm under stress.
Struck by the re-occurrence of this vital notion elsewhere in tropical Africa and in the Pan-American African Diaspora, I have come to term the attitude "an aesthetic of the cool" in the sense of a deeply and completely motivated, consciously artistic, interweaving of elements serious and pleasurable, of responsibility and play.
[18] This predominantly black jazz scene in the U.S., as well as expatriate musicians in Paris, helped popularize notions of cool in the U.S. in the 1940s, giving birth to "Bohemian" or beatnik culture.
[19] Notions of cool as an expression of inner self in a Taoist sense, equilibrium, self-possession, and an absence of conflict are commonly understood in African-American contexts well.
[24] Among black men in America, coolness, which may have its roots in slavery as an ironic submission and concealed subversion (as in an article by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein),[25] is enacted at times in order to create a powerful appearance, a type of performance frequently maintained for the sake of a social audience.
[27] Majors and Billson address what they term the "cool pose" in their study and argue that it helps black men counter stress caused by social oppression, rejection and racism.
They also contend that it furnishes the black male with a sense of control, strength, confidence and stability and helps him deal with the closed doors and negative messages of the "generalized other".
[29] The issue of stereotyping and discrimination with respect to the "cool pose" raises complex questions of assimilation and accommodation of different cultural values.
In fact, in many art forms including rakugo, samurai from the countryside were often depicted as the target of ridicule by the average commoner in the civilized Edo period.
[34] In The Art of War, a Chinese military treatise written during the 6th century BC, general Sun Tzu, a member of the landless Chinese aristocracy, wrote in Chapter XII: Profiting by their panic, we shall exterminate them completely; this will cool the King's courage and cover us with glory, besides ensuring the success of our mission.Asian countries have developed a tradition on their own to explore types of modern "cool" or "ambiguous" aesthetics.
Business leaders and government officials are now referring to Japan's 'gross national cool' as a new engine for economic growth and societal buoyancy.
In a June/July 2002 article in Foreign Policy magazine,[38] he argued that as Japan's economic juggernaut took a wrong turn into a 10-year slump, and with military power made impossible by a pacifist constitution, the nation had quietly emerged as a cultural powerhouse: "From pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and food to art, Japan has far greater cultural influence now than it did in the 1980s, when it was an economic superpower.
Brecht projected his cool attitude to life onto his most famous character Macheath or "Mackie Messer" (Mack the knife) in The Threepenny Opera.
The luxuries depicted in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin traced the outlines of a new cool.
Peter Stearns, a professor of history at George Mason University, suggests that the seeds of a cool outlook had been sown among this inter-war generation.
WWII also brought hundreds of thousands of GIs, whose relaxed, easy-going manner was seen by young people of the time as embodying liberation.
To be cool or hip meant "hanging out", pursuing sexual liaisons, displaying a level of narcissistic self-absorption, and expressing a desire to escape all ideological causes.
Some clubs featured live jazz performances, and their smoky, sexually charged atmosphere carried a message for which the Puritanical values and monumental art of Marxist officialdom were an ideal foil.
This drives many young people and adults to attempt to "fit into" the mainstream and adhere to trends in order to purchase products and/or brands that make them appear cool.
This unique social phenomenon was principally occasioned by the tobacco industry's manipulation of the burgeoning segregated urban black consumer market in cities at that time.
