At a scruffy studio in San Francisco's SoMa district last week, a group of nattily attired young people gathered to celebrate the hipster.
A documentary about a popular Instagram photographer named Bex Finch was projected on the walls, and as Finch described her love for analog film a snort erupted from the crowd.
"Sooo hipster," someone shouted. Audience members, who were sipping organic margaritas, laughed knowingly.
Whether they're ready for it or not, hipsters are about to get their close-up. The loosely defined subculture is the subject of a YouTube channel, American Hipster, that releases its first shows Monday.
Will hipsters watch programming about themselves? Will the world at large? Will YouTube, which is spending $100 million to create niche content like American Hipster, make its money back?
Seedwell, the San Francisco creative studio producing American Hipster, admits that it is an experiment.
"We think a lot of hipsters will hate our channel," said Peter Furia, a Seedwell co-founder. "But we think some of them will see some value in it. We think people who aren't so much hipsters will really enjoy learning more about some of these things they're seeing around them."
YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, believes channels like American Hipster are the future of entertainment. Niche content delivered over the Internet could ultimately disrupt television, executives say.
"We think we're in a pivotal moment in the history of video," said Jamie Byrne, head of original programming for entertainment at YouTube.
The company is investing heavily in that thesis, giving 100 channels like American Hipster funding to create original content. The channels will repay their advances with advertising revenue generated by the videos they create, and share revenue with YouTube thereafter.
Relative unknowns
Some big names are part of the project, including Madonna, Jay-Z and Shaquille O'Neal. But most of the channels are created by relative unknowns. Seedwell is among those hoping to break out of the pack.
To do so, it has to overcome perceptions about its slippery subject. "Hipster" is used most often in the pejorative sense, referring to young, middle-class urban types with a fondness for independent music, alternative fashions, and artisan food and crafts.
While the term has its origins in the 1940s, it had a resurgence in the 2000s, starting in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn and radiating into conclaves of creative people in other big cities.
Almost from the start, hipsters have been an object of derision, chided for a perceived reliance on their parents' money and an overenthusiasm for cheap beer and trucker hats. As a result, few claim the term for themselves. In 2006 the satirical news site the Onion ran a story headlined, "Two hipsters angrily call each other 'hipster.' "
Mark Greif, writing in New York Magazine in 2010, argued that the hipster movement had essentially ended as it became absorbed into the culture at large.
"The mainstreaming of hipsterism to the suburbs and the mall portends hipster self-disgust," he wrote. "Why bother with a lifestyle that everyone now knows?"
Too big
David Fine directs the channel's documentary series, "American Hipster Presents," which is traveling to 10 U.S. cities to showcase bohemians in their natural environments. He says the fact that hipsters have entered the mainstream is the best argument for making shows about them.
"It's too big to ignore," he said in Seedwell's SoMa offices. "You document it like you would document hip-hop or grunge. It's undeniably there. I don't think we're trying to say we've got the inside scoop. We're just saying, regardless of whether you think it's a dirty word or not, let's explore what it really is."
No comments:
Post a Comment