Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
He was funny before he even existed: A satirical genealogy of the hipster
This paper examines the popular satirised image of the male “hipster” in 21st century advertising imagery. Representations of the hipster in advertisements variously portray the lifestyle as aspirational or asinine, and by 2015, the death of the hipster as a subcultural protagonist was heralded (Rowe, 2015). Despite this observation, and variations in his aesthetic, the hipster persists as a comedic stock character exploited to portray millennial masculinity as a site of misplaced priorities and in opposition to dominant maleness. This study places satirical representations of the hipster in an historical framework – connecting him to the aesthete, bohemian, mod and punk - working towards the compilation of a genealogy of jokes that that lampoon male fashion from the 18th century onwards (McNeil, 2017). This work proposes that fashion satire is a particularly fertile site for cultivating understanding of fashion subcultures and works to locate examples of graphic satire outside of humour periodicals, augmenting definitions of graphic satire while contributing fashion studies.