By PAOLO JOSE CRUZ
Photo by Brendan Goco
First, some necessary context:
A Democratic Party
One could argue that Meiday events are probably the most democratic gigs in Manila today. Granted, the lineup of performers is always handpicked by sole organizer Mei Bastes, to her own personal, exacting standards. However, that’s just natural quality control. The diverse roster of musicians speaks for itself, ranging from established names (Pedicab, Taken By Cars), to up-and-coming acts like Shuriken. Guests at Meiday are sure to hear a plethora of genres too comprehensive to namedrop.
And in these crisis-stricken times, one more crucial fact remains: since its origin on Mei’s birthday in 2008, Meiday has remained steadfast about not charging for entrance, despite the considerable production costs involved. Whenever it’s held at Cubao X, as it was in February this year, you can always count on affordable mixed drinks provided by The Junkie Shop, the eclectic boutique co-owned by Mei.
Of course, nobody really goes to a party just because it’s democratic. They go because it’s fun. They go because they feel as if they belong, or at least they can be themselves without fear of judgment or harassment.
Enter “The Class Crowd”
One person who didn’t have much fun at Meiday in February was a certain Disappointed Music Lover (DML), who sustained minor injuries during an unfortunate scuffle with over-zealous bouncers. The precise details are sketchy, and the implications have been passionately debated online, long after Mei herself took responsibility for the situation, apologizing for the hired security’s thuggish demeanor.
Perhaps the most enduring thing to come out of this whole mess arises from DML’s claim that one of Meiday’s volunteer staff allegedly reprimanded him for entering an area supposedly restricted to the “class crowd”. As one might expect, this lead to quite a shitstorm, with Mei being on the receiving end of hostile feedback, including a few outright threats. But even after the initial outrage died out, the phrase “class crowd” continues to be used ironically, as a convenient shorthand for referring to Meiday regulars.
Third World Hipsters = SRS BIZNESS
Regardless of whether or not DML made up the phrase “class crowd”, it exists as a glaring reminder of the inextricable link between class privilege and what amateur sociologists (like myself) refer to as cultural capital. Or perhaps, in this case, subcultural capital. It denotes a particular type of knowledge: recognizing which set of consumption practices will bestow an ideal level of perceived hipness. Which movies to watch. Which bands to listen to. Which books to read. Even down to the minute implications, like the way one sports their ironic vintage tee and skinny jeans. I was kidding about that last part, of course. Happily, most of us are willing to approach the matter with a sense of detached tongue-in-cheek irony.
All of this is necessarily related to economic status, natch. Because really, how else would one afford to be so in the know?
But the idea of a “Third World hipster” goes far beyond just issues of affluence or upward mobility. It suggests the existence of a cultural elite within a social strata (“Class ABC”, accounting for some 7% of the country’s population) that already has a 29% share of our national income, as of 2006. Whether or not this supposed hipster elite are granted any more real power over the Disappointed Music Lovers of the nation because they’re hipsters is still up for debate. However, the paranoid will inevitably draw their own conclusions.
Kapuso? Kapamilya? Kascene!
All of this got me thinking: what if some enterprising TV producer decided to make a show that attempts to represent the lives and loves of this supposed Third World hipster elite? Ladies and germs, I present: The Class Crowd.
Yes, I know: spare me the history lesson about the relative failure of Lipgloss, and the brutal implosion of The Helium Club. And don’t even think about bringing up the Upper East debacle. This is my speculative fantasy, damn it! So indulge me, okay?
Honestly, I imagine the final product would be something like this:
… crossed with a generous portion of this:
… and just a mild hint of this:
Because it’s meant to be, like, ironic, d’ba?
____________________________________________________________
Pao is a contributor to New Slang, lives online, and Googles everything. In addition to being the quiz master of GeekFight, Paolo hopes to one day realize late film critic Alexis Tioseco’s wish for “someone, anyone [to] make a good, thought-provoking film about the Philippine upper class”.
I was sold when I saw the Bubble Gang clip!
(Yes, and that’s my face behind Diego Mapa’s head!)
Posted by marla | 03.23.2010, 10:03 pmI’ve been going to those meiday events for the past 2 years primarily because i like some of the bands and their music. Plus the free entrance.
The attempt at a hipster atmosphere, I don’t really mind, if there was ever any glaring manifestation of it that would affect me in an offensive way. Maybe we’re just too busy having fun to really bother with those minor intricacies that come with trying to portray an Indie hipster image, annoying as it is.
Posted by Amadines | 03.23.2010, 10:27 pmLet’s break this down! (actually, I’m just itching for discourse. Lifestyle of the petty bourgeois culturati and bored)
I haven’t gone to Meiday. Nothing against it, the bands that perform there just aren’t my thing. And really, I’m no hipster. I enjoy Jay-Z, Tupac, and Oi! music unironically. Probably one of the last rude girls around (circa Put3ska, reprezent~).
You’re right, being a hipster is about cultural capital but the hipster subculture in itself is a class contradiction. The American hipster is stereotypically a sheltered suburban kid who seemingly rejects his white privilege and romanticizes and appropriates the marginalized black culture. They slum it out in Brooklyn and live on welfare precisely because they can afford it. Living poor has become a fashionable lifestyle choice. Like it’s a badge of honor to be starving and yet well-read and well-versed. I forget which essay I read it from, but it had something like “the hipsters ironically choose to be poor in one of the richest cities in the world.”
The Third world hipster suffers an even more crippling dose of class irony (which, I assume, they revel in). Rich kids who can afford to subscribe to foreign indie culture, appearing poor by dint of their ukay-ukay bought clothes, stinginess, and bad hygiene, but ultimately part of a larger globally marginalized minority– Filipinos. It’s romantic, dude, the stuff indie films are made of. But it’s caught in the middle and like all things in the middle, suffers under the weight of the polarizing extreme forces (in this case, the bourgeois and proletarian class).
While most hipsters come from the bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes (which is why they have the cultural capital to be hipsters in the first place), hipster culture is essentially anti-social culture within this class. Tattoos and piercings? Those don’t belong in the professional workplace! Only convicts get tattoos! Recreational drugs and partying all night? You can’t get a proper job that way. Polite society won’t accept you. But that’s the thing, hipsters can afford to not be part of the traditional workplace. They’re ~creative~ and can subsist on their anti-social looks and ethos. And if they’re not employed full-time, there’s a trust fund to ensure they won’t be completely bankrupt.
At the same time, the hipster’s tattoos are nothing like the proletarian tats done in dingy back alleys using ballpen ink and a customized motorcycle motor. Circumstances don’t force them to take whatever job is available. Hipsters’ esoteric knowledge has no practical application among the working class, and while the proletarian enjoys Imelda Papin, FPJ movies, and the latest matinee idol, they do so unironically. Hipsters have minimal grasp on these subject. It’s rare for a hipster to conceal his class origin, and the working class can easily spot that sort of arrogance.
So the hipster is neither here nor there. Is this a good thing or a bad thing– that’s up for debate (personally, I say it’s a bad thing). But to return to the subject of Meiday– come the fuck on. The whole event is a class crowd– the organizers, the bands, the patrons. The real bourgeoisie is somewhere else, counting their money and watching chandelier ceilings. The real proletarian is somewhere else, working a 24-hour work day.
The scenario you just described is steep in hipster irony– middle class kids discriminating against other middle class kids.
<3
Posted by Mssr. Ponce de Wasabi, esquire. | 03.25.2010, 10:13 am^FUCK, formatting fail. Also, TL;DR.
Posted by Mssr. Ponce de Wasabi, esquire. | 03.25.2010, 10:14 am“Living poor has become a fashionable lifestyle choice.”
It’s been a fashionable lifestyle choice for hundreds of years, dude.
Posted by Edward | 03.25.2010, 11:49 amDoucheoisie is more apropos. Though, third world hipsters has a nice ring to it.
Posted by Shinji | 03.25.2010, 12:12 pm“It’s been a fashionable lifestyle choice for hundreds of years, dude.”
You are correct, good sir. I only meant that the actual poor are more gangsta about it. They were poor before it was fashionable.
Posted by Mssr. Ponce de Wasabi, esquire | 03.25.2010, 2:51 pmHi Pao,
Can’t help but feel like this article has irresponsibly stirred up shit all over again. The premise is anchored on what you purport to be sketchy details, on events which may or may not have actually taken place which probably makes for a juicier, more engaging read. It’s unfortunate that it seems like everyone who has responded has chosen to assume (maybe because of the way you had written your article, maybe because it’s ironically hip to hate on hipters) as if actual discrimination took place. Hence, we get extremely uninformed and unnecessary comments like “middle class kids discriminating against other middle class kids” which are ignorant of the following FACTS:
Fact # 1: Prior to becoming an ironic hipster meme, “class crowd” was a phrase which was not uttered by anyone on that Meiday. DML himself admitted this himself and took back his “classist” accusations (facebook has captured all the drama). But only after all the damage had been done.
Fact # 2: DML ran into bouncer trouble because he tried to go past the boundary the bouncers set. Plain and simple.
Fact # 3: (And I realize that this overlaps with #1 but because god fucking damn, it cannot be said enough), NO DISCRMINATION OF THE SORT ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE.
Can we ge that in our heads guys? Please? One kid spread an irresponsible lie. It’s not a truth for you to spin your pseudo-intellectual thoughts around.
And yes, I’m proud to say I’m posting this because Mei is one of my best friends. Thanks to irresponsible lies and comments, she’s had to take on so much unnecessary hate from random people. She’s been the bigger person and has decided to take responsibility for this mess even if she had no obligation to but I am putting my motherfucking foot down on anymore comments or articles like this which will only fan the hater flame. She doesn’t deserve any of it.
I’m sure you wanted a springboard for an interesting discussion around hipsters and cultural capital but Meiday would’ve been the last place to start man.
And seriously, all these guys talking about hipsters sound like hipsters in denial or maybe “hipster kids discriminating against other hipster kids”. How’s that for irony.
Posted by Pepe Torres | 03.25.2010, 4:04 pm@Pepe: I’m genuinely sorry that you feel upset, because my intent is definitely not to stir up any ill will, for Mei, for Meiday, *or* for DML and his supporters.
I’ll tell you the exact same thing I said to DML, when he Private Messaged me about using his real name in the original edit of this blog post:
I think it’s possible to be a dedicated, active participant or supporter in a music scene, while still recognizing and discussing the criticisms leveled against it. Even before the incident with DML, there were already references to Meiday as a ‘hipster event’ — some more affectionate or tongue-in-cheek than others. All i’m doing is addressing in the open what has already been joked about in hushed tones. And I do so in the interest of public discourse. If you want to call that pseudo-intellectual masturbation, I can live with that.
So in that regard, I do think it’s fair to use Meiday — as a public event — as my conceptual starting point for discussing hipsters in the Philippine context. It’s not meant as a slight against Mei, as a person, or as an organizer.
Please also note that nowhere in this piece do I ever agree with the assessment that Meiday attracts hipsters, to begin with. Likewise, I never claimed that any discrimination has necessarily taken place across class lines; only that DML believed that it had, at one point.
In fact, both you *and* the other commenters may be correct in your view of the situation. You call it “hipster kids discriminating against other hipster kids”; they say it’s “middle class kids discriminating against other middle class kids”. And from where i’m sitting, it seems like you’re all describing the exact same thing, from different perspectives. Getting those views out is precisely the starting point of reaching consensus, or at least a more critical understanding, rather than pretending that no tension exists.
So I have to disagree with your assessment that “articles like this … will only fan the hater flame”, and frankly I would hope that Mei agrees with me. (Though it’s ultimately up to her whether or not she decides to say anything about it.)
Posted by paolo | 03.25.2010, 4:40 pm“And seriously, all these guys talking about hipsters sound like hipsters in denial or maybe “hipster kids discriminating against other hipster kids”. How’s that for irony.”
I agree.
Posted by marla | 03.25.2010, 4:42 pmHi Pao,
I’m not against intellectual discourse (in fact a couple of friends and I were talking about cultural capital in the context of the real bourgeousie who bring in international music acts in manila not to make financial but social profit) and in principle there’s nothing wrong with using Meiday as a conceptual starting point in the context of the organizer herself referring to it as a hipster event in the tongue-in-cheek way that you mentioned. I have no deal with talking about hipsters in general, I will happily read on with interest if the next issue of New Slang is “HIPSTERS – Yes, we’re talking to you!”?. I did not mean to say that any article talking about anything meiday or anything hipstery = fanning the hate flame towards Mei.
My issue is the specific angle or starting point you used was this horrible mess with DML which I just found irresponsible because while this article may have spurred on some of the discourse you hoped for, there was also this inevitable take away that “yes, some classist discrimination went on during Meiday”. The reason some of us joke about it in hushed tones is because we’re informed enough to know that none of this shit actually happened – but when the people of the internetz come across articles like this and all the resulting hate that came out of DML’s facebook smear campaign and they have no clear idea of what exactly happened, HATE just happens.
Posted by Pepe Torres | 03.25.2010, 5:05 pmBtw, apologize for the formatting fail, folks.
Posted by Pepe Torres | 03.25.2010, 5:05 pm*** NECESSARY OFF–TOPIC ANNOUNCEMENT ***
To everybody attempting to make long comments with multiple paragraphs: i’ll ask Rory (our tireless webmistress) to fix the comment code to automatically insert an extra “BR” tag after every paragraph. Until then, kindly bear with the clunky post format, and rest assured that i’ll get around to editing it within a few hours’ time.
For now, let the discussion continue…
Posted by paolo | 03.25.2010, 5:20 pmI’ll just leave this here. http://tinyurl.com/ykxgsqx
Posted by Shinji | 03.25.2010, 6:52 pmNo hate from here, mates! I don’t go to Meiday not because of some cool cred I’m trying to hold close to my heart like a little baby, but simply because it’s not my scene. (but I gather it’s some sort of celebration for someone named Mei? Is it her birthday? Happy birthday!) No hate on hipsters either because, meh. They’re okay, I suppose. The long-ass comment was just my historical/ class analysis take on the hipster scene. Take it as it is or overread.
Posted by Mssr. Ponce de Wasabi, esquire | 03.25.2010, 8:17 pm“HIPSTERS–Yes, We’re Talking to YOU!”
I’m SOLD.
Posted by alice | 03.25.2010, 10:04 pmbut hipster = white people!
(and “honorary” whites, like the japanese were, in apartheid south africa)
hipster manila is another way of performing whiteness, no? the upper class version of skin whitening creams?
liked the article!
Posted by maita | 03.26.2010, 5:52 amsooner or later i’m going to have to really sit down and sort out this hipster stuff. i feel old because i don’t understand any of this.
Posted by miao | 03.26.2010, 2:43 pm@Miao: The meaning of ‘hipster’ is obviously contested. For the record, i’m partial to the definition used by Douglas Haddow in his scathing critique, Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization:
“Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.”
What that means, in practical terms: you can’t really *define* or rationalize a hipster. You just instinctively recognize one when you see one, as long as you understand the present context of how “hipness” is constructed.
Posted by paolo | 03.26.2010, 8:02 pmbut that’s just it! what is hip? (and please don’t say tower of power, hahaha!) that’s what i’m saying. i’m so out of it i don’t recognize these kids anymore. are we past the horrible haircut stage? (wait… thet’s emo, right? not hipster?)
Posted by miao | 03.27.2010, 10:00 amalso, how do you get your icon to appear in the comment threads?
Posted by miao | 03.27.2010, 10:00 amyou’ve pretty much summed up the problematics of what it means, globally, to be a hipster. in the context of paris (and france, very, VERY generally) the hipster can however still be linked to a tradition of the intellectualization and indeed, the institutionalization of “alternative” cultures. here, such practices are legitimized by the state, by way of subsidies (for new groups or cultural organizations, for example), as a means of combatting foreign (ie american) influences and as well as promoting (continuing the myth of) france as THE epicenter for All Things Cultural.
Posted by charisma | 03.28.2010, 5:21 am