HW 23- 1st Constructivist Exploration of Cool

Cool is an interesting concept. It isn't something you can define properly or even hold onto for an extended period of time but it is something that most people recognize immediately. What is it about cool that is so easily accessible to everybody and yet so hard to maintain?

I think cool never really dies completely. Instead it fades from one group of people to another. For example, hippies were once very cool by mainstream society. They were everywhere you looked and they were the symbol of their times. They were in the mainstream grouping. However, as time progressed and people moved on with their lives and things changed, hippies left that group of people, being the mainstream, and moved on to form a smaller group of pure hippies that still exists today through the evolution of it's popularity. The same can be said about other concepts that expand past people as well. For example, in the 90's, Seinfeld was one of the top shows on TV and it was very cool to watch it and discuss it the next day. Now it has moved from this mainstream grouping into a lesser group of cool, the nostalgia group.

I think that cool is also dictated by the popular. I understand that this is not some grand new revelation, but those considered popular or cool do not take responsibility for their actions the way that they should. This changes the course of cool as well and makes it cool to be irresponsible and to not care about your actions. This is the general direction society has been heading in the last few years thanks to people like Amy Winehouse or Britney Spears who don't take care of anybody except for themselves, and even so they don't take tremendous care and often lead their lives into chaos. This is in right now and society heads down as a result.

Cool is not always about being popular and without a care though. Take for instance the 1986 hit song, "Hip to Be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News. This song is about being "square", or being a nerd. The song peaked at number 1 on the U.S. Billboard top rock tracks listings and reached number 3 in the overall U.S. Billboard category. With lyrics like "I used to be a renegade... but had to settle down" and "Now I'm playing it real straight", this song counters what makes most other songs popular and completely avoids what made other songs of the year such as "Addicted to Love" and "Greatest Love of All" so popular. This shows that cool isn't a constant, as I stated earlier, however it helps to establish a trend that can connect to today, such as love always being cool in some form, however where it was once the "Greatest Love of All" it is now "3". A very drastic change to be sure.

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