As a man who often congregates with the hipster community, I feel the need to say that (500) Days of Summer did not have a single hipster in the film. When did music fans automatically get categorized as hipsters? For shame.
As for your question, there is nothing wrong with a film that targets a certain audience, in fact, that’s what most, if not all, films do today.
Ha. Do hipsters really get classified as a people group or social class? I can’t think of anything less interesting to talk about. Bleh.
I have to disagree with (500) Days of Summer catering to a specific social group. My mom just watched it today and she enjoyed it immensely. She certainly isn’t anything close to a hipster.
Besides, as Glem said, Tom and Summer aren’t hipsters. They’re “hip,” yes, in a young, twentysomething way, but they certainly don’t look anything like any of the hipsters I’ve met. Nor do they act like them either.
For REAl hipsters see
Shadows
Guns of the Trees
Pull My Daisy
The Flower Thief
The more movies you watch the more you will get bored with trends. That’s natural. I could go through my own list of things that should be put on moratorium
Heist
Buddy Cop
Serial Killer
Will Ferrell
Underwater Treasure
Does that mean that no film in those genres will ever be good? Well, probably, but not necessarily. It just means I’m tired of them and unless they change film as we know it I’ll still be tired of them. I haven’t seen (500) DOS but I can see how the hipster thing could become tiresome as well.
What defines a hipster? I could be one and not even know it… :O!
Mike: ‘Does that mean that no film in those genres will ever be good?’
No not necessarily, but I believe the fourth one reached it’s peak with Anchorman. ;)
Haha. My stock asshole answer is to say i think the fourth one reached it’s peak as a spematozoa.
Mike: That’s fair, I was actually going to add ‘if you believe even that,’ for ones such as yourself. ;)
I hate hipsters in general, but they’re just teenagers or early 20-somethings going through a phase. Hating them doesn’t really constitute intolerance of some social/cultural group.
Ha. Thanks, I think :/ I haven’t seen a lot of hipster films but I used to read a lot of hipster comics back in the day and it the cliches wore thin mighty fast. References to alternative rockers like the Smiths, complaints about shallow girls not liking “deep” guys, complaints about jobs not allowing them to be creative, and other standard hipster stuff made you want to scream “can you write a character over 40 in here somehow?” After a while comics like this seemed as creatively abysmal as superhero stuff. But there were some good ones.
I agree with Glemaud – the first thing that popped in my mind when reading this thread was, "There were hipsters in (500) Days of Summer? It’s one thing to not like this movie, fine. But to not like it b/c of the hipster factor, that seems a bit ignorant. I liked the movie for what it was and I in no way associated it with hipsters (at least not the hipsters in LA that I know – and since this film takes place in LA, I think I speak from a tad bit of experience).
I think if people label this film as hipster simply because of the music, then yes they are complaining about a specific class of people but it’s misguided to associate this with hipsters. A lot of regular people listen to that kind of music and it’s popular with some of the twentysomethings these days. What’s wrong with that? It’s not necessarily the music I listen to but I still enjoyed the flick. And my reason for appreciating the film had nothing to do with it’s trendiness – the film had unabashed heart and it was the emotional honesty of the film that really spoke to me. This isn’t a hipster idea – this is what I look for in ALL the movies I go to.
Mike: Don’t worry, I’m far from bein’ a WF fan myself.
I didn’t think so, i was just jokingly suspicious of the phrase “ones such as yourself.” It’s all in jest though, no worries.
How about 70’s films…..old hipster nostalgia? Is the beginning of Apocalypse Now a hipster sequence because it uses a song by the Doors?
Mike: I know, but it’s too easy for things to be misinterpreted online and I don’t want to come off as rude by mistake.
Josh S – I don’t think you have to worry about coming of as rude. Leave that to us professionals. :)
Fredo: :D
“How about 70’s films…..old hipster nostalgia? Is the beginning of Apocalypse Now a hipster sequence because it uses a song by the Doors?”
That is a great point. This is why I said it was possible for the genres I hate to produce something great. Some of my favorite films could be classified as “old hipster nostalgia.” The frustration is mostly with superficial aspects of certain films that shouldn’t make someone completely disregard them if other evidence suggests they have merit. I’ll still need plenty of evidence for the genres I listed though.
Hipsters wear tight jeans.
Hipsters worship Godard.
Neither were present in (500) Days of Summer
Hipsters like to use the word “ironic”, often incorrectly.
Fredo: Am I a hipster if I enjoy, but don’t worship Godard?
How about 70’s films…..old hipster nostalgia? Is the beginning of Apocalypse Now a hipster sequence because it uses a song by the Doors?
It has to do with how the music is used. Coppola isn’t using Wagner and “The End” the same way that (500) is using Hall & Oates.
hipster is just a fancy way of saying, “you shit-ass”
Perhaps I don’t know much about hipsters in general. I know that I like most of the same music that they do, but my contact with hipsters stops at brushing shoulders at a used record store.
Let’s forget the label “hipster” then, because apparently it doesn’t apply to this particular movie.
My real concern wasn’t with hipsters, so much as the way that people reacted to the film based on the fact that it included a certain group of people, who listened to certain music…etc, etc. My interest is not limited to this movie alone. I have friends, for instance, who find it hard to get into Mean Streets because of the way that it focuses in on a very specific people group from a very specific place. My understanding of the history of that particular film is that it did very poorly outside of NYC, perhaps because people didn’t know how to relate to it’s characters. I love Mean Streets, by the way, and I’ve always thought that Scorsese’s ability to show us that culture from the inside out is amazing.
Oh, and Zoody Dechanel is set to marry Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.
Hipsters here live in Williamsburg. Many of them live off of their parents’ trust-funds and live in $500,000 condos, but wear hobo clothes, don’t have jobs (some have never held a job at all), wear vintage and skinny jeans, and act “artsy” and pretentious without knowing what they’re really talking about.
Nathan, I think I know what it is that you’re driving at. Whether the appeal of 500 Days goes beyond the group of people, whatever name or categorization you apply to them, is immaterial to me. Personally, I could not possibly care less what group of people a film focuses on, but what makes a given film experience worthwhile is the way in which it is approached. Specifically, 500 Days did get at a demographic that is trendy and pop-culture savvy, “hipster” or not. But my personal problem with that film is that it does so many things well, covering multiple realms of emotional response to unrequited affection and how we deal with them, but then gave us an ending that I felt contradicted the entire sensibility of the film. “This is not a love story,” the narrator definitively claims. Up until the end it seemed to be driving at some sort of self-actualization, if I can call it that, but then left our main character with another woman who may arguably be better and may just as easily not be. I felt like it placed the emphasis back on finding a relationship to make the picture complete, unlike such monumental films as Annie Hall and Manhattan.
Josh S. – As long as you don’t wear tight jeans, I’ll give you a pass on your Godard love.
But you’re treading on thin ice so beware.
My idea for this thread got derailed, and fast.
http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/5239/comments
Nathan M.
Over the course of the past month or so, since the release of (500) Days of Summer, occasional opinions about it have popped up on this site. Some like it, and some don’t. But one of the criticisms that people have leveled at it bewilders me. I read things like, “If I have to see one more movie where hipsters parade around their favorite music…”, “I’m tired of dumb indie movies with people like Zooey Dechanel.”, or some other variant of these two. These criticism seem particularly pointed at the social class of it’s characters – hipsters.
From one angle, I can sort of understand these remarks. It’s a film that definitely caters to a very specific people group, and it trades in pop culture references meant for those people, and not for others. Hipsters, like a hundred other sub category people groups, can be annoying sometimes, but they’re still people. So, why is it a problem to make a movie about them?
When I think of all the qualities that movies present to me, one of the greatest is their ability to let me look into the lives of other people groups. Up there on the screen is a window into worlds that I’ve never been to, with people that I’ve never met, participating in cultural rituals that I never have. Not that movies can be depended upon as a sort of anthropological resource at all times, but they point us in different directions, both past and present, far and near.
If you don’t like the hipsters in (500) Days of Summer, why?
And, by the way, this thread is not meant as a sympathy plea for the on-screen persecution of hipsters. Nor is it my way of saying that everyone has to like (500) Days of Summer, or hipsters. I’d love to hear people discuss a wide variety of elements found in the film, but I’m particularly interested in how we deal with movies that involve a people group, or social class, that we don’t like or understand.