Blessed Are the Uncool

Global Cool

Global Cool is no longer Global Americanisation. It may have started that way, but in the same way that having appropriated/absorbed black rock music, whites took it in entirely new directions, the same is true at a broader level with Global cool. Here is an example.



This is quintessential German cool: Love Parade 2006 in Berlin. It has nothing at all to do with casting an eye across the Atlantic, to see what the Americans are doing.

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Meanwhile, here, from Flickr, is the ultimate in Anti-American Cool. Che Guevara, that icon of cool rebellion, had nothing on Bin Laden. Che took on a Banana republic, Bin Laden the world's only superpower. All this to say: Cool concerns itself with the local, here-and-now. Cool is not at all about loving the West, whence cool first emerged.

posted by locutus est @ Monday, July 24, 2006