Homework #37, Cool paper final draft

Welcome to the year of 2010. Sounds futuristic, eh? The new year has just begun, yet the drive to be accepted, and cool, is still a common theme (or an ongoing drive), despite the futuristic sounding year. So, what is cool? I decided to look up the definition of "cool" on urbandictionary.com, and the first definition is "The best way to say something is neat-o, awesome, or swell. The phrase 'cool' is very relaxed, never goes out of style, and people will never laugh at you for using it, it’s very convenient for people like me who don't care about what's 'in.'" Anyone and everyone can say "that's cool." Or use the word cool to describe something. Cool is also a very versatile word, which is cool. Isn't it? The word cool is also used to keep your cool. Like in West Side Story there's a song called "Cool", and all of the lines are talking about playing it cool, and not getting in trouble. One of my favorite lines from that song is "Got a rocket in your pocket, keep coolly cool, boy!" This scene was performed right after the death of one of the Jet's leaders got killed, and all of the guys want to get even. Then one of the guys starts singing this song trying to calm everyone down. Rockets are contained, but if you light a rocket it goes everywhere. So this is a metaphor of the anger bubbling around inside them, and how they have to stay cool, as in staying calm. If we all play the typical cool pose, then we won’t actually be cool. Or: the typical cool is actually less cool than the not so typical cool. Or if you try to follow the typical cool role you end up being uncool, while people who are not the typical cool and are themselves are actually cool.


To start off as an example for the typical cool, I will share my story that I had to write:

Cassie was a beautiful seventeen year old, with long, dirty blonde hair and big, lavender colored eyes. She had a style of her own, and a sense of coolness about her that was often effortless. She was happy it was girl's night in with her friends, and they were sitting around in the living room talking.

"So, how did you meet Chaz?" Roxy asked, pulling Cassie out of her thoughts.
Cassie blinked, looked up at her friends and said, "Do you really want to know?"
"Yeah!" "Sure!" A chorus of cheers went round the room.
Cassie smiled, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear that was been falling in her eyes. "Well, one day I was walking down the street with some of my classmates, and I noticed this really cute boy had been tailing me. So I was trying to act cool -a little bit more than I already am, of course- and Trina decided it'd be funny to try and trip me. All of a sudden I was falling, and seconds before I was about to hit the pavement, I realized I wasn't falling anymore. Then I felt the strong arms wrapped around my waist, and smelled the rich scent of his leather jacket. I turned around, and smiling, looked up into the warm green eyes of my hero. 'You saved me!' I said. With a cool, relaxed smile on his face, he said: 'Anytime babe.'"
"Awww!" "Then what happened?!" Suddenly all the girls were asking questions at once.
Cassie gave a wicked grin, and continued "Offering his hand, he said, 'My name's Chaz, what's yours beautiful?' and that, ladies, is how I met my sweetie.'"
"He sounds like a really cool guy." Mavis said with a wink.
"Yeah, yeah he is." Cassie replied.
The End
*To give it credit I wrote this story while thinking about a scene from the movie Grease.*
My story has both the typical female role, and the typical male role in it. The character Cassie is beautiful with blonde hair, and she’s the kind of cool that can’t be doubted, like she says, “So I was trying to act cool -a little bit more than I already am, of course-“ because she already knows she’s cool. She also has her huge group of girls that are all listening to her and want to hear what she’s saying. Then there’s Chaz, who is confident in himself, and relaxed. He’s strong, and he’s wearing a leather jacket.

The definition of cool depends on the person who's using it. I may think that a person or thing is cool, when someone else may think that same person or thing is uncool. I think it's cool not to try too hard to be cool. I also usually go against typical definitions or people that are "cool". Cool is seen as the clique of popular people that stick to themselves. The cool people in movies are always the clique that has everyone who looks exactly the same, and no one else can get in. They don't talk to anyone outside their clique. For example, in Twilight all of the vampires are in one group, and everyone else wants to be in the "cool" group. All of the girls have a crush on Edward, while he seems to not care for the girls.

The typical cool is like a monster vaccume, that tries to consume as much of society as it can. It tries to make people detached, uncaring, and not smart. People earn cool points for being the bully to the not typical cool. If you're mean to your parents in front of people it's supposed to be considered cool. If you act up in class and make people laugh, it can be considered cool to be the jokester who's failing all of their classes. The song 21st Century Digital Boy, by Bad Religion, has the quote: "I don't know how to live but I've got a lot of toys." Which sounds like a lot of people today. People are always trying to one up every one else, by keeping up with the latest watches, or sneakers, or hair styles.. This quote is from an anonymous guy who's a friend of mine, and is an example of the cool role in teenage life: "Lol nah I'm too cool to be ashamed of myself." There's also a shirt that says "I'm right 97% of the time, and who cares about the other 4% of the time?" Get it?

I feel like burying oneself is not cool. If you act like a jerk but you're cool, you're life is still going to suck. For example, if a guy is acting really cool to impress a girl, but he is not being himself, and if the girl falls in love with the guy's not self then she isn't falling in love with who he really is, she's falling in love with who he wants to be seen as. There's this scene in Grease where Sandy and Danny haven't seen each other since the summer, and all of a sudden Sandy finds out Danny goes to the same school as her. So she excitedly screams "Danny!" and Danny in his leather jacket, white teacher, blue jeans and with his gelled hair gets really excited too. "Sandy I thought you were going back to Australia! I'm so glad.. (looks at guy friends.) I mean that's cool. That's cool.. What's a matter with me babe, what's a matter with you?" After Danny realizes his buddies are watching him expectantly, he goes into asshole mode. To please his friends. The typical cool guy, like Danny in Grease, puts his friends first. It is important in the cool role to have tons of friends who approve of you. If you have an ugly personality, but look cool, that's not going to save you. If you're a pretty blonde model with blue eyes but you like making people miserable, you're still ugly on the inside. I don't care if that gorgeous model is "cool" because if they're ugly on the inside, they're ugly on the outside as well.

Gwendolyn Brooks put herself in the boys' shoes, and felt like they thought they were cool because they were skipping school, drinking watered down gin and listening to jazz music. Kind of like the jokester who's too cool to get to school, and has too much of a life to try and be in school. It’s also similar to Learning to Labour by P. Willis, there is a quote that says "The lads also tried to identify with the adult, non-school world, by smoking, drinking and expressing strongly sexist and racist attitudes" This really stood out to me because they're trying to be like adults by smoking, drinking, and being sexist as well as racist. They weren't concerned with their education, they just wanted to have a "laff", and act like adults. Kids and teenagers are constantly trying to act older than they really are. Like girls wearing revealing clothing and too much makeup when they're only in middle school, which also happens a lot. But when I read this sentence I got the visual image of a bunch of boys sitting around in their father's too big clothing, and looking like children. Which, last time I checked, isn't very cool. Even though a lot of the time people just want to make other's laugh, and 'have a laugh', and just cruise on by in life. It also says "...and saw manual work as superior to mental work." In other words they'd rather use their bodies than think with their brains. They'd rather do muscle work than thinking work. Another thing I noticed is that it says how the 'lads' realize that they might not get a good job, so they feel like they shouldn't have to bother with school and education.

Theories:
Rosa Parks: “Each person must live their lives as a model for others.” This is found in our planners. It goes with how we are all acting on a stage, or acting out our lives. We all have roles to play, even though there are subsets to the roles. It's like in The Breakfast Club:, there's the Princess, the Jock, the Brain, the Criminal, and the Werido. Or as Jacara has said before, we’re all in our own little boxes, and we just go from box to box. We all are constantly trying on new identities, and trying to find one that defines us the best.

Thoraou: "The way we are is a product of where we are. (The way our character is) is because society produced us that way."
Goffman: "We are all put in certain scenes where we try to perform and create certain characters. This forms our self."
Scenes ----> performances ----> character ----> self. Vs. Self (real me) ----> character ----> performances.

The song Leave out all the rest, by Linkin Park, is an example of the feeling of meaninglessness and wondering about importance: "I dreamed I was missing/ You were so scared/ But no one would listen/ Cause no one else cared/ After my dreaming/ I woke with this fear/ What am I leaving/ When I'm done here" This is a common worry that people have. None of us want to be forgotten. We all want to be remembered for doing something great.

There are many sources all over the place that discuss feeling meaningless, and how people feel like whatever they do, they are still unimportant. The first quotes say that we look for meaning in materialistic things, and that the materialistic things are to blame in the first place for us feeling unimportant. It's the reason people shop to try and fill the never-ending hole in themselves.Though this may be a little inappropiate and the connection may not seem too clear, it reminds me of something Fat Bastard said in Austin Powers. He said in one movie: "I eat because I'm unhappy, and I'm unhappy because I eat. It's a vicious cycle. Now if you'll excuse me, there's someone I need to get in touch with and forgive: meself" (To read all about the lovely Fat Bastard in Austin Powers, go here. Basically, my connection is that people shop because they are unhappy, and that they are unhappy because they eat, and like the quote says, it's a terrible cycle.

Another name for the feeling meaningless is the theory of nihilism, that no matter what a person does, they still don't mean anything. That the world does not stop for one small individual, and that whatever we dod, the world doesn't care. A man once said to me, "The world could just do like this *he shook around a bit* and we'd be gone." In life, people are always striving to be noticed, and important. They -including myself- want to find a way to be come immortal, and to live forever. If we know we cannot die, it might help people feel important. To feel untouchable, invincible.

Even if we buy the cool new thing, we get an emptiness from it: "The emptiness infects the very objects that are supposed in the materialistic society to be the source of all satisfaction. We seek in luxuries and conveniences compensation for the loss of nature and vitality, and for the essential poverty of the Ideal manifest in urban landscapes."
"What characterizes the emerging global culture is just this loss of local initiative: consumer society has emasculated itself by trading self-reliance for convenience and imagined security." People try to find themselves through materialistic things. There are a lot of theories on The Emotional Life, about materialistic things and identities. Some quotes that stood out to me are: Adaptation is something that the mind does, when there's nothing else that we can do." "When we imagine our future changes and sorrows, we tend not to think how things will be shaped by time." "We get the handbag that gives us the boost, which wears off, then we buy a new one." "The people who knew they could change their posters, liked them more than the people who knew they could. Why? Because they adapted to like them." "There are things we find that we can live without and still be happy." "When we lose our jobs, we lose a part of ourselves." "My hair was me. My hair was a presence. So I was a presence. I lost my hair in one day, so I thought I lost my identity."

Problems with being cool/ trying to be cool:
There is an article written by Sandy Ryan discuses a perfect girl (Kathryn) with a not so perfect life. Kathryn’s parents both have fairly important jobs, her dad is a successful international lawyer, and her mom is a systems analyst. Ever since she was very young, she was brought up to be the best. She was considered to be “the perfect girl”, with good grades, striving to be number one. She grew up thinking, “to be beautiful, you have to be thin”. This article tells a story of Kathryn’s life, and how bulimia almost took it away from her. This is not an example of how to be cool, or popular, but it shows the problems one may face if put under too much pressure. She was considered the perfect girl, yet she was under so much stress that she started being bulimic, and almost killed herself. This story is very tragic, yet I thought it was important to post it as an example of someone falling apart under trying to be societies’ definition of cool. There is a quote that sort of fits with being “cool”: control. Kathryn said she “purged to feel like [she] had control over something in [her] life, since everything else seemed to be totally out of control.” She had felt like she had little control in her own life, so she started making herself throw up to try and make herself thin.

An example in real life of problems with society's typical cool: There was one morning where the people on Z100 were discussing how come hot people don't read, and I felt like it was very realevent to our "cool" unit. Some quotes that I wrote down from people calling into the radio station are:
"Because when hot people read, I don't think they're hot anymore" (She said something like that..)
"Hot people remain hot until they read".
"Hot people are more into visual stuff, and reading is kind of plain. If they were reading a magazine it would be me interesting."
"You can be hot and read. You just might not be picture hot."
"They go home, change their clothes, take out their contacts and put on their glasses. They slip into their nerd skins."(I wish I could make sure I had these quotes more exact, but they're pretty close and I couldn't find the conversation online.)

Most of the people calling in said that it was weird and uncommon for 'hot people' to read. I really loved the person that said that hot people "slip into their nerd skins." I think this is really funny, because I can relate to it. I go home, put on pajamas, and take out my contact lenses. Then I read, hang out with my family, text my friends, and eventually do homework. I don't care if people don't think of me as "cool", or if they do think of me as "cool". Society's definition of cool can be pretty twisted most of the time anyway. Society seems to think that the popular people are really cool: the person who gets high all the time, has sex with too many people to count, shoplifts.. Is really mean to people. While in reality they can be very shallow, are unaware of themselves, can be sort of unintelligent.. All of these are negative things. Do people really want to look up to people who are ruining their lives?

Also, another young female called in and said that she was hot and that she read. They asked her if she could send in a picture of herself. They asked how hot she was on a scale of 1-10, -ten being the hottest- and she gave herself a nine. A woman on z100 said "If you think of yourself as hot, then why didn't you give yourself a ten?" I thought that they were tearing apart people for no reason. Cool people can read! In my mind at least. I'd prefer a real, smart, fun person than a "perfect" person with a fucked up life. I thought that the woman calling in was cool, because she was standing up for herself. I was going to call in and send in a picture of myself as well, but I was about to be late to school.

Not Typical Cool = Cool
To start.. busting out of the typical cool and into the not typical cool. A lot of examples of the not typical cool can be found in the musical Rent. A great quote that was said by the fabulous tranny Angel is: "I'm more of a man than you'll ever be, and I'm more of a woman than you'll ever get." Angel's character is incredibly fun, and out there. Angel taught her friends to love one another, and to be who you want to be. When someone was making fun of her, she walked up to them and said the quote above. She didn't live her life being scared of what other people felt. She dressed how she wanted to, loved her friends, and helped people.

Another theme that comes up a lot in Rent is the idea of "no day but today". Like these lyrics, from the song Another Day: "There is no future/ There is no past/ I live this moment as my last/ There's only us/ There's only this/ Forget regret/ Or life is yours to miss/ No other road/ No other way/ No day but today." This is a good way to see life. To take it a day at a time, and to live like it is your last day. To not worry to much about your part or your future, but to live the day that you are living in. It's like a line from a song that my mom wrote: "Just stay in the moment and breathe."

One of the sweetest quotes that's to me an example of people cool and really down to earth is: "But I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery." The First Day of My Life, by Bright Eyes. Some people would love to just sit back and let all of the good fortunes come to them. There are a lot of people who assume that good will come to them. Yet this song says how he'd rather be working than to wait for something to come to him.

My role model/ favorite actresses is Audrey Hepburn. She refused to change herself to be like all the other models. One of the movies she's in is Funny face. Bits and pieces of lyrics from the song called Funny Face, from the movie Funny Face: "How can you possibly make a model out of that? You can't be serious" "For you're a cutie/ With more than beautie/You've got a lot of
per-son-a-li-ty for me." And "You're not exotic/ But so hypnotic/ You're much too much/ If you can cook the way you look." Most of when he was singing this scene he was looking at a picture of Audrey Hepburn and wondering how he could make her look like another model. But he liked her face because it was funny, and because she had some personality. There are so many typical models that all look the same. I have a whole book on Audrey Hepburn and movies that she's been in. She didn't want to be like other models. There's a picture of her modeling a table cloth and wearing a bread basket on her head, and she looked beautiful in that picture.

Something that I think is fascinating and really cool is the time of the hippies! I've seen Hair the musical twice, and have really enjoyed it. The time of having long hair, and being barefoot, burning your draft card.. I actually have a paper that they were handing out durning the play (the picture is shown above this paragraph) which is like a fake burn your draft card invite. My favorite character in Hair is named Claude. He acts as a British guy, and some ways that he was rebeling is that he had the British flag on his butt. Because that's considered disrespectful and all. Claude also wore his mom's necklaces, his hair was sort of my length, he had a headband on.. He was very pretty. These were some of the ways that he, -like all the other hippies- were rebeling against their parents and the war. During that time it was also against the rules for blacks and whites to be together, and for gays and lesbians to exist.. There's a song called Black Boys, that the white girls and one asian lady sing, saying how they tried not being with a black guy but that they -basicaly- can't resist. There's also a song called White Boys, where a bunch of black girls sing about not being able to get enough of white boys. Which is a whole rebellious thing. Sorry if I ruined everything for someone who's looking forward to seeing Hair the musical on Broadway.

Icy. Iced. Frigid. Frosty. "Aw man that jacket is iced!" "Ooh that's icy. The iciest." "That car is frigid man!" "Oh yeah? Frr-osty" In the In Death series by Nora Roberts, there are a lot of characters that speak like this. Whenever something is awesome, or cool, they usually say one of the four words I mentioned. The In Death series takes place in the future, in the year 2059 and the years after that. I really like the characters in Nora Roberts' books, and the way they speak. A lot of people in that series are very stylish, they have pink, green, orange, magenta, blue.. hair. There are two characters that always have their hair dyed multiple colors at a time and they are very fashionable. Their names are Mavis and Trina. There is also this guy named Ian McNab who is a detective, but he always wears bright clashing colors and says things like "iced". I think those words are good substitutes for the word cool, and that people should use them. There are many unique, not typical characters in the In Death series.


Another thing that's cool, and not so typical? ARTISTS! Like Ewan Mcgregor plays the pennyless artist (Christian) in Moulin Rouge. He is passionate, and he thinks that the purest thing is love. "Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!" and "Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love." (if you read this.. you know who you are.) He tries and tries to write a story about love. His dad thinks that he needs to be cured, yet you can see a glowing light around his thoughts on love. And the woman Satine, who he is in love with.

And to finish it off..My friends and family are cool, because they’re real:
Interviewing Alice: What do you think is cool? Like clothing, celebs, parties, theater.. "I think its cool to do the things you like doing with other people who like them and to not feel judged for it".
Do you think of yourself as cool? If so, what are some things about yourself that you think are cool? "By my definition sure. I will tell people my favorite music genre is musical theatre because it is, and I shouldn't be ashamed of the things I love."
Do your friends think you are cool? "Oh. I really couldn't say. I guess they hang out with me because they like something about me.."
Do you think your friends are cool? "Yes, they are cool. Because they are people who are confident in their life choices."
Who's cooler, the pope or the president, and why? "The pres because he's okay with gays."
Okay. Who do you think is cool? Like a character in a book, or ploy, or a celeb, or on tv? "Marla singer from Fight Club and Miss Rain from Precious."
Why?"Marla because she can take care of herself and stand up to men. And Miss Rain because she helps people through the thing she loves and is proud of her sexuality."
________________________________________
Interviewing my friend Harry: What do you think is cool? Like clothing, celebs, parties, music..
"Music is cool, art is cool. Activism is cool."
Who's cooler, the pope or the president, and why?
“Uh. Definitely the president. Just because the pope is like weird. The president right now hasn’t done too many bad things, and the pope has done a lot of bad things. But the president is a lot newer so I guess we have to see.”
__________________________________________________
Interviewing James:
Who's cooler, the pope or the president, and why?
“The president, because he’s more of a democratically elected person, and he’s more elected by the people, which would make him cooler I think.”
What do you think is cool? Like clothing, celebs, parties, theater..
“I would say talents are cooler than materialistic things. There’s more to it, and it’s more of a personal like accomplishment, more than something you buy.”
Who do you think is cool? Like a character in a book, or play, or a celeb, or on tv?
“I think Angela Lansbury is cool. Because she’s had an amazing career and she’s a very down to earth person I’ve met her. So talent and success did not make her crazy.”
Do you think of yourself as cool? If so, what are some things about yourself that you think are cool?
“Umm, sure, I think I’m cool. I think that what makes someone cool is they can’t care if other people think they are cool. They have to be self sufficiently cool.”
Do you think your friends are cool?
“Umm.. Yes. I think they’re cool because they are passionate about what they want to do and they just do their thing.”

My favorite parts of the interviews:
All of Alice's interview: Her main point is that you should do what you're passionate about and that you shouldn't be judged and you shouldn't care what other people feel. As long as you're happy doing what you want to be doing, that's what matters. As well as her saying that the president is cooler than the pope because "he's okay with gays".

An idea that I got from Harry is that the president's reputation isn't very tainted yet, because he is newly seen in the world. Yet the pope is weird and has been round for a long time.

James: like Alice's idea "I think they’re cool because they are passionate about what they want to do and they just do their thing.” To keep doing your own thing and to be happy with it is cool.


Conclusion:
So, what are some traits of the typical cool? Cutting school, making people laugh, dressing and acting older than you actually are, breaking the rules, smoking, being a rebel.. If you're a guy back then, having long hair was rebellious, for girls having hair that isn't on your head is rebellious too.. But definitions of cool keep changing, even though the word never goes out of style, and not everyone has the same definition of cool. I could think the quiet kid is really cool, and some one else might think the popular kid is cool. So is someone actually wrong? Or is that just how our maps tell us to see things, and how we view the world? There are some people that don't have things that they're passionate about, and don't really have a purpose. My mom is very passionate about her non-profit organization Just Tell. She's helping people which is important. I'm really passionate with my artwork, and I love to paint. Jacara is passionate towards her music. Music is her life, and one of the things that she cares about a lot. Alice and James are both very passionate in musical theater. It's the thing that they want to do. So instead of being the typical, careless person, try and be the person that does your own thing, and is cool by not trying to be cool.

Works cited:
-Dan Bruiger, "Emptiness of Modernity", http://www.leftfieldpress.com/essays/emptiness-of-modernity.htm
-Sandy Fertman Ryan, “The perfect girl.”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBX/is_1_11/ai_n6151475/ Girls’ Life, August-Sept, 2004.
- Leave out all the rest: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/linkinpark/leaveoutalltherest.html
-Lyrics to Another Day: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/rent/anotherday.htm
-Lyrics to the song Funny Face: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/f/funnyfacelyrics/funnyfacelyrics.html
-A website with quotes from Moulin Rouge: http://www.angelfire.com/oh/quotations/movies/m/moulinrouge.html