The academics of being a hellman

Culture is all around us and it is beyond doubt that each and every human being on this green and blue little cricket ball with an equator for the seem is a product of the cultural influences that create the hegemony of their society. Cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu claimed that everything we do in life is a learned process acquired as a direct result of the ideals and expectations of the culture we call our own. To encapsulate this notion he coined the phrase cultural reproduction and believed that those in power used their cultural knowledge and power to reproduce ideals and beliefs that would help them stay in power, get all the money and as a result most of the babes too. He believed that those in power had access to high culture through untainted mediums such as classical music, conventional visual art and opera,while the masses were forced to content themselves with crap like the spice girls.

However in modern society things have changed. As the world has become continuously more urbanised and cultural beauty and significance is no longer confined to wanky stuff like ballet and theatre people have found away to break away from the expectations of society and become cool. No longer is cultural capital a currency that belong only to the aristocrats and social elite. Now if you need some cultural capital to score a babe or some mad cred with a hell mod squad all you have gotta do is some mad name dropping like Morrisey or Dylan or Brand or Nietzche or Keruac or Rimbaud (as if we would ever do that), or be on the door list of the raddest club around (let me on Tills). Another way is to dress nice by integrating a bunch of past sub cultural and classic trends to create something rad and unique, and if you really want to impress a babe you can tell em its called a bricolage (which is just a fancy name for this mix of cultural symbols). Also you can take the advice of an expert on the topic known as Simmel. He believed if you wanted to be truly stylish you've gotta have a little balancing act of individualisation and an absorption of the collective, rocking clothes, hair make up and body language that encompasses the plurality of our modern world.

One of the most critical figures is Baudelaire and possibly his raddest concept is that of Flaneur. A Flanuer, according to this great cultural philosopher, is one of the biggest hellmen you can be. If you were this dude your objective would be to walk the anonymous spaces of a contemporary city, experiencing the complexity, disturbances and confusions of the streets with their displays, relationships, imagery and despair. For Baudelaire a flaneur is the hero of modern life. He took in the vivid and fleeting beauty of the city and the impressions of the crowd and appreciated it all for its immediacy and finality, all with a certain stylish detachment. So if you want to be cool in the eyes of a skits wad frenchmen this is definitely the way.