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For other uses of cool, see Cool (disambiguation).

For more on cool in the context of indigenous African cultures, see African aesthetic.

Cool, in popular culture, is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance and style. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no one meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and is frequently used as an expression of admiration or approval. A great deal of literature has been committed to understanding the concept of cool in societies.

A cross-cultural perspective

Cool in Africa and the diaspora

Scholar Robert Farris Thompson has described African American cool as having corollaries in several African cultural traditions, citing, the Yoruba concept of "Itutu". He also has noted similarities between African and European notions of cool.

Thompson also, however, finds the cultural value of cool in Africa and the African diaspora different from that held by Europeans, who define it primarily as the ability to remain calm under stress. He cites a definition of cool from the Gola people of Liberia, who define it as the ability to be mentally calm or detached, in an other-wordly fashion, from one's circumstances, to be nonchalant in situations where emotionalism or eagerness would be natural and expected.

According to Thompson, there is significant weight, meaning and spirituality attached to cool in traditional African cultures, something which, Thompson argues, is absent from the idea in a Western context. "Control, stability, and composure under the African rubric of the cool seem to constitute elements of an all-embracing aesthetic attitude." African cool, writes Thompson, is "more complicated and more variously expressed than Western notions of sang-froid (literally, "cold blood"), cooling off, or even icy determination."(Thompson, African Arts)

The telling point is that the "mask" of coolness is worn not only in time of stress, but also of pleasure, in fields of expressive performance and the dance. Struck by the re-occurrence of this vital notion elsewhere in tropical Africa and in the Black Americas, I have come to term the attitude "an aesthetic of the cool" in the sense of a deeply and completely motivated, consciously artistic, interweaving of elements serious and pleasurable, of responsibility and play.

Many, trace today's pop-culture cool to concepts of cool in traditional African cultures, transmitted to white American society and later internationally via the African American experience. Cool has been used to describe a general state of well-being, a transcendant, internal peace and serenity. (Thompson, African Arts.) It also can refer to an absence of conflict, a state of harmony and balance as in, "The land is cool," or as in a "cool heart." Such meanings, according to Thompson, are African in origin.

Idioms of cool heart and cool territory do not ... communicate in Western languages the same sorts of meanings of composure and social stability unless the phrasing is used by, or has been influenced by, the presence of black people of African heritage.

The black expatriate jazz scene in Paris, with its beatnik groupies, helped popularize notions of cool in the U.S. in the 1940s.

In other cultures

According to authors Dick Pountain and David Robins, attitudes similar to the modern vernacular, or slang, use of cool have existed for centuries in several cultures They claim the ethic of the Samurai caste in Japan, warrior castes in India and East Asia have elements which resemble cool, and that a similar phenomenon in Europe, which they term "aristocratic cool" (also known as sprezzatura), has existed for centuries.

Pountain and Robins also see the machismo of Hispanic cultures and the "Anatolian smile" of Turkey as having similarities with pop-culture cool.

Uses

While slang terms are usually comprised of short-lived coinages and figures of speech, cool is an especially ubiquitous slang word, especially among young people. As well as being understood throughout the English-speaking world, the word has even entered the vocabulary of several languages other than English.

Cool can be used to describe composure and absence of excitement in a person, especially in times of stress, and can refer to something that is aesthetically appealing. It is also used to express agreement or assent.

Cool is often used as a general positive epithet or interjection which has a range of related adjectival meanings. Among other things, it can ean calm, stoic, impressive, intriguing, or superlative.

Theories of cool

Cool as social distinction

According to this theory, cool is a zero sum game, in which cool exists only in comparison with things considered less cool. Illustrated in the book The Rebel Sell, cool is created out of a need for status and distinction. This creates a situation analogous to an arms race, in which cool is perpetuated by a collective action problem in society.

Cool as an elusive essence

According to this theory, cool is a real, but unknowable property. Cool, like "good", is a property that exists, but can only be sought after. In the New Yorker article, "The coolhunt", cool is given 3 characteristics:

• "The act of discovering what's cool is what causes cool to move on"
• "Cool cannot be manufactured, only observed"
• " can only be observed by those who are themselves cool".

Cool as a fictional concept

a heavily manipulative corporate ethos.

— Kalle Lasn

According to this theory, cool can be exploited as a manufactured and empty idea impossed on the culture at large through a top-down process by the "Merchants of Cool". An artificial cycle of "cooling" and "uncooling" creates false needs in consumers, and stimulates the economy. "Cool has become the central ideology of consumer capitalism". Supporters of this theory avoid the pursuit of cool.

Cool as an opinion

Quite often cool is in the eye of the beholder. One person, usually a member of a certain social demographic could consider something to be cool whereas a member of a separate social demographic could consider completely the opposite to be worthy of the label. Trends are usually considered cool when only a small minority are involved in them. More people becoming interested in this trend pushes it towards the mainstream, therefore classifying it as uncool. Something else will then emerge as a new trend, and the cycle will repeat indefinitely.

Cool as a family resemblance concept

If cool cannot be defined by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then it is better understood as a family resemblance concept.

Start with a set of paradigmatically cool individuals (for example, perhaps {Lenny Kravitz, Lily Allen, Fonzie}), and understand coolness as the union of overlapping penumbra centered on these cool individuals.

The paradigms of cool change with each generation and within each subculture.

Cool definitions

• "Cool is a knowledge, a way of life."
• "Coolness is the proper way you represent yourself to a human being."
• "Cool is an age-specific phenomenon, defined as the central behavioural trait of teenagerhood."

See also

• African aesthetic
• Charisma
• Cool jazz
• Itutu

Compare

• Lame (slang)
• Square (slang)

References

1. Thompson, Robert Farris. "An Aesthetic of the Cool." African Arts, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1973).
2. Thompson, Robert Farris. African Arts.
3. Thompson, Robert Farris. African Arts.
4. Dick Pountain and David Robins, Anatomy of an Attitude, Reaktion Books Ltd., 2000.
5. ^ Heath, Joseph and Potter, Andrew. The Rebel Sell. Harper Perennial, 2004.
6. "Merchants of Cool"
7. Lewis Macadams, author of "Birth of The Cool" .
8. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit, New York: Vintage Books, 1983, p. 13.
9. Marcel Dansei, Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence, p. 1.

• Cultural appropriation
• Popular culture