I found this article in our local paper. It was pretty interesting.
What is 'cool'? Word has evolved over time by Kimberly Noblin over at The Journal And Courier
Who says James Dean isn’t cool?
Researcher Ilan Dar-Nimrod, that’s who — and he has the research to back up the claim.
In a recent publication, based on the findings from conducting three separate studies among nearly 1,000 predominantly college-age participants, Dar-Nimrod, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, came to the conclusion that the definition of “cool” today is not the iconic image we have in mind.
Rather, cool is someone who is socially desirable, friendly, intelligent, confident, unique and trendy — think Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. But whatever happened to the leather-clad, cigarette-in-hand, too-cool-to-approach, rebellious stud?
Randy Roberts, a distinguished professor of history at Purdue University who focuses his studies on American pop culture, doesn’t exactly think that the core principle of what is cool has changed.
Recalling Marlon Brando, Jack Kerouac and the leather jacket-wearing bad boys and beatniks of earlier years that were the embodiment of cool, Roberts said that films and novels from the 1940s through the 1960s glamorized the outlaw hero.
“The cool guy didn’t get along with parents, he rebelled against everything,” said Roberts, citing “Rebel Without A Cause.” “They weren’t a bad person, just misunderstood.”
Roberts compares new age outlaws, such as Zuckerberg, with those iconic images that first come to mind when we hear the word cool.
“A range of what is cool has expanded. Zuckerberg is cool because he is worth billions — would he really be cool without all of the money? He was sort of an outcast. In both cases, these people are living in outcast worlds, they are taking alternative routes, they are doing their own thing and rejecting the mainstream of corporate America with no desire to work for anyone else. Zuckerberg won’t ever be the man in the gray suit,” Roberts said. Zuckerberg’s choice of attire for the business world: hoodies.
Nathalie Desrayaud, a doctoral candidate at Purdue who studies social psychology as well as communication, offers an alternative perspective.
“ ‘Cool’ is ... based on the norms and expectations of the time and environment. Rebellion means different things at different times to different people. I don’t know that the nice-guy-next-door-type is universally, or even nationally cool. ... But I agree that coolness is no longer limited to a very narrow definition exemplified by James Dean.”
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