W. Smith
A couple of decades ago I overheard a retailer in his shop bemoaning the lack of precision in our spoken language, using the word “cool” to make his case. “It has to do with temperature,” he opined. I fought my temptation to call out to him, “Hey, buddy, language changes.”
And now we have a scholarly-cum-artistic team looking at our common, albeit slang, use of cool. According to Joel Dinerstein and Frank Goodyear III, there are four defining factors of cool: 1) originality of artistic vision; 2) cultural rebellion; 3) high profile recognition; and 4) recognized cultural legacy. A list of 100 cool Americans was assembled (check it out on the internet). Because this was the basis of a portrait exhibit, only cool people with an existing good photograph were considered.
Examples in the category of “Roots of Cool” include Fred Astaire, Frederick Douglass, Buster Keaton and H. L. Mencken. “The Birth of Cool” includes Humphrey Bogart, Miles Davis, Billie Holliday, Jack Kerouac, and Jackson Pollack. “Cool and the Counterculture” includes Angela Davis, Clint Eastwood, Bonnie Raitt and Malcolm X. Finally, “The Legacy of Cool” includes Kurt Cobain, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, Steve Jobs, Tupac Shakur, Jon Stewart and Benicio del Toro.
In case you’re interested, those not making the top 100 list include Janice Joplin, Dean Martin, Jerry Garcia and Jay-Z’s wife Beyoncé. (I add that last tidbit for those who, like me, didn’t know the two have been married for nearly a decade.) And no Presidents fit the criteria used to define cool, though four were considered: Obama, Clinton, Reagan and Kennedy.
Frankly, I can’t find a definition that closely backs up this study. Slang definitions tend to consider people cool if they have achieved honor and distinction in their field. Our researchers added their own take, and that’s fair.
Personally, I don’t have a really positive view of Quentin Tarantino or Andy Warhol (both on the list), and I’m not wild about Jackson Pollock’s work, but I think it’s cool that Georgia O’Keeffe and Tupac are on the list.
Whether you’re cool or not, you may reply to [email protected]; or send along your own special word with some comments that shed light on it.