HW 23- Initial Thoughts on "Cool"

So this unit has a very trivial feeling to it, that I really hope does not dwell on the surface, because I just don't see a point. I feel like the word "cool" is a term people use to describe someone else who has a certain trait which they feel is better than that trait in themselves. I know that when I see someone and think that they are cool, its because either I can relate to them, or they have something unique about them that I want to emulate in some way. Although that may not be the most socially aggrandizing thing to admit, it is the truth.

I think that behind closed doors, and in our own minds, we all know that having a Bugatti, a model wife and Ca$h, is not what makes a person cool. Having a particularly impressive trait such as intellect, strength, wit, determination, social prowess, and athletic ability, are what make people definitively "cool".

The way I see it, we have a definition of cool, which we keep inside ourselves, but that's not really "cool" in the social sense. What we keep inside ourselves, is what we aspire to as worthwhile people. What "cool" really is, is the term used in conversation, in our social lives, and that definition of cool is having cars, women and money. Cool is superficial bullshit, and carries a purely social meaning, beyond that, "cool" is meaningless.

I want to site an example in pop- culture to support the ideas in my post. The actor James Dean in the Movie "Giant", portrays a young man, who becomes extremely wealthy off of a small plot of land containing oil, which he is given by the family he worked for as a handyman. The reason that James Dean's character is so cool, is that he is determined to stay on the land he is given, and refuses to sell it back to the family. His determination pays off, and eventually he becomes far richer than his former employer. James Dean epitomized cool in this movie, he struck oil, and it didn't matter how he did it, or if it made him happy, but what does matter, is he got rich. And as we know, getting rich, is pretty damn cool.

In the movies, we take the things we see as "cool" because, like the term itself, movies are fake, and can't give us anything which we should or can realistically emulate. Instead, we need to look at the actual actors, who are truly cool, and have qualities we should strive for. Paul Newman for instance, was a standard of social graces and "coolness" in his movies, but in real life, he was charitable and kind, a person worthy of the "cool" label.