In an interview with comedian and podcaster, Marc Maron, on his show WTF, acclaimed actor, writer, and renaissance man, Ethan Hawke discussed a project that was a possibility in the past but had fizzled out. The project was a biopic on American jazz trumpeter and vocalist, Chet Baker. He brought the project to the attention of director Richard Linklater, whom he’s since worked with on eight films. Linklater had some interesting ideas for the project and what direction they should go in. Something that Mr. Hawke said while telling this story was that Linklater had an immediate vision for how the film should be. He thought, “What is cool? Chet Baker is cool. What is cool? Cool is detachment.” I thought to myself, “detachment? What does he mean detachment?” I had never heard someone describe coolness that way before, but something about it appealed to me. I thought, “wait a minute there might be something to that.” So, I thought I’d explore it a little more, what it is, what makes someone cool, and how our idea of cool differs from those in decades past.

First off, what else is cool besides detachment? To boil it down to one word isn’t the best way to get at an understanding of the phenomenon that we encounter on a daily basis. When we picture cool we immediately go to celebrities, say James Dean, Frank Sinatra, and Miles Davis. No? OK maybe I should pick people from this century, say George Clooney, Leo Dicaprio, and Johnny Depp. Now do you get the picture? Good. Now, what do they have in common? A lot of you, I’m sure, are thinking that they’re all good-looking, and you would be right. Is there a correlation between coolness and physical attractiveness? Well, according to a study conducted at the University of British Columbia when students were asked to write down words that, to them, indicated coolness, a large amount of them wrote things that pointed to appearance, such as "attractive," “hot," "sexy," "handsome," and "beautiful." This doesn’t really adhere with what was formerly associated with cool.

Cool used to mean defiance to authority, rebellion, and stoicism. This “cowboy machismo” has since been retired and replaced by the nice, attractive, funny guy from down the street who might play in a band. Cool was not something that you needed any reassurance of. If you were, you were, no one needed to tell you, and you never felt the need to tell anyone.

One could argue that this is no longer the case. Our culture has become enamored by the idea of instant-gratification and acceptance of our peers. Coolness does this weird thing where when trying to achieve it, you seek equal parts individualism and belonging; two ideas that have no business being in the same room.

In the book, "Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude" by Dick Pountain and David Robins, there is an interesting term used in regard to coolness. They call it a “moving target,” meaning that cool is not some intrinsic property that someone is born with and last forever. Cool is developed by culture and cool is destroyed by culture. To illustrate this, the book discusses what happened to the Levi Strauss company in March of 1999. Levi’s market shares dropped 50 percent between 1990 and 1998 and thus had to lay off 6,000 workers and close half of their US plants. Why the decline in sales? Well Pountain and Robins put forth the argument that, well, Levis just stopped being cool. In the '50s and '60s, Levis clothing was generally worn by the working class but then suddenly middle-class kids started wearing their blue denim as a way of rebelling against the norms. Their parents didn’t want them wearing them, as it was symbolic of a different culture. Pountain and Robins claim that, “Kids want simultaneously to be acceptable to their peers and scandalous to their parents.” There could be truth in that. Those kids that were wearing denim in the '50s and '60s were parents in the '90s and their kids certainly didn’t want to be seen wearing the same thing as them, just as they did 30 years earlier. What this tells us is that there was nothing inherently cool about denim or blue jeans, but that a society and a generation decided to make is so. Just as the next generation decided to take its cool label off and attach it to something else.

So what about detachment? Is detachment inherently cool? Can that word fully illustrate what cool is? Well, in a certain way, I think so. However, I think the type of detachment, has suffered the same fate as Levi’s jeans. The type of detachment that used to be cool was ironic. It was stoic, and it manifested itself through the person hiding their true feelings. When one was scared, they didn’t blink, when one was insulted, they laughed, when one was interested in reading, they read in private. Today, the detachment we see in those that are cool are that of superiority. They see themselves as better than the competition, top of their class, in need of constant reassurance, through themselves or others. You’re cool if you’re listening to this artist, wearing this brand, buying these headphones, as if those that don’t do those things are not cool.

As we learned with Levi Strauss, coolness changes constantly. Every decade or so ushers in another wave of cool. It will never stop transforming. Personally I see real consciousness to this very issue going on, particularly in the rise of Hisptersim. The next big thing might not be liking what everyone else likes, but the exact opposite. That still carries with it a sense of superiority though, which I do not condone. Not because I’m better than you, of course, but because superiority indicates detachment, and detachment is what draws people and societies apart. It expands the boundaries between myself and my peers, without any chance of actual progressive and meaningful connection. Now, if only that wasn’t so damn cool.