Search - Zoolander (Special Collector's Edition) on DVD

A Grand Slam Against the Superficiality of "COOL"!

B. Tween_DeLions | USA | 04/11/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Finally, a Hollywood movie that lampoons not just fashion but "COOL"!

It's hard to say exactly when all things cool became blatantly uncool. But the transformation is virtually complete. Almost everything associated with cool these days is little more than superficial, sensationalistic, self-serving, exhibitionist, mindless preening. Cool has come to mean fashion and fashion has come to be virtually anything loud, stupid, unwise, with a heavy heavy dose of self-righteousness thrown in.

The great irony is that "cool" has become the one form of propaganda that young people can't question without being ostracized. One aspect of the sixties movement was about transcending government propaganda aimed at it's own citizens and waking up to a higher reality. But after the sixties generation was no longer setting the trends, "cool" started a downward trend into mindlessness. Now some of the worst propaganda that is foisted on the young is in the form of "youth culture", the one thing that is virtually impossible for young people to question, because peer influence is never so great as when people are young.

The teens and early twenties are the years when peer influence is hardest to resist. And so young people are forced to swallow anything with a "cool" tag attached to it. Cool has become the new God because its dogma has the same kind of unquestionable authority. You simply can't question notions of cool without a million "zombies of cool" ripping you to pieces for your gall in daring to question it.

"Cool" has become a giant snowball rolling downhill. It keeps increasing in mass and velocity. One day it will self-destruct of its own mindlessness, like the children on the island in the novel, Lord of the Flies. Then, hopefully, newer, wiser versions of "cool" will arise to replace the old. But in my opinion, the term "cool" has been worn out and can never be the same again. The word should be retired, because everything associated with it has become tainted with mindlessness. These days, "cool" has become a license to be a loud and aggressive unquestioning idiot.

I respect Ben Stiller for daring to point that out. Although this movie may not be something you can watch over and over, it's something everyone should see once. The obvious premise of this movie might have been "the world of fashion has become superficial nonsense", but the subtext is "cool has become superficial nonsense". It was a brilliant idea. But I'm sure the message will be lost on a lot of young people.

Sixties "cool", of course, was guilty of its own varieties of mindlessness. But things have gotten only worse since then. Cool is the new religious fundamentalism. Question anything and everything! (Except "cool", of course)."