This Was A Midterm I Wrote About Beer

(A Note From the Party Castro: For one of my classes, we had a take-home midterm we could write about pretty much anything. So I wrote about Pabst Blue Ribbon. Here it is, in all its resplendent glory. The stuff at the end isn't very interesting but it was part of the assignment so whatever. Enjoy Plz.)

For the entirety of my time as a practitioner of the deplorable practice of drinking beer, I have noticed that Pabst Blue Ribbon, also known as PBR, has been claimed as the brew of choice for the, er, “hip” set. This essay attempts to understand why this is so.

By the 1990’s, the Pabst Brewing company had found its market dried up. It was holding on for dear life, even going so far as shutting down its breweries and outsourcing the production of its signature product to Miller.

At the start of the decade, a funny thing happened – Pabst’s sales began to pick up, especially among the “bike messenger crowd,” as one New York Times article hilariously put it. “Bike messengers” of course refers to hipsters and indie folks and the like. As the decade progressed, Pabst found itself once again enjoying a fair chunk of the cheap beer market, mainly by selling its beer to hipsters by the shedload.

There was no given explanation for this. The most notable association that Pabst had until the early 2000’s shared with the indie culture was a tangential one: the character of Frank in the David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet yelled at a guy about how he shouldn’t drink Heineken and instead drink Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s a pretty memorable scene, but it’s not enough for an entire subculture to adopt a single product as its flagship beer.

Before I really delve into why someone would want to drink PBR, I think it’s important to consider why someone wouldn’t want to drink it. First of all, Pabst’s flavor, even compared to other cheap beers, is not heralded. A quick poll of my friends asking their conception of PBR’s taste elicited such responses as, “soggy bread with a hint of iron,” “a cool mixture of horse’s urine and the juice that accumulates at the garbage bags,” and the comparatively laudatory, “drinkable.” So it’s clear that we’re not dealing with the most delicious product here. Nor does Pabst have the least calories of a cheap beer – one twelve-ounce bottle of Pabst has 153 calories as opposed to the 95 calories in Busch Light. Over a six or seven beer drinking session, those extra 58 calories can add up in a very tangible sense.

So if PBR tastes like shit and makes you fatter than beers of comparable price and quality, why the hell would anyone want to drink it? I attribute the Pabst phenomenon to three major factors: aesthetics, economics, and identity.

First off, PBR containers share many of the aesthetics present within indie culture. PBR’s minimalist design and basic color scheme jibes with the indie tendency to favor, well, minimalist designs and basic color schemes. Additionally, PBR cans and bottles look old, as if the label design hasn’t been updated since like the 1950’s. And indie people often have a fascination with all that vintage, be it shopping at thrift stores or purchasing music on vinyl – if it’s old-lookin’, chances are a hipster is into it. PBR’s appeal on this front is understandable.

Second of all, Pabst is cheap. This cannot be understated. The indie/hipster crowd tends to include vast quantities of college-age kids, and the 18-22 set are often perpetually short on funds. The fact that PBR is so aesthetically pleasing, plus that it only costs about fourteen dollars a case at the Harris Teeter in Carrboro, contributes to its significant popularity amongst the hip.

The deciding factor of Pabst’s widespread indie acclaim, however, is without a doubt connected to the question of representation. Pabst was so low on funds by the 1990’s that it had ceased to spend money on advertising. It was a product without an image to project – while most manufacturers of cheap beer could afford producing expensive commercials using such symbols as scantily clad women, football, and “manly” catchphrases to pitch themselves towards young, beer-swilling males in search of masculine roles to fulfill, Pabst had nothing.

I posit that since Pabst was a brand without a face, hipsters in their love for all things obscure embraced the company’s beer, since it offered them an opportunity to project their own image upon a beer instead of having another beer company’s pre-existing image thrust upon them. Clearly, the company recognizes that this is what’s going on, since to this day it advertises minimally yet still enjoys an ever-increasing market share.

Were it to advertise, it could very well undermine itself due to the rapid-changing nature of what is “hip,” and how hipster culture tends to exhibit a backlash against something once it gets too popular. The brand’s lack of advertising allows its image to stay fluid. Say that Pabst were to have endorsed the Kings of Leon circa 2006. This would have seemed like a pretty solid move at the time; the Kings’ wily Skynyrd-meets-Strokes sound had massive appeal with the indie set, but by the time 2009 rolled around and “Use Somebody” was emanating from every department store speaker in America, PBR’s association with a band who had “sold out and got popular” would be a detriment to its “authenticity.”

Pabst is today so closely associated with hipster culture that through the mere act of drinking a PBR is grounds for being labeled a “hipster” by one’s friends. By drinking a Pabst these days, one is making a statement about one’s tastes, interests, sociopolitical views, etc. What once began as breaking away from pre-existing structures with regards to beer-drinking has become a structure in and of itself.

BONUS KEYWORDS SECTION:

Binary: By using terms like “hipster” and “indie,” I realize that I’m creating a binary that doesn’t really exist between the “hip” and the “mainstream;” these “hipsters” are “indie” to what, exactly? The terms are bullshit because they lump people into groups that presuppose certain things about them which probably aren’t true. However, I’m using the terms anyway because they denote a certain group of people who may share common tendencies with regards to dress, musical tastes, sociopolitical views, etc. I realize that I’m contradicting myself, but it’s whatever.

Aesthetics: Hipsters may tend to gravitate towards PBR on the basis of aesthetics; the minimalist design of the label dovetails with the hipster tendency towards basic outfits such as white v-neck t-shirts, cut-off jean-shorts, and slip-on Vans sneakers (sample outfit; I fully realize that "indie" fashion exists on a very large continuum. The fact that the bottles and cans look old remains consistent with the hipster desire for vintage items.

Labor: Because PBR is so cheap, it grants the generally-poor indie set an easier economic opportunity to obtain it; it takes less labor to generate the income necessary to purchase a six-pack of Pabst than it would to obtain a six-pack of, say, Magic Hat. Additionally, Pabst does not produce its own product; its outsourcing of its main labor to Miller might cause a backlash with the hip set, seeing as they trend towards corporate independence.

Symbol: Pabst has become a symbol of a certain lifestyle. That is to say, by walking around a party holding a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon, you are denoting an affiliation with hipster culture.

Structure: In the early 2000’s, drinking a Pabst was a way to break away from the identities offered by beer advertisers, “cutting through the cultural grass” so to speak. Today, drinking a Pabst now denotes that you’re now going along with pre-existing beer drinking structure, which could create an upcoming Pabst backlash which might lead to a new beer being chosen by the hip. Such is the cycle of culture. I couldn’t really get into this in my essay, but it seems that Miller High life, with its new camouflage can design and altogether “zany” image that it’s pitching, has a pretty decent shot of being the new hip beer of choice if the "bike messenger set" wants to choose their beer brand ironically by buying into an ad campaign that they would have a natural tendency to shun due to its altogether sophomoric, heteronormative-skewing ad campaign. Or it could be Keystone, due to its relatively low-key advertising practices and dirt-cheap price. Or hell, it could be Busch Light since it’s the recession and the beer seems to be on a perpetual sale at Harris Teeter, making it the absolute cheapest beer available around here. Only time will tell.