Then with the First World War, all of the European powers were in bad conditions and bankrupted. As a result, people got angry with the way society was working and started to try to destroy everything involving the ‘old society’. This movement was called Modernism and was first started by artists in the forms of surrealism, cubism, impressionism and expressionism. At the same time, this movement made people start to perceive things about how the society worked which generated the popularization of the idea of cynicism (people that believe that nothing works or has any value),
After the Second World War, the US was the most powerful country in the world and its culture was really influential to other countries. In this same context, jazz musicians started to use the word cool as a slang meaning something that is really nice. And, simultaneously, cynicism was becoming more and more popular amongst the American population (an example of it is the use of the word snafu as an acronym for ‘Situation normal all f***ed up’). Then, when the jazz capital changed from New Orleans to Los Angeles (the centre of media companies in the world), the idea of cool started to be commercialized and popularized. The coolest people in those days were the jazz musicians and other people such as Elvis Presley, Dave Brubeck and James Dean, who helped to create an idea of cool as being something Disrespectful in a calm and self-confident way.
