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It’s difficult to capture the ineffable essence of the term “cool.” Much like talent or art, “coolness” is a quality that’s impossible to adequately define with words, but you know it when you see it. Throughout history, writers have tried to bring this elusive characteristic to life in pop culture via shallow trickery and spiritless hokum. Sure, a leather jacket or a dogeared copy of Catcher in the Rye helps cultivate an image of carefree insouciance, but they reek of the chic-repellent known as effort. If it’s the intoxicating whiff of organic coolness you crave, there’s only one way to achieve this exclusive apex of social strata: Edgy Backwards Chair Sitting.

Irving Berlin is considered to be one of the greatest songwriters in history, but he’s also the Neil Armstrong of chairs, becoming the first patriot to stare into the abyss and ask, “What if I sat on a chair *this* way?”Photo: Everett Collection

This tried and true practice has been an indispensable tool for expressing a character’s inherent coolness since the turn of the 20th century. Also referred to as “Uncle Jesse Style,” edgy backwards chair sitting radiates a distinct brand of nonchalant defiance, like spray painting “opposite day” on a no trespassing sign or literally every single lyric to every single Kid Rock song ever produced. It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a snap of someone sitting backwards on a chair isn’t quite as chatty. It only needs one solitary word to express its inner truth: cool.

Before we visit some of the greatest moments in edgy backwards chair sitting, we must first pay tribute to the undisputed king and queen of this enduring pop culture trope: Mario Lopez and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Michelle Pfeiffer

One of the most beloved moments in the storied history of sitting backwards on a chair originates from Michelle Pfeiffer reprising her role from Dangerous Minds in Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” To say that this music video is iconic without emphasizing the term iconic would be a dereliction of italicization, which is also a baller band name. Best I can tell, the music video centers on Coolio, an actual person, inviting LouAnne Johnson, Pfeiffer’s fictional character from Dangerous Minds, to a semi-abandoned school that he… I guess rented?… so he could perform his new song in front of her.

To me, this seems like a nice gesture, but from the get-go Pfeiffer is not on board. Attempting to assert her dominance, the actress angrily tosses her chair to the side after Coolio suggests that Pfeiffer and her homies — Calista Flockhart and Michael Keaton, I assume — “might be lined in chalk.”

Unfortunately, their relationship doesn’t improve. The rest of the video is just a hodgepodge of Coolio rapping and Pfeiffer looking as if someone forced her to sit through a detailed five-hour lecture on the hidden intricacies of mitosis.

Hello, I’m actress Michelle Pfeiffer, and I alone have the most dangerous mind.

This is why I’m not cool enough for edgy backwards chair sitting. If Coolio invited me to a poorly lit school for a private rap jubilee, I’d keep interrupting him to be like, “Sick beat” or “Neat lyric, Coolio.” On a scale of 1-10, Pfeiffer gets a two and a half for manners but a perfect ten for her sleek coolness.

Mario Lopez

Mario Lopez didn’t invent sitting backwards on a chair, but he certainly popularized it during his tenure as A.C. Slater on Saved by the Bell. The producers of this TNBC staple were faced with a dilemma back in the early ’90s. How could they make Mario Lopez’s Slater — a new student whose best friend was a chameleon named Artie — as cool as Zack Morris, a Ferris Bueller clone with the ability to freeze time? Forget heroic plots about saving nerds or leading Bayside to victory over Valley on the football field, Slater became a made man thanks to his swashbuckling disregard for conventional seating methods.

At this point, it’s Pavlovian. If we see a character sitting backwards on a chair, they’re cool. We get it. Case closed. But it wasn’t always this way. It’s difficult to express just how important Mario Lopez was to the edgy backwards chair movement (although Zack obviously attempted to steal some of his thunder). For a generation of confused, disillusioned youth, Slater’s assertive sitting style was a beacon of comfort. When A.C. would jog into the Max sporting his neon ensemble du jour and confidently turn his chair around, he expressed an idea. An anti-establishment, punk rock ethos that said… hmm… how to best describe it. Oh yeah:

Hey, authority: pic.twitter.com/7chEAS0cGq

— Kid Rock (@KidRock) April 12, 2016

I don’t know much about this crazy world of ours. Is there a god? What happens when we die? Why does Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” have over 448 million views on YouTube? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But one universal truth I believe to be unequivocally beyond reproach is that sitting backwards on a chair is cool. Now that we’ve given the king and queen their due, here are the greatest moments in edgy backwards chair sitting history.