|
|
vogue, very trashy
Shocking, engaging, unedited, largely full of crap
By Jeff Bercovici
“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
When Michael McKean spoke these words in the movie “This Is Spinal Tap,” he could have been describing Vice, the independent Canadian youth culture magazine that has lately become required reading for hipsters throughout North America.
Acquaint yourself with Vice and you will quickly learn that it’s also a fine line between compelling and repellant, between uninhibited and crass, and between rough-around-the-edges and just plain crappy.
For instance: Is a photo of a naked 10-year-old boy humping a cat hilarious or just sick?
Are Derek Ridgers’ black-and-white portraits of British skinheads strangely beautiful or simply disturbing?
And is it deliciously subversive or just plain perverse to publish a Q&A with former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and illustrate it with pictures of a nude couple brandishing firearms?
Started five years ago in Montreal, Vice has only recently entered the U.S. mainstream amid a media blitz mounted to hype the publication of a book, “The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and a record label, Vice Recordings. The magazine has a circulation of 120,000, with most of the copies given away free at bookstores, coffee shops and music stores, and at Vice’s clothing stores in New York, Los Angeles, London and Toronto.
As its editorial turf, Vice claims all areas of interest to the average urban bohemian: fashion, music, sex, nightlife, video games and drugs. Especially drugs.
To their credit, perhaps, Vice’s three founders—Shane Smith, Gavin McInnes and Suroosh Alvi—seem to be aware of the dichotomy that lies at the heart of their enterprise.
“We learned Vice had to be a well-balanced combination of smart and stupid content,” Alvi recently told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. “Stupid done in a smart way, and smart done in a stupid way.”
Occasionally, the smart wins out. The current issue features an amusing piece by a former “20/20” producer who went undercover to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan, only to learn that the life of a white supremacist is a boring one.
David Cross and Sarah Silverman, two of the funniest stand-ups working, are regular contributors. There’s also the popular and sporadically funny “DOs/DON’Ts” section, in which regular people and celebrities alike are either commended or ridiculed for their fashion choices.
More often than not, however, Vice’s attempts at humor are neither clever nor provocative, just sophomoric, repetitive and, yes, stupid. In lieu of genuine wit, it serves up over-the-top profanity, photographs of fat and/or ugly people, photographs of breasts, genitals and asses, and anecdotes about drug use and other forms of debauchery. (From the current issue’s contributors page: “One time Tom got so fucking shitfaced that he passed out on our couch and puked on himself. We managed to contain it all on his shirt and got it off with only a little bit spilling into his hair.”)
Tediously, Vice subscribes to the same virulently anti-P.C. strain of humor that spawned Andrew Dice Clay and “The Man Show.” The magazine’s favorite target by far is homosexuals. Gays are regularly mocked, and terms such as “faggot wimps” and “homos” are tossed around, though always in such a way as to allow Vice’s editors to claim that their gay-baiting is just another ironic posture.
Now and then Vice will carry an article on some topic of real political significance. Unfortunately, Vice’s semiliterate contributors generally don’t reason any more clearly than they write. An article on U.S. policy toward Iraq places the latter’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1999 and claims that “every other anti-Western country is equally capable” of building weapons of mass destruction.
In similarly dubious fashion, the author of an essay defending the Islamic traditions of modest dress argues, “The notion that these women are subjugated and oppressed is coming largely from Western males who are pissed off that they can’t look at their bodies.”
It doesn’t help that Vice’s copyeditors appear to have taken the decade off.
The best thing that can be said about Vice is that it’s a real magazine with a real identity and not just another demographically-calibrated, focus-grouped advertising vehicle.
Unfortunately, its identity is that of an obnoxious jerk who makes fun of homeless people and recommends cocaine use as a means of finding yourself.
Here’s hoping that this trend-spotting magazine turns out to be a passing fad.
December 2, 2002© 2002 Media Life
-
Send to a
Friend| Printer-Friendly Version
Cover Page | Contact
Us