Let's talk about Vice Magazine

Also, I find it very troubling when people start making apologies for the phrase "back then, you knew your place".

I'm sorry, but I think printing a lifestyle and fashion magazine is inherently ignoring the poor and kowtowing to the rich. (I also don't think there's anything wrong with that, but let's not pretend Vice is the fucking Urban League.)

No, no! You're not alone!

(the thing is that i do see vice-like tendencies in my own writing, and they bother me to no end, which is probably what makes me a little oversensetive to the comparison.)

this is officially the last thing i will be posting to this thread.

Seems like a pretty forward-thinking staff to print it all things considered.

thanks markpanon

I'm interested in something nabisco said and to which suzy hinted: "I'm sorry, but I think printing a lifestyle and fashion magazine is inherently ignoring the poor and kowtowing to the rich.

I'm not trying to pick on nabisco, because he was careful to say that there's nothing wrong with this (I hope he meant fashion and lifestyle, not kowtowing to the rich, BTW) and because he is in transit to NY (yay!), but why are the poor not presumed to be interested in, or to be entitled to, fashions and lifestyles?

As Andrew Farrell said upthread: "Insisting that the poor prioritze the things you want them to => yellow card!"

As I mentioned on the "Style Mags C/D?" thread, it's fine with me personally whatever people want to do with their clothes, but as the first "anon" poster mentioned, I think Vice gives coverage to an aesthetic that has less to do with money than imagination. Sure, they are often mean, but it's never "oh look at the big occlusions in THIS person's diamond tiara, what an impoverished loser, haha" it's often more like "why did this person assemble THAT particular ensemble from the the thrift store and decide to wear all the tiger prints at once?" or "hey, it's kind of nifty when guys shave their legs below the knee."

You can see beauty and non-beauty everywhere in the world, if you want to, even in a pile of garbage. Just because I can't afford a Mantegna painting doesn't mean I'm not allowed to look at it.

'I checked out Gang of Four, Love, and Frank Zappa after hearing how influential they were and all I heard was a bunch of gay weirdos going “pajama people, pajama people.” Fuck that.'

I mean, who is actually talking there? Did the writer really do that and think that, or are they in fact a sophisticate with a huge and respectful knowledge of the history of rock? Is this a form of creative writing in which a journalist becomes a kind of dramatist, enacting his/her idea of a naive, 'hard-assed' music fan just about to form his/her own canon of taste? So then we have to ask, as a dramatist, can this writer construct a compelling or amusing or recognisable character?

I think we have to say that Vice does create an amusing parody of a certain teen nihilism, and that it's ambivalent enough to convince some teens, and to amuse some older sophisticates who see it for the fabrication it is.

Isn't it interesting that rock writers might be starting to play around with 'unreliable narration' in this way?

at the whorehouse with a face fulla makeup, where'd you think?

i haf read 0.0002% of this thread (ie jess promising he won't post again and the sentence before my own post)

er, good sleuthing there josh.

You have a heavy responsibility on your shoulders! But have mercy, before you fire off the post, ask yourself, would the world really be better without Momus and Vice? And while you're doing that, I'm going to call a referendum on alt.fan.momus and get a 100% confidence vote.

You stole my joke!

I posted a big long response to this then deleted it cz it's 5.35 am and I'm only bodily awake cz of my asthma, and no way is my brain awake.