Let's talk about Vice Magazine

(actually I just posted that because I wonder where I fall)

[also I tried to call you a "f-g" as a joke right here and I couldn't do it, not evern doubly or triply ironically or whatever the hell it would be at this point].

sterl, if you have to ask you'll never know, etc etc.

so wouldn't that sort of cycle be eventually repeated if the arguments momus espouses hold true -- and wouldn't the underlying message of these mass-marketed uses of these words, then, also mutate into an affirmation of already-existing prejuidices that are held by the majority of americans, for the simple purpose of making as many dollars as possible?

i don't know how this fits with maura's statement but i don't want the dream lost forever. (her coochie is still burned into my memory.)

Uh anyway, back to Vice...I don't think that made any sense.

also, as maura just brought up in conversation with me, it's equating purchase with a creative act which is one of the things that's made american culture so fucking vacuous to begin with.

second, wouldn't you argue though that the original sentiment and the mass-marketed version of it have two very different public connotations? this is important, because the provocations that these word-images would have on their viewers were essential to their being scrawled in the first place.

also, a hypothetical: if a girl bought this mass-marketed shirt and wore it to school unadorned, and then ran into 1 or 3 or 5 people wearing that shirt in the same way, since it is, after all, mass-marketed, how would her 'empowering' wearing of the shirt come across? so much of the way messages are looked at is rooted in context -- would this 'more empowered' 11-year-old then change the rest of the shirt's context (including, perhaps, the shirt itself) to make herself and her intentions stand out?

(spoken in a non-normative tone of voice)

I also read way too many Japanese fashion magazines.

(unless bc meant my beat digger analogy which i also thought was on point)

but Vice started in Canada!

haha Dave Q to thread!

To relate this back to Vice, it's perfectly fine for them to ironically fling epithets back and forth under the guise of changing the world but they should be cognizant of the fact that the majority of the people who wander across them aren't going to buy their interpretation and be prepared to deal with the consequences of it (ie, my family beating your ass).

(and then they all lez up)

Wednesday night at about 1 AM I was riding my bicycle home from [work]
when I met a red light about 15 or 20 blocks away from my house. Sometimes
if there are absolutely no cars or anything I'll run a red light, but if I
see headlights I assume they belong to a cop car containing a cop who will
give me a 200 dollar ticket and probably harass me to boot. So, I decided
to stay put. It's a long light, and I sat there and sat there.

A car coming down the road I was waiting to cross suddenly stopped at the
green light and a man opened the door and got out of the driver's seat. He
was black, probably between 20 and 30 years old. That's all I know and will
ever know about this person. He was approaching me rather quickly and
purposefully. I had a feeling that he was going to fuck with me in some
way, and was sort of waiting to see how.

He said "what up nigga?" and before I responded said "Where you from,
nigga?" I can't remember exactly but I think what I did was look back
and gesture vaguely down the street in the direction I'd come from - I didn't
really know what he could mean by asking me where I was from - "I'm from
Long Island" is maybe what I should have said but why would he care?
Anyway, as I turned back to face him and began to say...something, I don't
even know...I got punched in the face, hard, at least once and fell down. I
sat there in the road with my bike lying next to me and heard the guy get
back in his car and drive away. I think he said something else but I'm not
sure.

I couldn't see very well because a) I had just been punched in the face and
b) my glasses weren't where they should have been. I didn't want to put my
glasses on because I was sure they were broken, but they weren't. I sat
there for a bit longer, and touched my lip with my hand and my tongue to see
how badly it was fucked up. I slowly picked myself and my bike up and
continued to ride home.

What was running through my head as I rode home was "What am I supposed to
do now?" I felt like there must be some kind of appropriate reaction. I
didn't want to call the police because the police in my neighborhood are
fucking assholes (there's another long, much worse story I could tell
here...). I didn't remember anything about the car or the guy so there was
no way I'd be able to give the cops any information anyway. I wondered if
this was some sort of lesson, like, O.K. it's now unsafe to ride home at
night, but that's bullshit. I've been riding home from [work] late
at night for a year and I've never even felt uncomfortable before. What
managed to cross my mind for a second was: maybe I don't belong in that
neighborhood, like, getting punched by this guy was some kind of message to
move to a different part of town. That was the most fucked thought of all.
Thinking rationally, would you deduce that this guy was acting as an
authorized representative of the neighborhood?

I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm lucky that I didn't
get hurt more. I mean, if the guy had wanted to keep on kicking me or some
shit he could've just gone ahead and had his way with me. At least I was
just randomly punched - people get randomly stabbed and shot, too. I still
kind of can't believe it, but, it also makes sense in a weird way. I mean,
if I were driving around looking for somebody to punch, I would probably
would have punched me too.

I don't know what to make of the semiotics and/or semantics of this man's referring to my friend (who is, as you probably inferred, white) as a "nigga"; it seems bizarre to me, to be frank: was he using it primarily as a term of denigration? As a way of totally confusing my friend and making him feel uncomfortable? Is it what he calls everybody? I've no idea.

(I do know, however, what I probably would've done to that man had I been there and been suitably armed. My friend is a sweetheart who would never hurt anyone.)

As for the "N-word", unless I'm quoting something or otherwise making reference to a statement not my own, I never use it, whether ending in "-er" or "-a". Getting in the habit of using it in everyday speech strikes me as a very dangerous game -- the risk/benefit ratio is pretty atrocious.

Jess says 'no sound is innocent'. Race stuff is 90% of what makes Dan despair of humanity. The thread seems mostly to have concluded that re-casting meanings is a guilty activity. Indeed it is. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. The brave will do it, despite threats of a beatdown.

Dan again:

To relate this back to Vice, it's perfectly fine for them to ironically fling epithets back and forth under the guise of changing the world but they should be cognizant of the fact that the majority of the people who wander across them aren't going to buy their interpretation and be prepared to deal with the consequences of it (ie, my family beating your ass).

This goes back to my distinction between acts and deeds, and my first point on this whole thread. By all means be enraged (or encourage your family to be enraged) by transvalued epithets. After all, no interpretative act can be innocent, whatever the intended outcome of the transvaluation. But don't forget (and don't let your violent family forget) to judge by acts too. Vice employs homosexual and black contributors and promotes their perspectives and their terms. In the subculture Vice addresses, those people actually have considerably more cultural capital (ie cool) than straight and white people. It's by those deeds, and in that context, that you should judge the mag's editors.

As always, the answer to this dilemma can be found in that most holy of literary tomes, Chris Rock's Rock This:

"Yet some people still wonder why black people can say "nigger" and they can't. Believe it or not, it's a very common question. I hear it all the time:

White Person: Chris, can I say "nigger"?

Me: Why would you even want to?

White Person: I don't mean anything bad by it. I've travelled the world. I've got a yacht. I fucked Racquel Welch. Now, if I could just say 'nigger', everything would be complete.

Me: No. After I smack you upside the head everything will be complete."

I also want to note the following about this thread: "rappers do it" is a really piss-poor justification of basically any type of behavior.

Because I don't believe in the status quo. I don't believe that it is virtue just simply to avoid using a word which some people might find offensive. In many cases, that's conservatism and cowardice. That's what people do who don't think words and meanings are important enough to get into fights about.

I believe (in fact, I know) that society changes, and those changes start with small groups. In some cases the changes are wrought by avant garde artists, in some cases humble journalists. But nothing changes if nobody dares to stick his/her neck out.

My song about retards would basically say 'the retards are my friends'. It would be thought-provoking and ambivalent. 'Why don't I hang with retards? Why do we feel uneasy with someone saying he does? Why is it funny that he would pass this off as some kind of cool thing to do? Is he making fun of the handicapped, or is he paying attention to people who usually get none, or get only certain stereotypical 'managerial' or 'sympathetic' light cast on their lives?

The alternative is to pass in 'inoffensive' silence over such topics, or to sing 'I will always love you' or some variant, a 'formula so watertight nobody could possibly disagree with it. So you win.'

I'm not interested in winning, but in thinking. I'd rather be perplexed than right.

Modernism’s dirty secret: avant-garde work requires the survival of the order it first flared against, or its full radicalism no longer properly registers.

momus you sound like a 16 year old goth girl now.

I get the sense that the people who like the magazine have actually read the magazine, but that those who are critical of the people behind Vice haven't extended the criticisms to the published output that much, other than by pointing out (quite correctly) that hate speech words have a different effect when published than when uttered. By the way, I don't happen to share Momus' views on co-opting and subverting language here, so please don't attribute those to me, either.

I find parts of Vice amusing but after reading that interview I am wondering what it is I like about it. I have definitely wished aspects of Vice didn't exist, and I do have a different attitude towards it now. I think I have a similar reaction to Vice as I did to Spy in that my baser nature is amused in spite of my better self, although, unlike Spy, Vice is free so I don't feel like such a sucker for reading it.

If you can't get past the offensive words in Vice and have nothing more to add, I fully understand that, because it's an important issue, but I'd be interested in hearing someone articulate their criticisms of the magazine other than that it contains words of hate speech or that these guys are poor spokespeople for higher education in Canada. So, let's talk about Vice magazine, anyone?

a lot of the writing is good and the "don'ts" page is usually hilarious, but suzy is absolutely OTM re: "edgy" = zero actual risk.