Let's talk about Vice Magazine

I've totally gone off the idea of the song about retards. Now I think I want to write one called 'The Biographies of Famous Mathematicians', because mathematicians are under-represented in song, and the math of curves is beautiful. Or something about lapdogs...

BTW Dan, I just recorded my Schubert song in German (it didn't sound right in English) and was thinking about you -- affectionately -- when I sang it, because I remembered you'd offered to sing it. I guess that isn't going to happen now...

we won't reap the rewards until oprah derides the latest martha stewart clothing line as being hella gay.

(Vaguely serious post on this thread by me to occur sometime tonight, perhaps.)

in what possible universe is "language" distinct and seperable from "writing"?

Momus: Because I don't believe in the status quo.

This is my problem, Momus: you never seem to bother to isolate the valuable parts of the status quo from the ones you disagree with. The western "status quo," insofar as it exists, frowns on things like racism, child pornography, spousal abuse, and incitements to violence -- and I don't imagine you'd see inherent transgressive value in taking any of those actions. It's for that reason that you can't simply fall back on the syllogism that any transgression against the status quo is an inherently good thing: at some point you're going to have to start looking at the individual transgressions and working out whether you think they're productive ones or not. What I'm seeing in a lot of this thread is you saying "it's a transgression, therefore it's good" and a lot of other people saying "it's a particular transgression that doesn't help anything and quite possibly makes things worse."

"nigga" isn't a stereotype, fritz. it's a collection of stereotypes as well as being a word, unlike "16 year old goth girl" which is just a collection of stereotypes (and isn't a racial or sexual slur no matter how it can be twisted.)

(nb: i don't think fritz is an idiot, and basically agree with what he sez.)

(also equating a public message board with a magazine is a bit more problematic.)

I had a huge argument with a Vce editor about this issue one night, and his basic argument was that there should be no difference between the way people talked to their closest friends and the way they wrote. they were arguing that it was just honest.

Julio: Glad to oblige.

I don't know if I should even get involved but Jess, I guess my point was more something like "Well, do you like the magazine otherwise?" Because there are other things going on in the magazine, with or without the smartass diction they use, which never struck me as the main point of the magazine. Some of the reviews and interviews are brilliant. The Andrew WK review was one of the main things that got me interested in him. The debate about using these slurs is relatively uninteresting to me - sometimes I talk like that with people who know me and think it's funny, mostly with my sister. If it offended you a great deal I probably wouldn't around you. I don't think it's that much worse than making jokes about dead babies or something - I don't take the latter as condoning child murder. It's not a big deal to me either way but I can understand why it could offend someone. If it offends you, fine, understandable, that's a general point about using these slurs that applies everywhere, not just Vice. But if we're going to talk about Vice, I think there's a lot more to talk about even if the vocabulary does offend you. I'd be more interested in talking about the reviews, interviews, articles, and columns. Unless you're so turned off by the use of words like "homo" that you never read further, in which case HOW DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN SIT THROUGH YOUR EMINEM AND G'N'R ALBUMS? It reminds me of the time I lent my sister a Public Enemy CD. She gave it back after only reading the lyric sheet and complaining about some of the attitudes towards women. All this said to me was that she had no interest in listening to the music itself.

stockbroker. beautiful. divorced. fat. busboy. German. singer-songwriter. rockist.

as i said before, i am friends (or at least "friendly") with almost everyone who has expressed a "dissenting" opinion from my own on this thread. including geeta, who tried to paint me into the reductionist "you disagree with jess" = "you are wrong" corner. if i had to stop liking them because i disagree i think i'd surely be limiting the enrichment of my life. but if my friends were as juvenile and purile as vice with little redeeming value, i'd feel no shame.

i like big black too, that doesn't mean i don't think steve albini is an idiot.

The problem is that the word has historically meant not just "you are a person of these particular inferior characteristics tied to your race" but also "you deserve according treatment, as do all such people" which is a great deal to go into a word, and that doesn't even begin to address the "-a" issue.

know what I'm saying? the use of the n-word in huck finn tells me more about the characters of tom and huck than it does about jim, right?

imagine that same book which is great and anti-racist and powerful and all thrown into a crowded integrated inner-city classroom already rife with racial tension -- some gang related, much not -- and kids being asked to read out loud passages including that word. it's like throwing a bomb into the room.

context is everything.

Home Truths thread to thread! Or just d00mie.

You want examples of why I hate Vice? This article got mentioned on some blogs a few months ago. I'm sure this magazine is very proud of its CANON SMASHING SHOCKAH, and I'm not like offended that they're dissing bands I like, I just think the writing here is really puerile and annoying. (And ooooooh, "venereal warts" -- these guys are PUSHING BOUNDARIES. WHOA.)
And I quote:

3 The Fall
Great band, right? “Mr. Pharmacist” is the jam, right? What about the other 99.9% of their songs? Have you ever heard that album they made up on the spot? The one where he goes, “I am curious orange, curious oh-rawnge”? What the fuck is that? Those guys suck. They’re one of those bands your big brother totes because nobody’s ever heard them before and they seem like some heavy shit. Like Brian Eno. Or Roxy Music. How gay are they? All these groundbreaking bands like The Residents or Throbbing Gristle or Captain Beefheart or Pere Ubu or Cabaret Voltaire are essentially nonexistent. Music critics always cite them as a huge influence but nobody’s ever heard them play a note. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of them even have any albums. I’m not going to look into it, though. 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.