Let's talk about Vice Magazine

Yes, the ancien regime is bad, but if we revolt and try to found a republic there will be a Terror and then a Dictator, and isn't that worse?

Yes, if liberals take over the language and semiology of fascists it will diminish the power of fascist heraldry, but it will inevitably make fascism more acceptable. Let's not go down that path!

Yes, 'A Clockwork Orange' contains an intelligent critique of power, but if we release it with a U certificate young and impressionable people will just pick up on the violence and the streets will be full of mayhem.

The end results of the caution behind this argument is 'put all that nasty stuff back in Pandora's box'. But you can't. So what you do is make a liberal version of the New Brutalism. Which is what Vice is. There's a pretty obvious Reithian spirit lurking just behind its faux-brutalism. What makes it a successful mass market product is precisely this clever combination of Apollo and Dionysus.

Meanwhile I'm delighted to have made a statement SO binary that it brought that accusation from you! I suppose what I'm saying is that a magazine's sphere of influence (i.e. the things it actually can 'subvert') doesn't generally include Bill Gates and his cronies. The only things it can 'subvert' are its audience and the fashion system its operating in: accepting advertising, getting rich and floating on a coke'n'hype bubble for as long as it lasts are all wonderful things (particularly if you're a Vice magazine editor!) but I don't see where the subversion comes in.

"So what you do is make a liberal version of the New Brutalism."

Are you so bereft of imagination that you cannot think of any other way to address the very real threat of the New Fascism? If so, we're in trouble.

Are so bereft of imagination that you can only read "let's not go down that path" as "let's not go down any path"? If so, you're in trouble.

The issue is about questioning everything, not about questioning nothing, Momus. I'm astonished that I have to point out that your 'status quo' isn't a monolithic bloc but an innumerable range of different and nuanced worldview spinning around a hegemonic axis. You seem enormously keen to point out the enormous fluidity and multiplicitly of language (whilst simultaneously trying to explain that some in-groups have special access to what's really happening right now); would it kill you to acknowledge that this is true of meaning, culture and society more generally?

"The American and French revolutions, for one thing, would never have
appened if people had never, for fear of giving offence or going out on a limb -- or even causing some bloodshed -- questioned the status quo."

You said way way above that: change is normal (check) and that nothing changed unless people stuck their necks out (not check) (no pun intended juxtaposing that next to the French Revolution). By temperament I'm a utopian idealist, but even I can see that social and cultural change is the water we swim in. IT's dialectical, not the exclusive result of a bunch of avant-guardistes pushing the boat out and looking on with an 'I told you so' smile as we all eventually catch up with them.

Well, even to use the word subversive, as the Nerds piece does, in a positively-loaded way is a start. I don't see Maxim or Loaded talking about how they feel let down by people they had hoped would be more 'subversive'. It's also rather interesting that they use contemporary art to illustrate a teenzine-type article. Nobody was forcing them to do that. And nobody is forcing them to write about figures like Larry Clark, who is genuinely a subversive character, whether you like what he does or not.

Ellie / Tom, can I just say, on this question of binaries, that you can use binaries (we all do and we all have to) without pledging allegiance to their arbitrary divisions, which always fail reality. Eno has a nice riff (in his 'Swollen Appendices') about 'axis thinking'. Imagine a pile of spills. Each represents a binary concept: short / long, black / white, good / bad... Each on its own is flat and reductive. But imagine them all stuck through each other. That's more like reality. It's 3D. You can locate a point in the middle of your cat's cradle of spills, and it'll be at *this* point on the binary spill 'wet /dry', and *this* point on the binary spill 'rough / smooth'.

I'd also cite Barthes, who said that language structures our thought, but that we should learn to 'abjure' its structures, in other words abandon them quickly, like temporary scaffolding.

Misunderstanding of these points is why I'm so often accused in these threads of setting up binaries but also of abandoning them and changing positions. That's the whole point. Apollo / Dionysus, for instance, is a binary. But it's only when you put it up against another binary like 'Left wing / Right wing' that the dialectics -- and the thinking -- really begins.

I think you mean collaborating.

(Rimshot.)

I now have a computer screen full of coffee.

Momus = an MP on Question Time. "I'm very glad you asked that question. (Answers different question)"

Momus
Oy smartass!

can you explain why exactly
You probably can't, but come on, we want to see you wriggle a bit

you see inherent value
The word 'inherent' means the questioner wants you to explain without reference to any contingent or contractual value. He's forcing you to be a Platonist, knowing full well you aren't one.

in people's doing things society disapproves of?
Wha...? I thought this was going to be hard. Is he really asking me to justify any form of action which is not in total lockstep with some notional monolithic society?

As you can see, when I look more closely I see that Nitsuh's very question was full of propositions ('inherent value', the idea of society en masse 'disapproving') which are alien to my conception of the world. Perhaps he meant it as a trick question.

I would read it as applying to a range of objects as applying to the characteristics that they have in common, that distinguishes them from what they aren't, which is (to start with) the single-facet description of those objects that is the next clause. Would the word "intrinsic" help instead?

Is he really asking me to justify any form of action which is not in total lockstep with some notional monolithic society?

You've loaded this sentence the wrong way round. He's asking if you will justify "(any form of action...)" which is a large group with only one obvious thing in common, not that you pick any (form of action...) and justify that one thing.

Perhaps he meant it as a trick question

Then why did you answer?

And my answer lies in my refusal of the idea that there really is, as he implies, a monolithic society out there with only one standard of conduct, one model of human interaction, one ethics, etc. If there's even a possibility of such a world outside the ant kingdom, it must be seen as the worst possible nightmare scenario.

In a pluralistic society, dissent, disagreement and debate between people with different worldviews (like the Vice thread itself!) are signs that things are working as they should. All forms of behaviour will be disapproved at some point, from some position. That's okay. What's not okay is to try and stamp out behaviours you see as transgressive or divisive. That's basically cheerleading for antworld. And I thought there was somthing, if not antish, at least waspish in Nitsuh's question. I was guilty until proven innocent, because I was championing a form of expression that would inevitably annoy someone, somewhere.

Responding with talk of 'the status quo' was probably not useful, I will admit, and I think Ellie picked me up on that.

That could just reflect on Vice's copy editors, assuming they have any.

Well, it ain't working- I showed it to some of my friends (and We Are The Kids, 'natch), and we pretty much agreed it was bollocks and that, generally speaking, the bullies at our school are much more creative with the term "faggot" than Vice is.

Yes, the ancien regime is bad, but if we revolt and try to found a republic there will be a Terror and then a Dictator, and isn't that worse?

Ha ha ha cf: Portuguese history 1908-1975

I would say that "irritating=good" is one of the least interesting formulae around, just for the record, and cite the Insane Clown Posse as evidence of my claim.

Or, as my betters once put it, "Wicked clown, wicked clown/wicked clown, wicked clown/wicked clown, wicked clown/wicked wicked wicked clown."

because "they" do it at the exclusion - no the DERISION - of everything else. as tom alluded to, ilx's own vice-isms are read within the context of ilx as a whole. if ilx were JUST those things (fisting jokes, "nigga please", drug refs, whatever), i'd guess that it'd have a VERY different demographic overall.

i'm not for one moment suggesting that vice isn't reflective of the way that people speak at times, nor am i saying that there isn't value to what they do. in fact, i admitted *way* upthread that they sometimes "hit at the root of a subject with more effectiveness and insight than anyone else"

what i object to is the way that their VERY one-dimensional dialectic is proferred as a complete and whole and 'real' lifestyle. i mean, you can't deny that what they do is generally to the exclusion of reasoned debate or considered opinion (their 'serious' stuff is always coded by an "aw shit" moment of faux-earnestness). it's clowning. it's anti-intellectual. and it's that which makes me really question momus' prevailing theory that they're using these epithets in an earnest attempt to subvert their meanings. rather than, say, subverting the meanings in an honest attempt to use these epithets.

(sorry. it slipped.)

But it also seems to me that you don't like John Ashcroft, and you don't like him because you've decided that his particular transgressions and his particular rebellions against the status quo aren't positive or productive ones.

So I absolutely cannot believe you're pretending there's some deep trick to the question I asked you earlier (and consequently skirting the entire point of it). There are a great variety of actions that violate norms in a great variety of ways. Clearly this doesn't mean that they're all good. Having people running around smeared with their own feces, for example, would be highly transgressive and would certainly get people talking, but it would also stink.

There is nothing at all antlike about pointing that out, to you or to Bob Dylan. Breaking down "the status quo" -- which let's note is a term you introduced to this discussion, so stop trying to backtrack into "there's no such thing" -- is not inherently good: it's only productive if you're breaking down a part of the status quo that for some reason needs to be broken down. What you're doing is saying "I unquestioningly support emptying the bath out the window, in all cases." And all I'm saying is you have some sort of responsibility, in each case, to think about the ratio of baby to bathwater therein.

Mein...gott...they...are...even...more...stupid...than...I...feared...or...dreamed.

and if we're reducing this argument to cliches, all i'm saying is ilx has some responsibility to think about the ratio of thrown rocks to glass houses here.

yes, i realize that message boards and magazines have different functions but a lot of the criticisms of vice here centre around it's glibness, hipness, cynicism, emotional remove, shock-for-shock's sake, ambivalence about stereotypes, etc. all of which ILx and most normal, intelligent people indulge in from time to time.