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Gavin Vicious
Jul. 22nd, 2004 05:30 amI meet V*ce magazine founder and publisher G*vin McIn*es at Cafe Chanoma, Nakameguro.
G*vin immediately lives up to, exceeds, and pushes into self-parody everything I've heard, read and feared about him. He's wearing a Skrewdriver T shirt. His arms are covered in tattoos. It's his first time in Tokyo (he's here to set up a Japanese edition of V*ce, something I've been arguing against ever since the idea was mooted, but might end up assisting in some capacity). When I ask how he's finding Tokyo he says 'It's completely demented. It's great, though, you can shout 'White Power' and nobody knows what you're talking about!'
G*vin does a great Rab C. Nesbitt impersonation (his parents are Glaswegians, by the way, Big Man). He seems disappointed that I'm so well-spoken and un-Scottish. I'm also a much slower drinker than he is, and not much help when it comes to knowing stuff like whether coke and heroin are available in Tokyo. 'My Tokyo is a sort of twee and tender-minded place where pretty girls sit in cafes eating very high quality cakes and talking about their cats,' I explain. I wouldn't be much help in a rumble with Shinjuku yakuza. Perhaps it's beer and post-Scottish bravado talking, but G*vin seems really keen to go there, find the nearest tinted limo, and shout into it 'Hey little guy, you with the permed hair!' Oh shit.
Despite his 'controversial' views -- he likes Japan's immigration policies, and came to Machiavelli by way of Tupac Shakur -- G*vin's actually rather likeable. Something about him reminds me of Iggy Pop. What we have in common is a love of provocation and unreliable narration -- oh, and a belief that human nature is essentially good, which means (somewhat paradoxically) that you don't have to tout some 'responsible' moral line every time you say anything. You can let people draw their own conclusions. (Oh, and can I mention that V*ce has good art direction, great photography and interesting writing.)
I have the feeling that G*vin's White Power schtick is really all about wanting to be 'beyond the pale', and what I like about V*ce is that it's consistently and boldly 'beyond the pale'. It absolutely doesn't allow you to trust it (G*vin says that he's making the pseudonyms more obvious these days, to show the mag is written by fictional characters), and it makes you re-examine your political convictions. V*ce gets up people's noses, and its eagerness for a fight goes beyond the call of duty for a style magazine. That's refreshing in a world where product cycles and marketing imperatives are the real fascism. I still doubt whether V*ce will fly in Japan; this is a country where youth is liberal but not 'politically correct', so I doubt the shock taboo humour of G*vin's Dos and Donts captions will amuse Japanese kids, who tend to be sweet, idealistic, naive and polite. And, in fact, if V*ce does succeed here, becoming some sort of barometer of changes in Japanese culture, I'll be rather sad, because I love the way Japan renders irrelevant all the western dialectics which are V*ce's battleground -- perhaps I should say playground. Well, let's see.
As our meeting wears on I sense I'm being categorized as somewhat fagé (G*vin's term -- faggy, pronounced with a french accent). That's fine, though. There's a place for fagé in V*ce, a magazine which often seems to me to be supplying White Trash fancy dress for the values of urban creative elites. (When I describe another V*ce strategy -- Canadians arriving in the less-liberal US and parodying its obsessions theme by theme -- G*vin nods conspiratorially.) Hidden beneath the macho swagger, the sex, drugs and rock and roll of V*ce, there's something reassuringly fagé about the magazine. I work with editor J*sse Pears*n, concocting stories about laptop girls, homeless people with Hello Kitty curtains, and cuddly Russian teddy bears. J*sse himself will be in Tokyo next month. He's curating an art show at Rocket Gallery, Aoyama. According to G*vin, the show is all about pussy cats, because 'J*sse's into all that kind of stuff'. Now that's what I call reassuringly fagé. Or, as Rab C. Nesbitt would put it, 'Ya wee fucking j*sse!' Maybe V*ce Japan can fly after all.
G*vin immediately lives up to, exceeds, and pushes into self-parody everything I've heard, read and feared about him. He's wearing a Skrewdriver T shirt. His arms are covered in tattoos. It's his first time in Tokyo (he's here to set up a Japanese edition of V*ce, something I've been arguing against ever since the idea was mooted, but might end up assisting in some capacity). When I ask how he's finding Tokyo he says 'It's completely demented. It's great, though, you can shout 'White Power' and nobody knows what you're talking about!'
G*vin does a great Rab C. Nesbitt impersonation (his parents are Glaswegians, by the way, Big Man). He seems disappointed that I'm so well-spoken and un-Scottish. I'm also a much slower drinker than he is, and not much help when it comes to knowing stuff like whether coke and heroin are available in Tokyo. 'My Tokyo is a sort of twee and tender-minded place where pretty girls sit in cafes eating very high quality cakes and talking about their cats,' I explain. I wouldn't be much help in a rumble with Shinjuku yakuza. Perhaps it's beer and post-Scottish bravado talking, but G*vin seems really keen to go there, find the nearest tinted limo, and shout into it 'Hey little guy, you with the permed hair!' Oh shit.
Despite his 'controversial' views -- he likes Japan's immigration policies, and came to Machiavelli by way of Tupac Shakur -- G*vin's actually rather likeable. Something about him reminds me of Iggy Pop. What we have in common is a love of provocation and unreliable narration -- oh, and a belief that human nature is essentially good, which means (somewhat paradoxically) that you don't have to tout some 'responsible' moral line every time you say anything. You can let people draw their own conclusions. (Oh, and can I mention that V*ce has good art direction, great photography and interesting writing.)
I have the feeling that G*vin's White Power schtick is really all about wanting to be 'beyond the pale', and what I like about V*ce is that it's consistently and boldly 'beyond the pale'. It absolutely doesn't allow you to trust it (G*vin says that he's making the pseudonyms more obvious these days, to show the mag is written by fictional characters), and it makes you re-examine your political convictions. V*ce gets up people's noses, and its eagerness for a fight goes beyond the call of duty for a style magazine. That's refreshing in a world where product cycles and marketing imperatives are the real fascism. I still doubt whether V*ce will fly in Japan; this is a country where youth is liberal but not 'politically correct', so I doubt the shock taboo humour of G*vin's Dos and Donts captions will amuse Japanese kids, who tend to be sweet, idealistic, naive and polite. And, in fact, if V*ce does succeed here, becoming some sort of barometer of changes in Japanese culture, I'll be rather sad, because I love the way Japan renders irrelevant all the western dialectics which are V*ce's battleground -- perhaps I should say playground. Well, let's see.
As our meeting wears on I sense I'm being categorized as somewhat fagé (G*vin's term -- faggy, pronounced with a french accent). That's fine, though. There's a place for fagé in V*ce, a magazine which often seems to me to be supplying White Trash fancy dress for the values of urban creative elites. (When I describe another V*ce strategy -- Canadians arriving in the less-liberal US and parodying its obsessions theme by theme -- G*vin nods conspiratorially.) Hidden beneath the macho swagger, the sex, drugs and rock and roll of V*ce, there's something reassuringly fagé about the magazine. I work with editor J*sse Pears*n, concocting stories about laptop girls, homeless people with Hello Kitty curtains, and cuddly Russian teddy bears. J*sse himself will be in Tokyo next month. He's curating an art show at Rocket Gallery, Aoyama. According to G*vin, the show is all about pussy cats, because 'J*sse's into all that kind of stuff'. Now that's what I call reassuringly fagé. Or, as Rab C. Nesbitt would put it, 'Ya wee fucking j*sse!' Maybe V*ce Japan can fly after all.