Scratch a satirist, find a moralist
Feb. 12th, 2005 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe Vice sex issue has hit the streets, with a Terry Richardson shot of Hiromix on the cover.
In the opening section YO WHAT IS UP (the graphic features a comedy trucker hat black guy and a comedy trucker hat white guy strolling towards each other, grinning goofily) there's a piece I wrote called Japan: These Fuckers Are Horny. (Actually, my suggested title was 'Sex in Japan With Factman', but, like, whutevah dude.) It's a guide to the prices charged in Japan for various sexual services. I invented the Factman character as an amusing cypher for Google; no way could this have been a first-person tale or even investigative journalism. I've never frequented commercial sex establishments in Japan or anywhere else. I've never paid for sex. (Well, not unless you count that time I paid Keiko to be my "personal assistant" and come round to "work for me" on Orchard Street every Friday... mmm, where are the Polaroids?)
I don't know what Chris Morris would make of Vice's Can You Say 'BJ' in Iraq, a short (and possibly made up) interview with a US soldier in Iraq accompanied by gory photographs of dead Iraqis. Morris' new series Nathan Barley premiered on UK's Channel 4 last night and most press reports have stressed that the satirist's claws have been retracted somewhat this time around. A big theme in Charlie Brooker's original TV Go Home Cunt episodes (the birthplace of the Barley character) was that the technowhizz kiddycult immorality of Barley and his Hoxton kin was obscene when juxtaposed with, for instance, suffering prostitutes in Columbia or shoe-making sweatshop workers. I'm not sure whether Brooker and Morris are suggesting that Barley's coke and trainer habit directly oppresses people in the third world, or saying that suffering and dirty work are real whereas people who work at magazines called Suga Rape are not. Perhaps they're just evoking a sense of guilt (Morris was, after all, educated by Jesuits).
Vice magazine is almost certainly one of the targets of Morris and Brooker's satire, but the fact is that they and Vice are really on the same page, employing the same techniques, equally interested in moral questions. Almost literally: when a British newspaper gave Morris his own column, he chose to make a spoof diary about a journalist with mere months to live. Vice is currently running I'm Dying Over Here, a column by a 52 year-old woman dying of breast cancer. The Iraq piece in the new Vice could actually have been written by Chris Morris -- the old, nasty Chris Morris, anyway. The ironic device of the insensitive reporter asking questions about sex of a soldier who's just trying to stay alive, the shock tactic of the photographs, the use of guilt and revulsion, are all Morris hallmarks. And all, in fact, deeply moral.
I speak with some, ahem, authority here: Vice publisher Gavin McInnes, weighing into the debate at Design Observer about the Vice Design Issue, said the other day "Momus is one of the softest guys I’ve ever met but sometimes I worry he’s the only person that truly gets Vice." McInnes also disagreed with those who thought Zev Borow's excellent article for New York magazine, The New York Hipster Exodus, was a simple attack on hipsterism. "That article is a little too sophisticated for most," said McInnes, "including perhaps, the writer. It was meant to be about the absurdity of the claim that NY is over (a claim that goes back to the 40s). Unfortunately, the gag was lost on almost everyone she interviewed."
Chris Morris, who made spoof documentaries about pedophilia and a dangerous new drug called cake, would certainly recognise that problem. When Morris filmed Phil Collins condemning pedophiles while wearing a T shirt that read "I'm talking nonce sense", he was making a moralistic attack on moralism and immorality, just as Zev Borow's article makes a hip attack on anti-hipsterism and hipsterism. Some thought Morris was on thin ice, using the serious subject of pedophilia as content for his comedy, just as Vice are using Iraqi corpses to fill the pages of a style magazine, or Benetton notoriously used a bloody newborn baby and a dead AIDS victim in posters to sell their sweaters. Personally, I think people who look always at vested interests and ulterior motives are guilty of "moronic cynicism". They're not seeing the big picture, and their keenness to see corruption as the bottom line betrays a misanthropy greater than any shown by the provocateurs they're attacking.
I've never understood the criticism of Olivieri Toscani's hard-hitting images for Benetton, just as I've never understood the criticism of Vice. I don't think any of the examples cited were using shock tactics for their own sake, or illegitimately. I think they're all trying to sensitize us to moral issues rather than desensitize us to violence. They all think that opening Pandora's Box is useful, because they believe, finally, in the ultimate rationality and goodness of people, and feel sure that, provoked into thinking about difficult subjects, people will make better moral choices. Gavin McInnes actually said this to me in all sincerity when we met in Tokyo last year. If you believe in human nature, you provoke in the belief that people will rethink moral issues and come to better conclusions.
If you look at what people like Toscani, McInnes, Serge Gainsbourg (and occasionally even that fellow known as Momus) have done with satire, I hope you'll find us closer to Chris Morris than to Nathan Barley. Scratch a provocateur and you tend to find a closet moralist.
In the opening section YO WHAT IS UP (the graphic features a comedy trucker hat black guy and a comedy trucker hat white guy strolling towards each other, grinning goofily) there's a piece I wrote called Japan: These Fuckers Are Horny. (Actually, my suggested title was 'Sex in Japan With Factman', but, like, whutevah dude.) It's a guide to the prices charged in Japan for various sexual services. I invented the Factman character as an amusing cypher for Google; no way could this have been a first-person tale or even investigative journalism. I've never frequented commercial sex establishments in Japan or anywhere else. I've never paid for sex. (Well, not unless you count that time I paid Keiko to be my "personal assistant" and come round to "work for me" on Orchard Street every Friday... mmm, where are the Polaroids?)
I don't know what Chris Morris would make of Vice's Can You Say 'BJ' in Iraq, a short (and possibly made up) interview with a US soldier in Iraq accompanied by gory photographs of dead Iraqis. Morris' new series Nathan Barley premiered on UK's Channel 4 last night and most press reports have stressed that the satirist's claws have been retracted somewhat this time around. A big theme in Charlie Brooker's original TV Go Home Cunt episodes (the birthplace of the Barley character) was that the technowhizz kiddycult immorality of Barley and his Hoxton kin was obscene when juxtaposed with, for instance, suffering prostitutes in Columbia or shoe-making sweatshop workers. I'm not sure whether Brooker and Morris are suggesting that Barley's coke and trainer habit directly oppresses people in the third world, or saying that suffering and dirty work are real whereas people who work at magazines called Suga Rape are not. Perhaps they're just evoking a sense of guilt (Morris was, after all, educated by Jesuits).
Vice magazine is almost certainly one of the targets of Morris and Brooker's satire, but the fact is that they and Vice are really on the same page, employing the same techniques, equally interested in moral questions. Almost literally: when a British newspaper gave Morris his own column, he chose to make a spoof diary about a journalist with mere months to live. Vice is currently running I'm Dying Over Here, a column by a 52 year-old woman dying of breast cancer. The Iraq piece in the new Vice could actually have been written by Chris Morris -- the old, nasty Chris Morris, anyway. The ironic device of the insensitive reporter asking questions about sex of a soldier who's just trying to stay alive, the shock tactic of the photographs, the use of guilt and revulsion, are all Morris hallmarks. And all, in fact, deeply moral.
I speak with some, ahem, authority here: Vice publisher Gavin McInnes, weighing into the debate at Design Observer about the Vice Design Issue, said the other day "Momus is one of the softest guys I’ve ever met but sometimes I worry he’s the only person that truly gets Vice." McInnes also disagreed with those who thought Zev Borow's excellent article for New York magazine, The New York Hipster Exodus, was a simple attack on hipsterism. "That article is a little too sophisticated for most," said McInnes, "including perhaps, the writer. It was meant to be about the absurdity of the claim that NY is over (a claim that goes back to the 40s). Unfortunately, the gag was lost on almost everyone she interviewed."
Chris Morris, who made spoof documentaries about pedophilia and a dangerous new drug called cake, would certainly recognise that problem. When Morris filmed Phil Collins condemning pedophiles while wearing a T shirt that read "I'm talking nonce sense", he was making a moralistic attack on moralism and immorality, just as Zev Borow's article makes a hip attack on anti-hipsterism and hipsterism. Some thought Morris was on thin ice, using the serious subject of pedophilia as content for his comedy, just as Vice are using Iraqi corpses to fill the pages of a style magazine, or Benetton notoriously used a bloody newborn baby and a dead AIDS victim in posters to sell their sweaters. Personally, I think people who look always at vested interests and ulterior motives are guilty of "moronic cynicism". They're not seeing the big picture, and their keenness to see corruption as the bottom line betrays a misanthropy greater than any shown by the provocateurs they're attacking.
I've never understood the criticism of Olivieri Toscani's hard-hitting images for Benetton, just as I've never understood the criticism of Vice. I don't think any of the examples cited were using shock tactics for their own sake, or illegitimately. I think they're all trying to sensitize us to moral issues rather than desensitize us to violence. They all think that opening Pandora's Box is useful, because they believe, finally, in the ultimate rationality and goodness of people, and feel sure that, provoked into thinking about difficult subjects, people will make better moral choices. Gavin McInnes actually said this to me in all sincerity when we met in Tokyo last year. If you believe in human nature, you provoke in the belief that people will rethink moral issues and come to better conclusions.
If you look at what people like Toscani, McInnes, Serge Gainsbourg (and occasionally even that fellow known as Momus) have done with satire, I hope you'll find us closer to Chris Morris than to Nathan Barley. Scratch a provocateur and you tend to find a closet moralist.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-12 05:23 pm (UTC)What morals are we talking about? I feel like I’m not quite getting something. I can't see how the use of photographs of dead Iraqis in the specific article can sensitize us on moral issues. We've all seen these pictures and have felt so much. How will accompanying these images with such articles help the situation? Again with Toscani's billboards I failed to see how a shocking image will make a positive impact while promoting clothing and viewed on the street by passers by. I admire his work but never agreed the street was an appropriate place for it.
It all fails to convince me it’s not about exploitation.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-12 11:46 pm (UTC)I think you nail it right there. People keep dying in Iraq because of the murderous decision of the current US administration to go to war quite unnecessarily. The mainstream news media do not show the awful, sickening results of this: the terrible, banal sight of a mangled corpse, a human reduced to pulp. The Bush administration has tried even to hide the sight of US servicemen's coffins. As long as it's all abstract and far-off, everything can carry on. Denials that war is sickening lead to the prolongation of war. Complacency in the face of the obscenity of war led to the re-election of a self-proclaimed "war president". These photos show us exactly what that means. It means obscenity, it means feeling physically sick. We have seen these pictures and felt so much. We must go on seeing these pictures and feeling the same emotions, the same revulsion. These pictures must be run wherever and whenever possible to remind us that the violence has not stopped, and the war is not all right. Pictures like these can lead us to make morally better choices at future elections.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 12:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 12:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 12:58 am (UTC)cc: Whimsy
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 01:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 01:10 am (UTC)I would think that a viewer is still at liberty to weigh these matters -- quite possibley even to misunderstand (or just plain miss) the message entirely.
Are you saying that intentionality is the only relevant component? If so, are you of the 'kill the recipient' school?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 01:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 02:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 04:52 am (UTC)Still, do you equate an aesthetic objection to the piece -- whether the critic is confused or not about it's meaning -- with tacit support for the policies (you say) it was created to protest?
your assumption is stupid
Date: 2005-02-13 07:42 am (UTC)the thoughts of some who commented on viceland.com
Date: 2005-02-14 10:01 am (UTC)Date: Feb 10 2005 05:10:54 PM
Author: ultrasatan
i love it.
Subject: T6T...
Date: Feb 11 2005 02:49:59 AM
Author: hanta505
i bet the guy is too busy fucking his hand over fresh bodies. shits more hardcore than even the harriest muslim pussy...
Subject: a joke
Date: Feb 11 2005 01:43:37 PM
Author: timmy 2 times
1st time i laughed this issue.
Subject: FYL
Date: Feb 11 2005 06:03:12 PM
Author: FYL
Fuck you all USA, if you are with or, against or whatever. FUCK YOU ALL.
Subject: CNN
Date: Feb 11 2005 04:51:09 PM
Author: 3507321C
WHY THE FUCK DOESN'T CNN SHOW THIS SHIT, OH YEAH BECAUSE THAT WOULD SHOW JUST WHAT LIBERATING IRAQIS REALLY MEANS.
Subject: Now THIS is a VICE article
Date: Feb 11 2005 02:53:47 PM
Author: Johnny Monkey
I love it. Showing pictures of exploded heads is utterly disturbing and makes you think, yet the article completely takes the piss out of it and makes you laugh. Not a ha-ha laugh, mind you, the kind of laugh that makes me hate myself a little and want to cry. Once upon a time all of VICE's pieces were pretty much this...
Subject: You´re all no soul
Date: Feb 13 2005 07:00:14 PM
Author: An european
WHAT A BIG AMOUNT OF CRUEL, RACIST AND SICK PEOPLE ARE YOU. MAYBE TO SEE YOUR CATHOLIC WHITE ASS LITTLE CHILDS SUFFERING THE CRIMES OF A WAR WOULD NOT BE ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU THINK. YOUR ARTICLES ARE BRUTALITIES OF PEOPLE WHO HAS NOT ENOUGH INTELLIGENCE FOR HUMOUR AND TRY TO MAKE FUN WITH THE PAIN AND SUFFERING OF PEOPLE. SHIT STUFF CAN ONLY MAKE LAUGH SHIT MINDED ONES
FUCKIN BASTARDS YOURE TORTURING PEOPLE, BURNING FAMILIES WITH NAPALM, KILLING CHILDS WITH FRAGMENTATION BOMBS AND MAKING A WHOLE COUNTRY RADIACTIVE WITH URANIUM MUNITION, AND YOU THINK ITS FUNNY TO SHOW IT AS A JOKE TO "RETARDE THE CUM"?. OH, WHAT A FUNNY AND GEEKY JOKE, SEE YOURSELF LAUGHING IN THE MIRROR AND BE PROUD OF IT.
YOU ARE ALL SICK IN U.S. AND HERE IN EUROPE WE THINK YOUR WAY OF LIFE IS IN DECADENCE, N U´RE ALL ROTTENING WITH YOUR WHOPPER BRAINS. YOU "VICE" KIDS THINK YOURE FUNNY N UNDERGROUND, BUT YOURE EXECRABLE (IM SURE THERE IS MORE "VICE" IN THE LIFE OF SNOOPY THAN IN YOUR LIFE: WOMEN HATE CRUEL GEEKS LIKE YOU)
"JOKES" LIKE THIS TELL THE WORLD WHY NORTH AMERICA IS FULL OF VIOLENCE N HATE AND IGNORANCE, MILLIONS OF SAD N DESESPERATE PEOPLE LIVING AND EMPTY AND BORING SUPERLOW QUALITY LIFE. YOU´RE ALL NO SOUL, DON´T BE SURPRISED IF THE WORLD HATES YOU.
here u have + "funny stuff". enjoy
http://www.amcmh.org/fotosninos.htm
Subject: ....
Date: Feb 13 2005 07:14:15 PM
Author: ....
yeah, and you're a stupid crybaby - hows that mr post below
Subject: Look At What A Bunch Of Pussies You Are.
Date: Feb 13 2005 07:16:54 PM
Author: Connor
Listen to these fuckers talking about "your freedom." America already has its freedom, Iraq isnt threatening it. We got it from Britain.
And so they showed a few dead bodies, big fucking deal. Some people die in their sleep and some people get dismembered by suicide bomb explosions. Jesus, I'M an American and I don't understand why the world is such a big, sensitive clitoris about graphically showing what the fuck is going down over there.
Anyone who complains about how these pictures are insensitive are pussies
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 10:55 am (UTC)We should be shown the truth but in publications like Vice it isn't exactly shown to the major part of the public. Also there's no need in connecting images with something else in order to get them out there. Images like these speak enough on their own.