Vice (magazine)

File:Vice Magazine.jpg

Cover of Vice Magazine, V12N11

Vice is a free glossy magazine founded in Canada and currently based in New York City that covers contemporary independent arts and youth culture. The magazine's readership is comprised of young postcollegiate bohemians, often labelled "hipsters." Known for its controversial content, it often strikes a sardonic and ironic pose on debauchery, sex, drugs, violence, and social issues involving race and economic class.

Vice publishes editions in Australia, Austria, Great Britain, the United States, Japan, Scandinavia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. It is available for free and supports itself primarily through advertising. The magazine has published collections of its most popular work:The DOs and DON'Ts Book, along with , The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Vice has also created a retail clothing chain, Vice Retail, and a record label, Vice Records, as well as nascent ventures like Vice TV and Vice Film.[1]

Founding

Founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada by Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith and Gavin McInnes, the magazine was launched as the Voice of Montreal in 1994 with government funding to provide work and a community service. When the editors wanted to break free of their commitments with the original publisher, Alix Laurent, they bought him out and changed the name to Vice in 1996. In search of more streetwear advertising income, they moved to New York City in 2002.

Subject matter

The magazine prides itself on being subversive, controversial and openly writing about taboo topics, which has garnered it both praise and condemnation. Particularly outlandish articles, such as The Vice Guide to Shagging Muslims and Bukkake On My Face: Welcome to the Ancient Tradition of the Japanese Facial have precipitated the magazine being banned from a number of university campuses.

The magazine is also famous for the "DOs and DONTs", which has since been imitated by countless other magazines. The feature displays candid photographs of strangers in public places accompanied with a short piece of commentary either ridiculing or praising the person's fashion and perceived sensibility. The idea has also been spun-off into a book, The DOs and DON'Ts Book, along with a compendium of the magazine's most popular work, The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Vice has also created a retail clothing chain, Vice Retail, and a record label, Vice Records, as well as nascent ventures like Vice TV and Vice Film.

In the past few years, Vice's content seems to have shifted from dealing mostly with independent arts and pop cultural matters to covering more serious news topics, although both are often treated with the same spirit of blithe and caustic irreverence. They've recently championed the "Immersionist" school of journalism, which they regard as something of a DIY antithesis to the big-office methods practiced by traditional news outlets, and put out an entire issue composed of articles written in this manner. There have also been recent issues of the magazine wholly dedicated to concerns facing Native Americans, the mentally ill, and the mentally disabled written mostly by members of each group.

Vice has strong ties with hipster icons such as photographers Terry Richardson and Patrick O'Dell (their current photo editor), clothing line American Apparel (a frequent advertiser), and comedians such as Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman and David Cross. Vbs.tv, Vice's new "television" channel, is available for viewing on the internet, with the apparent intention of circumventing network intervention over content issues and allowing for a global, free of charge distribution plan akin to that of the magazine.

Vice's issues are usually devoted to one theme (e.g. "The Comics Issue," "The Iraq Issue") but, in 2007, Vice announced "After umpteen years of putting out what amounted to a reference book every month, we started to get bored with it. Besides, too many other magazines have ripped it and started doing their own lame take on themes. So we're going to do some issues, starting now, that have whatever we feel like putting in them."

Criticism

As the result of publishing a string of articles aimed at opening a dialogue about immigration and environmental issues, Vice has been accused of using "irony" to conceal reactionary politics or to promote what some see as racist attitudes. In response to these criticisms, co-founder Gavin McInnes published an article attacking liberals in The American Conservative entitled "Hip to Be Square: It’s getting cooler to be conservative" in August 2003.

Although McInnes' views on immigration have generated controversy and accusations of racism, the ridicule of racial hatred and other forms of intolerance have been a cornerstone of the magazine from the beginning. Vice often use such knee-jerk attacks to argue that reactionary condemnations based on quotes taken out of context is proof that the liberal left is equally intolerant of non-mainstream views as the conservative right, another cornerstone of the magazine's editorial outlook. Closer examination of McInnes' outlook on immigration reveals that it is mainly influenced by cultural and economics-based arguments presented by organisations like ProjectUSA rather than being linked to any racial agenda. In a September 2003 interview with The New York Times McInnes was quoted to have said: "I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of," he also remarked "I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life." "

McInnes has since said that the interview was a prank on the young fashion journalist who wrote the piece, with the magazine's political outlook and various aspects of the local Williamsburg, Brooklyn hipster culture clearly being exaggerated by the interviewees for comic effect. This is in keeping with Vice's longstanding disdain for The New York Times, and the magazine's writers regularly voice criticisms akin to those that Noam Chomsky made toward the paper and the rest of the mainstream American media in his book Manufacturing Consent.

External links

• Viceland - Official site.
• VBS.tv - Vice Television
• VICE Rumor Mule - VICE NY Office Rumors
• The Edge of Hip: Vice the Brand - New York Times article about the magazine.
• The VICE Guide To Travel DVD