Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Vice, Bizarre and others

All Acting Regiment

05:01 / 27.02.06

What do you think of Vice and Bizarre and other magazines which are based around an "extreme" aesthetic, which in this sense apparently means bondage, blood and terrorism?

Discussion isn't limited to just these two, feel free to bring in any publications you want to discuss.

05:03 / 27.02.06

I guess it's like transgressive fiction. When everything's been done, they'll find a way to do something different, even if that includes blood and torture. I don't think it's terribly offensive, or shocking even. When I was a lad, it had that visceral "OMG, people do that?" kind of vibe. But now I think I'm a little jaded. I can't believe anybody's shocked by these magazines.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:10 / 27.02.06

Nobody who's read Answer Me!, at any rate. For all their much-publicised flaws and unpleasant views (not quite as unpleasant as you may have been led to believe, but still fairly "ugh!" at times), the Goads certainly knew how to put together a zine.

I occasionally read Bizarre- there's usually a couple of interesting things in there, a couple of funny things and a whole bunch of shit.

15:09 / 27.02.06

Most so-called transgressive or actively, intentionally agressive writing usually gets more of a laugh than a shock from me, with Peter Sotos vigorously vicious early stuff actually getting a periodic shudder and a sick density forming at the pit of my stomach. Most of it...? Does anybody else remember 'Supermasochist' and 'Mondo Magic/Carne' and all? Or being a young kid and you see some gore flick too close to plausible in its boodplay and you start to wonder if in a budgetary panic, they just gutted their actors and taped it?
I dunno, maybe I'm odd, but I find honestly fictionalized events of traumatic nature to be far more effective, usually, than true, real - or supposedly true and real - actual events. Nothing's worse - or more attractive to me - than going from laughing my ass off to that quick mental flash of 'Oh god, please don't do...' and then they do. And then there's something funny or sweet again. Repeat cycle until end credits or backpages.
I think it's a recognition that fictional events don't have to be what they are, compared to reality, which is pretty well set in being precisely what it is. There's a desperate urge to rewrite or censor painful or fucked up stuff. Anybody else feel that?

Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears

14:36 / 06.04.06

Bizarre is just the Sunday Sport to Fortean Times' Guardian, isn't it? Poorly researched & sensationalist exploitation with gag-a-minute pictures?

Not sure whether Vice counts as 'extreme journalism' & I've never seen much gore or extreme sex in it. It's just a spectacularly faux-bigoted, vindictive, bullying, drug-obsessed, often unbearably funny piece of shit, surely? Promotes finger-pointing cruelty by inviting us to ridicule the frankly ridiculous (the different) & uses the words 'nigger' & 'faggot' a lot with a kindof transgressive lack of apology that's probably got some kind of high-concept robust libertarianish anti-PC "call-a-spade-a-spade" hearty agenda behind it, but in the end just makes you feel all prickly & guilty for being sensitive.

I dunno, maybe that's a good thing.

I actually quite like it.

If blogging counts as journalism, I guess Ogrish or Rotten.com would be the pinnacle of this quest for extremity. Went to Ogrish once & within two minutes, with one unwise click, I was watching a soldier being tied casually to two trucks in a field & ripped in half. Soldiers looked on & smirked & the clip got a high rating from Ogrish patrons. Changed a good deal of my attitudes towards the human race. Even more interesting is to read the clip comments where every kind of luminous bigotry spills onto the screen in a jawdropping wave. It's something to behold & rather like snorkeling in a septic tank.

I'm not sure about the value of such material. Should we be able to stare at it, unmoved? Never been able to shake the idea that turning away is evidence of a survivalist, denial-of-death weakness, a kindof hypochondriac need to experience the body as object (surface), not process (system), just as political correctness can be a way of sweeping prejudice under the carpet. If the world is gore & pain & prejudice, is it conditioning or cowardice that makes it hard to face?

Think I need to read more Dennis Cooper. I've got 'Frisk' here ...

All Acting Regiment

15:28 / 06.04.06

Bizarre is just the Sunday Sport to Fortean Times' Guardian, isn't it? Poorly researched & sensationalist exploitation with gag-a-minute pictures?

I think you've got it in one there.

Never been able to shake the idea that turning away is evidence of a survivalist, denial-of-death weakness, a kindof hypochondriac need to experience the body as object (surface), not process (system)

But is looking at rotten.com (for example) actually a way of experiencing the body as process? I'm aware of what you're trying to get at here- that it would be profitable to get to grips with the horrors of the world, to move beyond one's emotional reaction and try to understand the truth- but are we actually transgressing (any of) these boundaries by looking at rotten?

A lot of people there seem rather to be regressing into a larval state of other-hating and self-justification. Watching a soldier being torn apart on a computer screen is not really very different these days from watching a horror film, is it? It's certainly not the same as laying down on a bed of needles or purposefully burning yourself.

This is the problem I have with a lot of this stuff- it masquerades as transgression when really it doesn't require you to change out of the perception set that (people rich enough to afford bizarre mag or computers) we're in anyway through computer games/violent films etc.