By Jesse Cataldo
Vice Magazine may be most famous for its oft-imitated Dos and Donts, but the profane sense of giddy impropriety that makes that feature so popular also extends into other areas. The Brooklyn magazine, which has made a name for itself by being unrepentantly filthy and stridently anti-p.c, has grown in scope as it has in popularity, evidenced by an increasing interest in serious journalism. It may seem hard to believe, but the Vice Guide to Travel proves more than ever that a magazine known for detached irony and cocaine fetishism possesses a burgeoning social conscience.
Far from the sunny romp through exotic locales that the title seems to suggest, the guide finds Vice correspondents immersing themselves in some of the most dangerous places on earth. The effect is essentially a guide where not to travel, which turns over stones and digs up dirt in places most people would never dare (or think) to go.
Humor abounds on these adventures and the tone is characteristically far from dry, but this lightness belies the serious, often chilling information that’s being presented. In the most extreme cases, those involved can’t help but show how jarred they are by the unsettling facts they discover.
The best example is Vice co-founder Shane Smith’s trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, where he goes in search of a mysterious arms dealer known only as Ivanov – a post-Soviet kleptocrat who deals equally both in Beverly Hills-themed condos and nuclear warheads. It seems like something out of a James Bond movie, but the crew, even without the resources of a major news venue, finds Ivanov with shocking ease.
They meet with him, his face blurred and voice scrambled, and the figure he cuts as he speaks dryly about a meeting with Osama Bin Laden and the nuclear bomb he has buried in his mother’s garden exceeds the most cold-blooded of movie villains in its empty callousness. Later, Smith explains the possible effect of a dirty bomb on New York City to editor Jake Burghart. His shocked dismay, which practically radiates off the screen, is an effective device – it mirrors what we’re already feeling.
The continuing message here is that the world is a scary, dangerous place that’s often laced with bittersweet beauty. Further examples are found in the violent slums of Rio and the illegal arms markets of Pakistan, where peasant dealers make thousands of guns and countless bullets each day by hand.
Yet compared to the stark tone that’s struck up in these pieces, others seem discordantly jokey. Smith’s trip to Chernobyl, where he gets drunk and tries to hunt mutated wild boars amidst a radiation drenched, post-apocalyptic hellscape, straddles that line perfectly. Others, like David Choe’s dead-end trip to the Congo, seem ill-conceived and meant for the cutting room floor.
The pieces, six in all plus several bonus features, follow the style of the magazine’s articles – short and not always to the point. But they’re also exciting, informative and addictive. As the first in a continuing series, The Vice Guide to Travel strives for an ambitious goal and succeeds, creating a new brand of journalism for a young generation.
GRADE: B+