By Julia Eff
$2
When you open your zine with how your job working for an alt-weekly sucks I kind of lose sympathy for you. You're 18 and your job is to write stuff, surely that's better than most jobs, and especially better than what most 18-year olds are doing. I'd love a job like that.
Reading this zine I felt like there was an immense sense of entitlement, combined with massive amounts of vitriol. There are things here that I find interesting, there are others that I agree with, but the style it's all written in just seems incredibly mean spirited.
There's a bunch of pieces written about bands. Eff tears into Gerard Way for being a poser about his musical inspirations. Now I honestly have no idea about his music, though he has written some good comics (The Umbrella Academy), but calling him a "geetard" and a motherfucker because he claims to like Iggy Pop when he hasn't said that before? Um...
Then she spends several pages insulting Pete Wentz (who?) based solely upon his physical appearance and that people want to sleep with him. It's filled with rage, and kind of strange.
Even the content I do understand and agree with (there's a piece on concert etiquette where I believe I agree with every single thing written) is still written in a style that just makes me feel uncomfortable.
I guess I get the feeling that the writer has created a sort of persona of "extreme" to hide some sort of personal inadequacies or anxieties. Though I also feel as though I'm reading too much into this and my problems with this zine are really just that I'm not 18, and have never really cared that much about what music is hip or popular or whatever. Still, there is a good drawing of Morrissey.
Edit: (Days later I remember this.) Some of the pieces had "tl;dr" with a brief one sentence summary at the bottom. That was amazing.
...Maybe if it made you so "uncomfortable", you should've just put it down after the first page... y'know, as opposed to finishing it... because it made you so "uncomfortable".
ReplyDeleteJust saying.
To the commenter above - isn't that the whole point of a review? Reading a zine through, giving an honest, personal opinion on the contents, style, feelings it brings etc? If we don't like what we see, we can always write a different review on our own sites!
ReplyDelete(Btw, I'd say this even if I got a crap review for my own stuff.)
Being made uncomfortable isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can challenge your expectations and beliefs, and if you think about why something made you uncomfortable perhaps you can see yourself in a different light.
ReplyDeleteAs an example, lots of people are made "uncomfortable" by people who have a different religion, ethnicity, or sexuality. Should these people just ignore these other people, or should they perhaps examine why they have those feelings and make changes to their lives?
I'm not saying this specifically applies to this zine (straight up, I find the term "newfag" offensive in the way it is used here), just that being uncomfortable doesn't necessarily mean you should stop doing something. I feel like I am explaining this poorly, and feel as though this review is not very well written.
Also, its' a zine, not a novel. It doesn't take that long to read, and it's unfair to judge something by just a few pages.