SALON

Friday, Apr 5, 2013 3:20 PM UTC

HBO’s “Vice” is “60 Minutes” via Williamsburg

Aimed at people who dig tattoos, adventure, and social justice

By

Topics: Vice, HBO, TV, Television, North Korea, shane smith, vice magazine, ,

HBO's (Credit: VICE)

The Internet has laid waste to old media by giving content consumers hundreds of thousands of different places to get content that was previously provided only by old media. Once upon a time, if you were looking for a serious TV newsmagazine, you watched “60 Minutes.” Today, if you are looking for the same material, maybe you watch “60 Minutes” or you read and watch dozens of disparate sources. Oddly, this means that the fragmented “60 Minutes” audience is now available to be catered to by various boutique “60 Minutes.” “Vice,” Vice media’s new newsmagazine series for HBO, is just such a program, a juiced up “60 Minutes” via Williamsburg for people who dig tattoos, adventure and social justice and don’t mind the man so long as he digs the same.

Vice is a many tentacled media company — advertising agency, video channel, website, magazine — that has been heralded, most recently in this week’s New Yorker, for being able to make some cash in the Internet era by nailing its audience, hipster bros with a naughty vibe who like cool stories and alcohol. “Vice” is narrated by the company’s bearded CEO Shane Smith as it sends wan and tattooed reporters who look like the patrons of the new, local dive bar (graffiti in the bathrooms, specials on whiskey and Rolling Rock, but, you know, really first-rate bar food) to dangerous places.

The first episode contains segments on the vast number of political assassinations in the Philippines and the Taliban’s child suicide bombers. The second features stories about the Kashmir and the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan and a group of North Koreans illegally sneaking out of their country. (The infamous Dennis Rodman in North Korea episode will come later.) In Hunter S. Thompson-style, the patron saint of all things Vice, the “Vice” reporters are part of the story: Smith narrates his distress at meeting the just-teenage boys taught to blow themselves up. Ryan Duffy, riding with a Filipino politician on the same route on which he was almost assassinated a year earlier, confesses his nervousness. A deadpan reporter and camera crew make a passage across the river between Laos and Thailand in the dead of night with four North Koreans illegally on board.

These are all worthy, in-your-face subjects, if not quite given an in-depth treatment. Setting up the India-Pakistan conflict Smith says the two countries “really, really hate each other” before glossing over the history between the two nations. The passage of the North Korean refugees from North Korea, through China to Laos and Thailand and then on to South Korea, is given about 10 minutes, and “Vice” is only with the refugees for a short period. “Vice” is superficial, but it seems almost knowingly so, giving the quick, most adrenalized version of a story to get people interested enough to at least Wikipedia the subject (and, of course, to associate “Vice” with adrenaline).

Despite showing some very gruesome imagery— a real decapitated head, for example— and having a swaggy, “we’re so hip we send our reporters into dangerous places looking like they just rolled out of bed” self-aggrandizement, “Vice”  is fundamentally earnest: war is terrible, these situations are totally effed up, American foreign policy positions are generally right. The series, according to the voice-over that plays at the beginning, is out to expose the “absurdity of the modern condition,” but it doesn’t really fixate on the “absurdity,” or not much more than any news outlet sending dispatches from dangerous places. If there’s any irony in the project at all, it’s of the Winona Ryder in an elevator in “Reality Bites” kind: someone everyone thinks of as ironic but who actually doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

Willa Paskin

Willa Paskin is Salon's staff TV writer. More Willa Paskin.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 3 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Facebook has been used to find ex-lovers, childhood BFFs or the one who got away. He used it to find the guy who, without his consent, made him his drug mule.
247 points248 points | 23 comments
vote
“This could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann”
161 points162 points | 70 comments
vote
Poll: 3 in 10 voters say “armed revolution might be necessary” - 29% say they believe they'll have to act "in order to protect our liberties" in the next few years
44 points45 points | 18 comments
vote
"New evidence reveals big banks still illegally foreclosing on thousands of homes – and weak settlement allows it."
27 points28 points | comment
vote
Are millennials delusional? New research suggests that members of "Generation Me" are warped by a profound sense of entitlement
25 points26 points | 16 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations