Tuesday, June 28, 2005

NW and their metanarratives

So going on vacation left a pile of NWs in my mailbox. Not just the usual two suspects, but also a special edition (which, for you non-publishing folk, means an advertorial bonanza of beaucoup bucks). Naturally, it's a bit overwhelming to slog through more than one NW, nevermind THREE, and before I knew it the June 27 issue was dropped in the box.

Okay, maybe I hesitated a little because I hoped I would get A COMMENT on my TOTALLY AWESOME GUATEMALA PICS but apparently people are too busy with their workaday lives to say, "Wow, Callie, those are some great pics! How'd you get such a STEADY SHOT of Lucas at night? You are the rockin'est chick alive!" or something to that effect.

The first metanarrative I have noticed with NW is the ugliness of the cover photo art. The health issue, as advertorial, gets a much glossier treatment than Deep Throat, which is a Xerox of an old "Nixon Resigns" story and a cutout of Mark Felt circa the humongous glasses years. Anyway, the model on the health issue is over-softened and her bangs look terrible. Also they blowed up her head to make her look skinnier and that always looks silly. The dinosaur cover looks a little fakey and also maybe a tiny bit anime meets J-horror meets Nova. Rather than give us an idea how Dinosaurs lived, as per the teaser, the image is sort of like how NW wishes they might have been on a particularly Dianetics-cover looking day.

Hey, Tom Cruise is inside that issue with the dinosaurs! Wow! What a coincidence. Man, I really can't hear enough about Tom Cruise and his new brainwashed beard. I mean lovely lady.

Another cover metanarrative: Excessive unnecessary whiteness. Health lady is white (non-Hispanic) although really, she could be anything. So are the military father and son. Deep Throat can't help it, however. Let me tell you what I think. I think the white lady had to be a lady because she is basically naked behind some high-tech CSI-style screens that show her guts and bones and stuff (complete with glittery spots that don't exist in reality in your body, we are much messier on the inside than NW would have it, but then, how would that basic biological fact jibe with the teaser "Your Health in the 21st century"?) and men are very comfortable with seeing and purchasing mags with very scantily dressed ladies in vulnerable positions. And she's white because advertisers are comfortable with white people and you can't be accused of being slanted toward the white man if you have a *woman* on the cover. And the female thing makes her plenty exotic; no need to introduce melanin into this picture! Or, for that matter, a couple inches of normal flab and some wrinkles. I'm willing to give the military dad and son a pass SOLELY on the grounds that it might have been the only together people portrait this big, powerful mag can scramble together. But this white woman thing seems really retrograde and offensive to me. Anyway, isn't Mark Felt a Jew? (That was a joke, people)

Oh, man, there's an unnecessarily white see-through man and a whole white fake family inside the health issue. There's a white woman repro'd in blue for a depression story that is not about her, a white boy in a fake fascist poster and a white man holding a box of specialized vitamins. All honkies. NW, you stink. In the future, when we are using rocket packs and sitting at floating tables (as per the picture) NW will still be relishing its white privilege. Even the ads are more diverse than the photo illustrations.

Well, the Deep Throat issue shows some Watergate-era covers. Now, those were unsophisticated, for the most part. The White House as Reel to Reel looks pretty good, though. But the unspohisticated ones are striking in their graphic power.

Craziest inside story is about a born-again former alcoholic and tool (beat) company executive who believes God has put a vision of Israeli oil in his heart. With venture capital raised from gullible and optimistic evangelicals, he is trying to find just that with his company Zion Oil. No one has ever found any kind of oil in Israel in spite of 500 holes drilled. Even the signs in his favor (a Triassic Reef, for example, where he's going to drill) do not mean this is going to be an easy extraction point where the money will roll right in. By the time the knucklehead finds oil in Israel (to help with a strategic advantage against the Arab world, he says, although honestly the democracy and women's rights things might be a better leg up in that respect) I would wager that oil won't be the global energy player it currently is. Israelis are somewhat amused to be the recipient of so much investment by folks that think they are going to hell if they are Jewish. It doesn't say so in the article, but I'm wagering that's the case.

Interesting story about soldiers who rap. I guess there's nothing like a real, terrifying, violent war to put the terrors of the ghetto in a homey perspective. In an attempt to support the troops, there are some people actually recording these raps. Naturally, abstracted from the flow, sentences such as "There's a place in this world you've never seen before/ a place called streets and a place called war/Most of you wanksters ain't never seen the fleet/you talk about war and you've only seen the street." But honestly, wanksters? I'm pretty sure that lyric got whitened up special for NW. If not, this isn't too promising.

Wow. Even the Baghdad bureau chief, a bona-fide anti-Saddam ideologue (why that might be a problem as a journalist isn't even addressed. You stink, Rod Nordland. And you stink more, NW.) has had his little worm turned in an analysis piece titled "Good Intentions Gone Bad." He hits all the points that are pretty obvious: torture hasn't helped save a single life, incompetant leadership, cash going to contractors as utilities fail and the infrastructure crumbles, the too-low levels of troops and the withdrawal of important equipment, the Green Zone is a pig sty and dangerous to boot, the soldiers are hated in Iraq and ignored by the home team ... man, this guy has had the scales fall from his eyes. He still kind of stinks, but I feel a little pity for the poor, stupid, pathetic ... hey, he's making way more money than I am and is half retarded! Rod, you stink!

Oh, hello! "Bad Girls Go Wild"! Love it! Bring on the cat fights! Meow! Hype the fake threat! And say this for a TLS: "Sugar and spice and everything nice: maybe Speight's forgiving nature represents an ideal that even boys can aim for."

Man, this is a particularly rich treasure trove of TLSs. The stories are so cheesy, from the rehash of that chick with the Dracula book to the White Stripes suck-up piece to a completely unnecessary pro-"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" revu (TLS = "They complete each other") I am flabbergasted.

Until I see the June 20 NW. How do they keep up the cluelessness and corniness each week?

"...TV's obsession with celebrity and wealth to new heights ..." Sorry, Mark Whitaker, I think you are confusing the apparatus with the end users. And, for that matter, operators.

NW discovers the guilty pleasure of Go Fug Yourself, in "Blog Watch." Why it gets the yellow exclamation mark and the site that shows camera-ed busts of car thieves gets a green dollar sign is still beyond me.

Catholic hermits! Man, there are all kinds of religious nuts to write about in this country. HIV-positive international adoptions! The specificity boggles the mind. Hair extensions! It's been in since the 90s for white girls — much, much longer for women of color — but that means it's time for NW to notice! The Hiltons! Paris, Nicki, would it kill you to close your mouths for a family portrait? Nothing like looking like you're working on the ben wa balls when you're NEXT TO YOUR PARENTS. All the people in the illustrations of a money article are white. Duh.

Then to June 27. Dinosaurs are the new sharks. With a picture set up to scare us on the cover, there is a jaws-pic in the contents page with open mouthed teeth emerging from the dark. Dinos, of course, are even less of a threat than sharks. Not by much, but they are.

Anyway, suffice to say that there's a story about girls going to spa camp where they get manipedis and do Yoga. NW loves those teenage girls. Just like Tom Cruise! Who's in that issue!

More in depth NW blogging to come with future issues as I maintain alertness only over the course of a single issue. But I think you got the drift.

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