If only.
In today’s Guardian Toby Young does a quick and not-so-painless dissection of Miss Geldof’s (or should that be Mrs. Drummey?) new magazine, the Bret Easton Ellis inspired Disappear Here. Young is somewhat confused as to why Geldof’s shiny magazine – heavy on the paper grammage, low on the writing staff – has been compared to his contribution to a scene from a different era: the Modern Review.
If you were unfortunate enough to catch the MTV companion show to the making of the magazine or some of the Guardian’s rather hilarious and venom-laden coverage of Geldof herself you will be aware that the magazine derives its name from a quote in Less Than Zero, Ellis’s debut novel published in 1985. It belongs to the world of the 1980s, the excess of rich children who saw meaning in the mundane minutiae of their lives. And it can only be surmised that Geldof sees something of herself in Ellis’ portrayal of the young and vacant.
The logical step was to channel her wholly individualistic line of thought (for, in a sense, the girl discovered Ellis, without her it would have never been a best seller or made into a movie starring Robert Downey Jr and Andrew McCarthy 22 years ago…) into a magazine and rope in MTV to watch as various hapless members of Geldof’s crew dealt with her “my way or the highway” attitude. (It’s the first rule one must learn when working in camp Disappear Here apparently.) Now that the editor-at-large and her staff of four have released the magazine onto a suspecting public it remains to be seen if an interview with Vivienne Westwood and a list of 50 things the staff, and by staff we most definitely mean Peaches Geldof, love will turn into a profitable exercise or be consigned to the bin of the prematurely deceased vanity project.
To buy the offending article, (yes, minds have been made up, this is a definite no for the YRC magazine shelf) – a “strictly limited edition” - online costs £4.99 and is, apparently, the only way to guarantee you get a copy. £4.99 seems a little steep to buy into the fantastical life of Peaches Geldof. The website uses the third person plural – “all the tiny pieces of pop culture we love” – to sell the magazine, a sure sign that the driving force behind this enterprise is the hope that fans of Peaches Geldof and the bratpack she runs with will buy the magazine like they did her line for PPQ.
Definitely not the noughties’ answer to the Modern Review, Disappear Here seems to have forgotten that magazines about music and film generally need content and that heavy, glossy pages that “look beautiful” do not a readable magazine make.
And a feature on Pete Doherty – “Inside PETE DOHERTY’S Russian ballet dancer’s harem” – really, Geldof, really?
Interestingly enough, there is someone using the Disappear Here tag for good in this world. ‘Sometimes in the Fall’ looks like a decent music blog, ’tis a pity it hasn’t been updated since March…
1 response so far ↓
Jane McConnell // January 20, 2009 at 11:44 pm |
Peaches is an interesting fellow, its just a shame that she doesn’t think tabloid journalists are real journalists, when she has them to thank for all her publicity. Annoying. Spoilt.