Bye bye, Viz
Here is the letter I wrote to Viz announcing that I was cancelling my subscription:
Dear Viz
Well, that’s it, I’ve cancelled my direct debit to Viz. After reading it for nearly 40 years and being a subscriber for around 20 years, I’m off.
I own virtually every issue since 1986 onwards. I have several Viz annuals, one signed (and drawn in) by the main contributors. I have a Viz mug.
Why am I off? It’s not necessarily that you’re not funny any more – although strips like Mrs Brady Old Lady long ago lost their pizzaz and are now like chewing through tough gristle – it’s that, like Private Eye in recent years, you’ve become part of the centrist dad, liberal-left, Remainery, PC, metropolitan, globalist, tedious, annoying establishment. You still haven't got over Brexit!
Viz signing off X (Twitter) to move to 'safe space' Blue Sky was the last straw for me. The warning signs have been flashing for years, inside and outside the mag. The tweets your creatives put up on X (or used to, one now supposes), illustrate your furiously political core, which is a very left-wing one.
I actually enjoy Jack Black, Baxter Basics MP, Major Misunderstanding and The Male Online, four of your many takedowns of right-wing males, but where have the lampoons of left-wing idiots gone? It’s not as if you never had the characters.
Student Grant hasn’t been seen for years, but would have been the ideal vessel to blow a raspberry at the deranged wokesters seen in universities in recent times (I note that you only use the word ‘woke’ when it's out of the mouths of right-wingers you’re painting as reactionary bigots).
Luvvie Darling was the perfect strip in which to have a go at woke luvvies and their dumb pronouncements, but it’s hardly been seen in recent times. Millie Tant, the radical left-wing lesbian, has similarly been given short shrift. Male equivalent Lenny Left hasn’t appeared in decades.
Un-PC characters have vanished. Suicidal Syd appears to have finally shuffled off this mortal coil, presumably because the character made light of a serious matter – even though the strip was funny! – and I can’t imagine we’ll ever see the likes of Tranny Magnet, Sherlock Homo or The Thieving Gypsy Bastards again...
Your targets have become wearisomely predictable – Farage, Rees-Mogg, Trump, Katie Hopkins and, nowadays, Elon Musk. You asked in a recent issue to vote on whether Musk was A) a twat or B) a bell end. There was no third option for ’free speech champion who may have saved Western civilisation by buying Twitter’. You always imply that right-wing men have small penises (while sometimes saying left-wing men have big penises, such as ex-Labour MP Stephen Pound, although I imagine he’s now persona non grata to you as he appears on GB News, which you hate and slate, even though you’ve probably never watched it).
As someone politically aware, I can tell from the way these pieces are written that you have creatives from the hard online left, and their nastiness and bitterness is increasingly coming through.
When the likes of Gary Lineker, Chris Packham or Carol Vorderman are mentioned, all three of whom are (understandably) detested by the right, they receive vanilla write-ups.
Despite an appalling first six months in power, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has received no criticism or spoofing (Jeremy Corbyn got the same kid gloves treatment when he was leader). There was nothing about the inanity and cruelty of the lockdown rules. On the lunacy of net zero you have kept schtum. Blokes being allowed into women’s spaces and sports has not riled you. You uttered not a word of criticism in four years of Joe Biden, a senile puppet held up by strings.
Yet the moment Donald Trump wins a second term as president, you’re back with a sardonic ‘Donald J Trump: What’s in a Name?’ feature. I can’t face another four years of this sort of thing.
There is still occasional genius in Viz, and I will miss Foodie Bollocks, I will miss The Real Ale Twats, I will miss some of the letters and Top Tips (of which I have had many of both published over the years), I will miss Mahatma Macaroon, I will miss one-off strips like Donald Sinden In There Goes My Knighthood, I will miss the fake ads.
But it’s time to part ways. All good things come to an end. Bye.
Wow! Summarises my thoughts exactly, having been an ardent reader & subscriber to Viz for c30 years. Cancelled my sub a couple of years ago for the exact same reasons. Deeply sad, as I formerly considered it a monthly highlight. Wonder if they can turn things around??
ReplyDeleteI think the rot is too deep for them to turn it around now. They seem to have two or three real political activists on staff, the likes of Barney Farmer for example (I think that's his name). The likes of The Modern Parents and The Critics have also disappeared in recent years, two strips that mocked lefties.
DeleteYou omitted to mention their shameless pushing of the vax - i think a Sid Sexist strip in which they ridiculed people who refused these death shots as being "afraid of needles" - that's the one that killed Viz for me -after that it felt like buying a magazine from holocaust supporters. I think there were quite a few other examples of covidianism but I don't remember them - it turned my stomach. I'm 50 now and had loved Viz since my early teens. So sad.
ReplyDeleteYep, true. They also pushed social distancing in the Foodie Bollocks strip.
DeleteI saw that too and that’s when I stopped getting it.
DeleteMy kids are going through same arc but in condensed form with the beano. They got my old annuals and were amazed by how much funnier and less pc they were. There was a fairly recent issue of the beano with a brown skinned lady in a wheelchair telling the bash street kids off for not being enough like greta thunberg. The bash street kids were of course in agreement with this, as they were already out clearing up beach litter. I know it sounds like satire but it’s what it is. The last straw for them was going to a beano exhibition in London, which for some unknown reason decided to throw in anti colonial modern art of white hands being stabbed by brown ones. In an exhibition about the Beano for kids.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a letter to Private Eye, similar lines to what you wrote.
Sad to hear Viz has gone the same way, they were a part of my youth and occasionally I’d pick up a copy for a laugh.
Yes, a mate mentioned to me about the Beano nowadays. I think Our Wullie has undergone a similar process (just look at the cover of the latest annual). It's vandalism. It's propaganda rather than fun (like Doctor Who nowadays). It's sad and annoying.
DeleteTotes agreeballs, as Kewl Chicks used to say. It’s gone same way as Private Eye.
ReplyDeleteYes, there was a DS article on the Eye. And Gareth Roberts did one too I think.
DeleteAs Big Vern would say “I’d do time rather than read this bilge!” 😉
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen a copy of Viz for years (no shops round here any more) but even back in the noughties it was developing a leftward tilt. Can't imagine my favourites, The Fat Slags, being popular with the current crop of woke feminists. Have San and Tray been dumped too. Please tell me they haven't been turned into a pair of superslim, vegan, just-stop-oil supporting lesbians.
ReplyDeleteNo, Fat Slags are still there and pretty much the same.
Delete