'Zine not heard - alternative art

ArtForum, Oct, 1997 by Andrew Hultkrans

Willful obscurantism, the elevation of the banal, and the ironic appreciation of trash culture are guiding principles of most 'zines. 'Zine pioneer Candi Strecker, ruminating on her own fascination with beer-can hats, eloquently identified this tendency in her Sidney Suppey's Quarterly & Confused Pet Monthly all the way back in 1982. "Something has made our vision of the world go a bit askew," she writes, "and instead of accepting the satisfactions that derive from being players in our society, we create our own amusement by examining the output of that society." The average 'zine editor and reader, she says, is a "Self-Amusing Personality."

SAPS experience modern life with a sense of "amused horror," and desperately seek out other SAPS with whom to share their wry observations on consumer culture. These "culture artists," as she calls them, populate and perpetuate the 'zine underground to this day, and their obsessions with the banal (and each other) are largely responsible for their marginalization. Wondering aloud about the creation of a true community of SAPs, Strecker identifies the inherent contradiction of the 'zine - or any - underground: "What if an organization could make contact with the SAPs in all the fandoms and pull them together into one big network? Once organized, would we look at our organization with amused horror?" While the answer to Strecker's question was murky in 1982, when 'zines received no notice from the mainstream, today it is a resounding Yes, given the appearance of numerous books anthologizing or critiquing 'zines.

Contemporary 'zines are, by definition, small, arcane, and culturally coded for inaccessibility - America's nearest approximation of Soviet samizdat - so it's peculiar, if not downright contradictory, to see their contents lovingly excerpted, spell-checked, and reformatted into legible fonts and justified margins for mass consumption. Yet that's just what trade publishers have done with The Book of Zines: Readings from the Fringe (Henry Holt) and The Factsheet Five Zine Reader (Crown). Both books anthologize the "best" writing from the 'zine underground with gushing introductions from respective editors Chip Rowe and R. Seth Friedman. (Refusing to be scooped by the big boys, RE/Search's V. Vale has rushed out his two-volume Zines!, a higher street-cred compendium of interviews with 'zinesters.) The editors perform a useful service for the uninitiated, but for those who gauge their enjoyment of a publication by the amount of ink it leaves on their fingertips, there's something missing in this upscale treatment of a decidedly downtown medium.'

McLuhan's shopworn adage "the medium is the message" was never so apposite as in the cage of 'zines. A medium that includes a cardboard box, containing a dead locust', with a cassette glued onto it, does not lend itself easily to the format of Big Publishing. Part of the charm of 'zines lies in their proud amateurism and their scarcity in the marketplace. Finding a gem of a 'zine after hours of browsing through culture-industry garbage (mainstream and "alternative" alike)is akin to receiving a surprisingly eloquent message in a bottle, or discovering a thrift-store item that's worth more than its weight in kitsch. The pleasure of 'zine browsing (or thrift shopping) is as much the result of the search as it is the value of the discovery - you have to do the work to get the frisson.

That said, both books do expose some undervalued writers and rarely explored topics to a more general audience. Paul Lukas' dogged quest to excavate the secret histories of banal consumer products in Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption makes a deserved appearance in both anthologies (canned pork brains in one, "toasting" bread in the other). An excerpt from Jeff Koyen's misanthropic Crank outlines the pleasures of trepanning (drilling a hole in one's head for enlightenment). Jim Hogshire does his homework on Robitussin abuse in a hilarious bit for Pills-a-Go-Go, wherein he describes his "reptilian brain" after ingesting eight ounces of DM cough syrup. April Miller (from Fat Girl) compares the various methods of "packing" - placing a phallic object in one's knickers for visual (and self) stimulation ("soft packing" simply creates the appearance of a penis, "hard packing" allows for penetration, with the added benefit of clitoral arousal). And Rod Lott (from Hitch) unearths the "homoerotic subtext" in the children's video Real Life Giant Construction Equipment for Kids (Featuring Hard Hat Harry) by quoting the talking machines as they court one another - Concrete Pumper: "I'm going to pour my concrete into your rear hamper. Watch my chute come out. Ready, aim, fire! Then the concrete worker pulls my snaking hose. When he gives the signal, I take a deep breath and blow that concrete out at a stupendous rate!" Paver: "Ah, just the way I like it: hot and wet! Between two to four inches is the ideal depth."

While the anthologies present some fine examples of 'zine writing in easily digestible, one-stop-shopping packages, the bulk format is not kind to the notion of 'zines as a bottomless font of undiscovered talent. Too often 'zine pieces are poorly written or obsessed with kitschy fluff or childhood nostalgia like The Brady Bunch and Hello Kitty. In her appropriately titled 'zine You Sank My Battleship!, "Coochie Galore" introduces herself: "Hi, my name's Coochie (Chorus: Hi, Coochie!) And I'm a Hello Kittyaholic." Sampled in small doses, this can be quite entertaining. Swallowed whole, it's cotton brain-candy - mildly nauseating in its relentless barrage of "Isn't this cool?" or "Isn't this weird?" Coochie's obsession evidences a trend: the assumption in cultural criticism that the detritus of history is the only game in town.