RIOTUS

I’ve found Eddie Huang to be an interesting and entertaining figure since I ran across him on Vice’s YouTube channel back in the early 2010s. His personality made me a fan, and the way he showed food culture in the cities across the US and around the world. I found a commonality in the way Huang talked, and he felt like friends I had, especially in New York. While I know his use of slang that is connected to Hip Hop and Rap felt like appropriation to some, but for me, not so much, but that’s something to talk about later.

His move from the YouTube show to Vice’s new Cable channel, Viceland, with an hour-long show, was a breath of fresh air. Then all of that fell apart, Vice’s value fell, and then you find out they weren’t paying people, even Huang, with the news show still on and the YouTube channel still popping out content. So what happened?

Vice, a magazine that started in the mid-90s, was one of the many counterculture wave that was flooding the culture as Generation X was truly coming of age and in turn influencing the minds of the Millennials growing up after them. The rebellious spirit of the culture of that time was very enticing and inspired an entirely different ethos on how to see and remake the world and society through new forms of culture. They also wanted to live the American dream, but could those two things co-exist at the same time? That’s what Vice is Broke by Eddie Huang is working through in his story of how he got involved with Vice and the story of Vice itself.

Vice is Broke feels like a catharsis as Huang deals with a person he believed in and looked up to, who screwed him over. Like the final stage of an evolution in millennial adulthood, the death of your heroes. Huang mixes the history of the publication with conversations with former staff members who were essential to the history of Vice magazine and later the video and cable channel. For those unfamiliar with Huang’s style, it’s influenced by Anthony Bourdain but with a touch of stand-up commentary throughout. Each conversation feels natural, and his questions, while laced with humor, are very exploratory. When talking to the people from the early magazine era, his questions help him and the viewer understand what it was like working on that very Gen X magazine.

Through his narration, he gives you the history of Vice from its founding through to its hollow shell it is in now. The bulk of the film feels more focused on Shane Smith’s more capitalist nature and fronting like he has a set of beliefs and ethics when his main goal in the end was to make as much money as he could while controlling a sense of cool. For those that’s hip think of other brands of this ilk, like Supreme or A Bathing Ape. Yet through his exploration of Vice history is the story of Gavin McInnes, he was the real creative driving force of the magazine, but I feel the film shoots him a little too much bail as they now say. Gavin in the current world is a White supremacist pundit and founder of the Proud Boys. He’s a terrible person and has done real, actual damage in the world.

I think what bothered me about Huang’s viewpoint of him in the film is that he is essentially a trickster-like figure that might not actually believe in what he’s saying and doing, but is a nihilist and is just poking the bear to see what happens. That his more punk rock, brash ethos when he was younger is more ethically honorable than Shane Smith‘s dedication to capitalist exploitation. I could be off here, but even when people talked about Gavin, they spoke of his likability and charisma, but how that made them want to stay in his good graces. The film talks about his being pushed out like this, a big change in the soul of Vice, and for me, seeing where the magazine was and what he went to, I think it’s going toward neoliberal capitalist brand expansion, which is better than becoming evil in the ways of the Klan or the Neo-Nazi part of the spectrum. He just didn’t wholly believe Gavin, and I’m very much “believe these people when they show you who they are”. In every part of Kayfabe, there is truth, at least in the best of it. So even if it’s an act, Gavin is a piece of shit.

Smith clearly messed up the brand, and the second half of the film is essentially a perfect encapsulation of our society since the early 2010s, with the unbridled ambition and charisma chasing the wealth that disruption of the old standards brought without a thought of what was left behind afterwards. The film moves at a good pace, and his usage of old clips from his Viceland show, Huang’s World, is used well as an example and point of reference for what Huang experienced.

While I think this film might be a bit niche in its audience, the movie does work well with what we are all experiencing currently, in this unstable world we are all living in, accepting the wrongs that have happened and figuring out how to move forward after the loss and the injury. While I think the film was a bit too kind to McGinnis, and that might have more to do with my issues with how the term “punk” is used and how it can hide some hateful behaviors, Vice is Broke was an interesting and entertaining documentary. I think there was so more that could be explored, but maybe that might be bigger than Vice and Huang himself.