The Reprobate issue 0

IN HEAVEN
EVERYTHING IS FINE
An Introduction to The Reprobate
We’re told that print is dead. Sales figures
are crashing and established publications –
from the once all-conquering lad’s mags like
Loaded, FHM and Nuts to newspapers like
The Independent – are folding, either to go
online or vanish entirely.
Yet if a person was to venture into a branch
of WH Smiths or, better yet, a smaller
independent magazine retailer, they might
be forgiven for thinking that the demise
of the printed page has been somewhat
exaggerated. Sure, the huge corporate giants
might have gone, convinced that sales figures
of ‘just’ 67,000 are so pitiful that extinction is
the only answer. But there are vast numbers
of magazines out there, many of which the
average man or woman on the street might
not have even heard of. For many of these
magazines, even a tenth of those sales figures
would seem respectable. As the mainstream
publishing world has suffered, so the small,
And then we have the new breed of men’s
magazines – decidedly non-sexist and
depressingly humourless, stuffed-shirt affairs
aimed at the New Man, the Metrosexual and
the consciously upwardly mobile. In rejecting
the increasingly crass style of the late,
unlamented lad’s mag (which had deteriorated
into little more than a caricature of itself by the
end, with nothing more than football, nipplefree
shoots by Lucy Pinder, oafish Brit-crime
films and ‘banter’), these magazines seem to
have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
And the traditional women’s magazines,
with their obsessive need to body shame
(everyone is too fat or too thin), fixations on
here today, gone later today celebrities and
leering, unsavoury true life confession stories
(“My Dad Raped Me And Now I’m Having His
Baby – Get Your Vicarious Thrills By Reading
niche title has flourished. It seems that there
may well be more magazines in print now than
there has been for years. This should be a
good thing.
But despite this, it feels as though there
is little actual variety. Yes, we have the
expensive, glossy fashion, art and design
magazines that frequently seem to be an
exercise in vacuity – identikit magazines with
interchangeable covers and an emphasis on
style over substance. These magazines look
great, and are often so huge that they could
be used as doorstops - and yet they are all
too often intellectually empty, and what little
reading matter they contain is often very dry.,
self-conscious and empty.
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