The Voice

The Village Voice April 18-24
The Village Voice is a weekly arts oriented tabloid. It came to my surprise that there was not one article on the recent events that took place in Virginia Tech, the story that to this day still headlines our daily newspapers. So, what is it that makes this paper different? Why, in the current local and national turmoil, does the Voice choose Elliot Gould, a 70’s hit actor from Brooklyn, to be its cover story?
The Goulden Age, written by J. Hoberman senior film critic for The Village Voice since 1988, closely trailed the life of actor Elliot Gould. The article is filled with strong and meaningless details right besides each other like how he met his ex wife Barbara Streisand “in the cast of the 1962 musical I Can Get it for You Wholesale [in which] (he stared in the show, she stole it).” Yet the article does answer the five basic journalistic questions. Who? Elliot Goldstein. What? He is a prominent Jewish actor/psych patient with a long and arduous life. When? Took the seventies specifically by charge. Where? Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and now lives in L.A. Why? Through the details in the article, his life was interesting enough dealing with anti-Semitism and his neurosis to write a cover story on.
And still, with all of that I have yet to answer as to why, in the current local and national turmoil, does the Voice choose Elliot Gould to be its cover story? The Voice is an arts oriented newspaper, the gruesome events that occurred in Virginia Tech University or even the young Columbia Journalism student from Hamilton Heights, is not exactly what the liberal readers of the Voice are interested in. And if they are they can get those stories anywhere and everywhere else.
The Voice has sections exhibiting almost every aspect of New York City culture. Including theater, art, dance, books, eats, bars, film, music, and several pages on Asian call girls. The voice appeals to the vibrant, lively, liberal, drunken, apathetic, New Yorker who is looking for a good laugh and a good time.
The quality of the paper is strong for those who will want to read it, but in comparison with papers like the New York Times, there is not much of a comparison to make other than the fact that the ink gets on your fingers if you hold it for too long. The New York Times can enrich your knowledge of the world, while also zoning into the local aspects of the news whereas the Voice will not really focus on news at all, at least not what the people at the New York Times would call news. There is a severe difference in the papers’ frame of reference.
The article titled “New York’s Most Obnoxious Lawyer: Do we have to pick just one? Kenny Heller won’t admit it, but he could make a case for the title if he hadn’t been disbarred –for obnoxious behavior.” written by Sean Gardiner, depicts Kenny Heller almost as a caricature. The story was a seven-page rant following the seventy seven year old man who was the first lawyer to be disbarred for being uncontrollably obnoxious. Instead of a one-page story on him, the length of it actually helps you to grow almost an attachment to the cantankerous character, who gets arrested for not sharing his files after being disbarred, and like him by the end of the article. The picture for the opening page of the article shows an angry Heller (with a look as if with desire to beat the photographer) in the hands of distraught police officers. His baldhead, thick glasses, suspenders holding his pants at the height of his naval, and expression create almost a cartoon character of the angry old man, fitting the article perfectly.
When first looking through the paper the article that caught my eye was “I Live on Seaman After Cumming” by Maria Altman. For an older generation I feel that a raunchy title like this would either be looked down upon or misunderstood. The Washington Heights intersection is a center point of ridicule for those who live in the neighborhood, and just funny enough for a short article to make you smile after reading about a 9/11 worker whose foot was crushed under a six-ton steel beam. The two articles kind of balanced each other out one drove down a depressive road and the other a kind of nonsensical one. Either article alone would have taken away from the standards of this paper.
I would have to say, the sections that changed my views on this paper were those on current theater, art shows, and bars. The article titled “For Those About to Mock-Rock” by Eliza Bent is about a performance arts group called Banana Bag & Bodice who create and present spectacular (sometimes free) shows in New York, San Francisco and Dublin. In this show they mimic a rock group, and actually learned how to play instruments and orchestrate the music for their show. There is another article about El Museo del Barrio, which has an art exhibit on Los Desaparecidos who were tortured and killed in Latin America. As I went on through the paper I liked it more and more the paper possesses the power of culture, its philosophy must be to bring out the good in New York City, rather than shaming it down with articles about shootings in the Bronx and rapists in Hamilton Heights.