The VICE Guide To Travel
VICE Films

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Travel journalism usually puts the most serene, beautiful and pastoral parts of the world into focus. It's like cultural porn, airbrushing out all the nasty bits of poverty and crime so every place looks inviting. The VICE Guide to Travel, the first DVD release from the hipper-than-thou magazine and media empire, takes a less scenic route. Sending correspondents to parts of the world that make the Thunderdome look civilized, this video guide is participatory journalism done by the hipster cognoscenti. The camcorder work isn't professional and hard facts are often an afterthought, since commentary rarely goes beyond noting how fucked up things are. But, oh, the places you'll go.

After watching all seven short films -- which include scenes of P.L.O. boy scouts singing songs about destroying Israel and kids making bullets by hand in caves in Pakistan -- you'll come away admiring the steel balls it took to make this DVD. Footage of a magazine staffer partying in Rio's notorious City of God favela dressed like a game show host or taking a drunken tour through abandoned neighborhoods in Chernobyl is compelling just by its mere existence. A few brave and noble war journalists aside, the closest mainstream media gets to this kind of risk-taking is wearing bright yellow ponchos in the path of a hurricane. The VICE staff now has some fucking cool (if not exactly world-changing) stories to tell at its next Brooklyn loft party. Too bad our national news anchors don't have similar stories to share on their evening broadcasts.

Though longtime VICE readers might expect the bonus clips to be surreal combinations of participatory journalism and Jackass-style abuse, the extras are actually pretty tame. A clip of artist David Choe in the Congo, spray-painting a wall and pounding out drumbeats in front of a quiet but bemused crowd, could be some kind of statement about hip-hop culture coming full circle if it had any direction. The most disappointing extra is David Cross and VICE co-founder Gavin McInnes in China. The promising start -- the smartass duo tunnels to China via two subway stops and searches for bootleg Mr. Show DVDs -- ends with early-morning mockery of American businessmen watching the Super Bowl in a Shanghai sports bar. It's a little too obvious of a bit. And if this is what globalization has wrought, screw traveling.

by Pat Sisson