Monocle’s Disappointing Myopia
[ED NOTE: This post is by our first Guest Magazineer, Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. You can find him in New York City and on his blog, Speedbird. Welcome, Adam!]
As a charter subscriber and a longtime admirer of Tyler Brûlé’s audacity, I’ve been pulling for Monocle Magazine. But with all nine issues now sitting in my living room, I’m sad to say my final verdict comes back in the negative. At £75 annually, I simply don’t feel that my subscription delivers sufficient value for me to want to renew it. But there’s more to it than that.
- The magazine just never felt essential to me. That is what Tyler promised and that, above all, is what I wanted it to be: a crisp, concise, deeply clued-in briefing on the state of global play - not bemused dispatches on the lives of Danish fishermen (issue 7) and vintners in the remote Chinese west (issue 4). Not all weak signals are portents of things to come. In the context of Monocle’s value proposition, the desire to report on the unheralded is only as laudable as the degree to which the subjects of these reports eventually signify. Otherwise it’s nothing but whimsy and window-dressing.
- Tyler’s persistent and intrusive Nippophilia has always been a bit much - especially, perhaps, for those of us with some actual experience living as foreigners in Japan. My personal tipping point may have been that one paean too many to Tokyo governor, notorious immigrant-basher, and avowed “fascist” Ishihara Shintaro. There are plenty of things to admire about Japan, but calling things Japanese out for higher praise than you would grant the directly-equivalent Western item isn’t appreciation, it’s fetishism.
- Monocle consistently lacks anything resembling a critical voice. At times it plays at being serious, raising ethical questions about Chinese stem-cell research (issue 8), only to accept an interviewee’s dicier assertions without comment. At others, it simply fails to engage the ethical dimensions of what it chooses to report on (the newly-resurgent Japanese military, issue 0; Abu Dhabi’s biennial IDEX arms fair, issue 2; the Christian retail industry, issue 6). The magazine’s relentless focus on high-end consumption as a literal way of life is itself a major ethical stumbling point.
- Monocle blurs, like no Western magazine I’ve seen, the boundary between advertising and editorial. Advertiser products and services are frequently mentioned in features, reviews and articles, without any indication that there is a business relationship involved. In almost every issue, cross-branded “advertorial” is delivered in the house design vocabulary, typeface, and copy voice. The product placement even extends to the (awful) manga, where it stands out like an orangutan with an erection at the office Christmas party.
- Over the course of its first year, Monocle turned to surprisingly hackneyed “usual suspects” when looking for insight. I had hoped that a magazine predicated on its ability to deliver a certain novelty of insight would acknowledge a generational turn in the wellsprings of expertise. This hasn’t been the case.
- Monocle suffers from serious confusion in the way it positions itself. The book comes across as cloying, precious, and auto-parodizing, not at all, as one recent reviewer would have it, “ultra-stylish and ultra-global.” This is in part for its comically disproportionate attention to things Japanese, in part for its willful hipster-doofus obscurity, and in very large part, because I find thick lashings of name-brand luxury the sure mark of a pathetic arriviste, and not anything to be aspired to.
When I recieved my first copy of Monocle, I held it proudly cover-outward for all to see as I walked down the street. I, too, wanted to participate in its fantasy of discernment, global reach, and access. (OK, I’m sad that way.) But here’s the thing: I no longer wish to do so.
In a mere ten months and ten issues, Tyler Brûlé has, without question, succeeded in one of the most daunting tasks faced by contemporary enterprise, that of establishing a resonant brand. The trouble is that the brand he brought into being says all the wrong things about what I value.
Tyler’s to be applauded for trying something distinctive, personal and new in the first place; for paying painstakingly close attention to type, paper weight and texture; for pumping new life into one of my favorite words in the English language, “bespoke”; for commissioning pieces that, whatever their ultimate value, undeniably do not tread the usual path; and above all for believing, as I do, that in any consideration of the material, hard-to-quantify things like provenance finally do tell.
These are all wonderful qualities, but they’re not enough to build a business. If I’ve come to feel this way - as one of a mere 5,000 charter subscribers and as someone in the center of the Monocle demographic in terms of taste, vocation, and air miles - then something’s wrong. Monocle is so far from what it could have been, and my world is the lesser for that.
This post originally appeared on Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird.
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