No stars, please (Heat)

Name: theediscerning

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Heat
Date:	19/11/03 (105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Possibly a free film, Possibly some interesting tat

Disadvantages: Probably 99% uninteresting tat, Possibly *not* a free film

Yes, you can never claim theediscerning shirks his responsibilities. Rather than review a brilliantly healthy food item that will revolutionise your family's eating habits, and completely ignoring the next novel that will change your lives utterly and wonderfully for the better, theediscerning can reveal Chris Moyles picks his nose and eats it, and he can tell you all about the proof.

In a world chocka with the most hectic sources of endless information regarding our lives and those of future generations, isn't it nice to sit down for a while, relax, and dream our cares away with pictures of celebrities having ugly moments? That seems to be the sole purpose of Heat magazine. Gone are the days when you bought magazines for the words ~ there are hardly a hundred to each page here. Instead what we are buying into is the complete opposite to those celebrity-hugging C2DE-bracketed-housewives' magazines. So that makes it friendly for the yoof of today, which makes it fine for us all to "read" and be all smug and knowing.

Indeed, who wouldn't be smug if they could see pictures of Britney with bad skin, Cate Blanchett having builder's crack when she squats down, and Sadie Frost having a bit of a greaseball off day? Whereas much celebrity fodder makes us feel we can live like them, or live with them, Heat at least makes us think we can be better than them.

And what celebrities we have here. Ignore the above-mentioned, there is also real, important talent in these pages. Stand up, Sara Cox, in your retro flapper frock (only one consonant wrong, there, of course). It's page 105 (really? It only reads like page 34, there's so much depth) for an interview with the unfortunately named Jon Tickle. Instead of being a porn star, as it sounds he should, he?s come fresh from losing Big Brother to showing "science" to Sky One's viewers.

But who on earth is this Peter Brame character? Answ
ers not on a postcard, but on a huge, full-colour, almost A3 double spread. Such is the hard graft put into each page by Heat journalists, each main picture of the spread comes with not one but two captions. Double the value!

As far as the writing is concerned, there is actually a small amount that might count as news, but it must all be taken with a pinch of salt. There's a back of a house, which they say is not what David Beckham is married to, but where he is finally renting in Spain. There's news about Corrie people doing Children in Need ~ given a few days, would we not have found that out for ourselves? There's also Nicole Kidman talking about her miscarriage, which is fine, except she was talking to Marie Claire at the time ~ this is just second-hand reportage, and merely an excuse to cobble together old photos with old publicity for our fresh reconsumption.

All this is put together by a cast of several dozens. Read their names on the masthead page, which each week asks each one a pertinent question about their current tastes, which is generally an excuse for the editor to tell us how little he likes Radiohead. Rather than get personal, however, in criticising them, let's just assume for their sakes that the graphics people got a degree in order to present pictures of Simon Cowell getting an unfortunate French kiss from a dog. And how the literary members of staff find TWO books each and every week for us to read reviews about, why, the mind boggles.

To take the magazine as seriously as it itself does for a minute (half the time it takes to read the thing, then), the pap is well-produced, and its chosen market has made it incredibly successful, so it must be doing something right. One gets all the apparently relevant celebrity photo gossip, style tips and how-to-dress-like-[insert minor name] articles. The major interview will cover three or four pages, mostly with pictures, of course, but also with the eve
r-important questions about the subject's past romances. The three films under review will assuredly include only those *everyone* has reviewed elsewhere, and provide you with nothing new.

Similarly, the music pages will not let you experiment with anything but the safest pop, lest the ridiculous amount of people advertising Friends DVDs in the same pages get cold feet.

The magazine closes with seven days' of television listings, giving the fullest detail about the important documentaries and current affairs programmes (sorry, that bit was fantasy), the largest-print prize crossword imaginable, and the horoscopes page. Even here the brilliance of the writing comes across ~ just witness the recent column matching Britney (Sagittarius) and Madonna (Leo), and asking "And what would their babies be like?".

It is unfortunate to report that Heat is just so successful. The only real enjoyment that may be derived from flicking through the trashy pages is the inherent comedy to be had from some celebrity outfits. Thankfully, Heat staff have decided they're so much better than the famous people they depend on, and are not at all afraid of pulling them down a peg or two, if what has come off the peg is particularly stupid. What makes this collection of nonentities' opinions about others so worthy of publication is just a mystery.

Unfortunately it's just another sign of the times in which we live, a world in which soon people will be too brainwashed and stupid to even understand the phrase "dumbing down". Just witness the cutting-edge questioning on Channel 4 recently, to a Blazing Squad member ~ "Your single got five stars in the latest Heat review; do you think that's right?" In a world where the Heat opinion is gospel, there is no hope.

So why on earth does theediscerning have such knowledge of this magazine, if he thinks it completely rubbish? Well, he?s a sucker for a
"free" film screening, and Heat has one more often than not. Of course, it doesn't always reach his own provincial area of the country, and so far has proved to be a complete waste of time. The first time theediscerning bought Heat and took it to claim cinema tickets for a preview showing, they gave out twice as many tickets as seats, so when he turned up fashionably on time, the screen was full. The repeat attempt a month later was only to find the reverse, and that the cinema had no tickets to give away anyway.

That is just an aside, really, but a note of some import after all. You can rely on Heat for pictures of brazen hussies and brainless hunks you have no interest in, with a few snippets of personal interest scattered throughout, but where the only worthwhile reason to buy it is concerned, you are dealing with third parties that are much less reliable.

To conclude with Heat, if anyone really is that interested in a pictorial record of Christina Aguilera's MTV awards wardrobe, then they are pitied. There are more important things in this world for us all to consider than how ugly the Cheeky Girls are ~ and how the journalist could claim pride in knowing what each one is called is equally bizarre. The buyers of this magazine will hate the above for stating a different view to the one they carry ~ they buy Heat in their thousands each week knowing just what they'll be getting, and deserving every stupid page of it.

Perhaps this should close with the news that Heat costs £1.45 weekly, or 3Euros on the Canary Islands, but if you still consider it worth purchasing, you're lost to us already. In a world where these preening buffoons count as newsworthy celebrities, and in reviewing such trash here, a world with no stars as an option would be very welcome indeed.

Summary: