And now for something different: The Devil Wears Prada
We saw The Devil Wears Prada at AMC Fenway tonight. It’s a decent movie, definitely a good choice for married men who want earn some football-watching chits for the fall.
Some quick thoughts on the movie, with mild spoiler warnings.
1) The movie didn’t do a very good job establishing that Miranda woman as the devil. Driven? Sure. Bad mother? No doubt. Not a woman you’d want to marry? Clearly. But the devil? Hardly. Ari Gold in HBO’s masterpice bagatelle Entourage is a much more sadistic character, and he barely has any redeeming qualities at all. At least Miranda puts out an industry-leading magazine.
2) What was the Princess-girl character’s motivation for busting her ass for the devil? Stockholm Syndrome? Devotion to her job? Was she seduced by the lifestyle? I settle for seduced while wanting to prove that she was better (in both a moral and professional sense) than the fashionistas who surrounded her. Ultimately, I don’t think it really matters what her motivation was.
3) The Princess-girl character’s friends were poorly fleshed and except for Vinny Chase (he has a real name: Adrian Grenier) quite unnecessary. The movie should have spent the time it wasted on them on exploring Miranda’s wickedness.
4) I think one take-home message from the movie is that you can’t have it all, not even if you are a young American woman (call me a heretic!). Putting your career ahead of motherhood is not a decision that’s likely to bring about long-term happiness.
5) But I guess the movie sugar-coated it by having the Princess-girl character leave her job not for her boyfriend but for, for, I don’t know, self-empowerment and self-realization and self-validation or something equally nebulous. You go girl with your important job at New York Mirror (don’t newbie journalists have to write obituaries and police blotters nowadays?)!
6) Conservative journalist and movie critic Steve Sailer has made a good point about The Devil Wears Prada that’s worth repeating: Miranda’s open elitism is a lot easier to take than the faux-egalitarianism that many corporate tycoons favor.
7) In a similar vein, the cold hierarchialism of Miranda seems to me to come a lot easier to Americans than the notion of team work that is often praised but perhaps not quite as often an actual reality. I’m not entirely convinced that teamworkism is a philosophy that makes the best use of Americans’ cultural capital.
The idea that the devil wears Prada is ridiculous. As everybody knows, the devil wears pinstripes.
9) Very little actually happens in the movie. Is the book equally devoid of action?
Trailer comment: Saw a trailer for some movie with Alec Baldwin. Looks absolutely slit-your-wrists awful. Don’t see that movie, whatever it is.
[I originally referred to AMC Fenway as "GMC Fenway." AMC is correct.]
[Good grief. I have got to get better about proofing my posts. At one place in this post I referred to the movie as "Pravda". No doubt the Devil reads (or writes) Pravda, but that's not relevant here. I can't get over the fact that I wrote "The Devil Wears Pravda." It just goes to show you can take the boy out of the Cold War, but you can't take the Cold War out of the boy]
