A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Devil Wears Prada

Date Viewed: 7/1/06

Details:

Meryl Streep (Miranda Priestly)

Anne Hathaway (Andrea 'Andi' Sachs)

Emily Blunt (Emily)

Stanley Tucci (Nigel)

Adrian Grenier (Nate)

Simon Baker (Christian Thompson)

Director: David Frankel

Score: 0

The Review: A boss from hell for a job in la-la land.

Bright journalism student (Hathaway) chooses to take a year or so off after college to take a job as personal assistant to the daunting, demanding, hard-assed and easily disappointed editor (Streep) of Runway magazine, the (fictitious) fashion "bible." For someone with no fashion sense and little initial interest in the business, this seems an odd choice -- I echo Priestly's other assistant's (Blunt) incredulity -- but a transformation is in the works.

Streep as Miranda Priestly and Hathaway as Andi Sachs are both curious characters, very well-acted, to some degree sympathetic (more so for Andi), and interesting in an examining-an-alien-civilization sense. But neither are people I'd like to meet or associate with. Priestly is so far disconnected from the world I live in as to be a fantasy figure. The fashion industry certainly represents a dominant business in today's world, but its lack of objectivity coupled with the glorification of delivered opinion and fashion bullies repels me. I choose not to use the term "shallowness" because I don't believe it applies (creativity must be granted its due), but such subjectivity is not something with which I normally interact, nor anything about which I care to be informed (*footnote*).

Unfortunately, Andi suffers from "slippery slope" syndrome: starting out from a crystalline ethical ground, but then exhibiting an even clearer (and perhaps more psychologically understandable) journey into the dark side than Anakin Skywalker. She seems willing to tolerate rampant condescension and snide sniping comments, wearing a cheery disposition almost like a child never expecting to be punished. Her bid for complete sympathy fails when we keep hearing her trademark line: "I had no choice." Not only the audience, but most of the people around her -- from her boyfriend (Grenier) through Nigel (Tucci) to Priestly herself -- recognize this as self-delusion and dissembling.

That aside ("...other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"), the Cinderella story (or the Ugly Duckling story, or some contemporary fusion) nonetheless rests easily on Hathaway -- from the Princess Diaries, to Ella Enchanted, to Prada, she's allowed herself to be typecast as a young girl transformed over the course of the movie into something vaguely recognizable in the starting material. But as I said for her first movie, they had to work pretty hard to create the klutz: Hathaway's beauty is difficult to conceal. "She sure cleans up well."

From a factoid-based novel by Lauren Weisberger, with a loose connection to (non-fictional) Vogue magazine.

(1-Jul-06)

(*) Footnote / Addendum: This review started out with slightly more bitchy intent, but I discovered both that my thoughts on subjectivity and gatekeeper bullies needed more explanation, and that a comparison to the subjective and creative worlds of art and music was warranted. Since I enjoy and collect several forms of music and a variety of art, I feel the obligation to distinguish my attraction, interest and curiosity about such creative production from my general lack of such feelings for fashion.

Creativity is a fragile trait, easily extinguished and difficult to nurture and encourage. It is an essential characteristic for most human endeavors, whether they be science, art, music, architecture or even fashion. Those rare movies that recognize and praise nascent creativity should be rewarded for their efforts. (Alas, this is not one of them.)

On the other hand, as I expounded in Gangs of New York, there are different kinds of bullies, but they all have a core set of personality traits that I consider anathema and counter to the creative and intellectual process. There is the model of Ellsworth Toohey of Rand's Fountainhead, a critic and pseudo-intellectual gatekeeper bully who loves power for its own sake, and for the control it gives him over people, process and opinion. Both William ("Bill the Butcher") Cutting and Amsterdam Vallon from Gangs are simple physical bullies, and no matter than one might be more sane than the other, they're still both violent thugs whose control over people follows gang allegiance or weapons, not logic or rationality. And I've encountered several intellectual bullies in my career in science, and though unnamed, they share many of the traits I'm decrying here -- gatekeepers, reviewers, managers, arbiters of scientific process and style whose argumentative, confrontational, combative, subjective, uncollegial and occasionally purposely-ignorant manner distort the scientific continuum to the detriment of creative exploration and discovery. The major flaw is not subjectivity per se, but the aggressive single-minded declaration that "my way is the only way." Creativity in the application of power to control people, does not deserve the appellation.

Miranda Priestly shares many of these traits, and what I can see -- both in and beyond the universe of Prada -- is that there are a number of such "guardians" in (and of) fashion. The playing field is not level; here be bullies. It is for this reason that I find aspects of this movie repugnant. Strong statement -- strong feelings.

(2-Jul-06)

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