Helen

The Devil has the best lines

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How Hollywood loves to show that it believes in true ideals and hates all superficiality and artifice. The industry that is devoted to superficiality and artifice turns its collective and, no doubt, carefully straightened nose up at such frippery as the fashion industry. Or so it would seem is the message of “The Devil Wears Prada”.

The film tries very hard to be on the side of Andy Sachs, the idealistic young fledgling journalist, who comes to New York and applies for jobs in magazines and newspapers. Of course, she gets ignored until, unexpectedly, she is interviewed for the job of the second PA to Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), all-powerful editor of the biggest and glossiest fashion magazine, “Runway”. Andy and her friends are rather snooty about the fashion industry (well, all but one who appears to understand it) and she shows it by her lack of interest in the subject, dowdy clothes and complete inability to deal with the problem of being Miranda’s PA.

Then she is taken in hand by Miranda’s second in command, played with kindly waspishness by Stanley Tucci, who does his best to explain what it is all about to Andy. Failing in that, he dresses her in wonderful clothes, which are a little hit and miss, as they would be on a young woman, however pretty, who has not really acquired a style of her own. Andy gradually becomes so efficient that even Miranda appreciates her and starts pushing her ahead of PA No 1, Emily. Andy plays along, gets to go to the Paris shows, without ever apparently really acquiring any real knowledge of the world she lives in and has a one-night stand with a well-known writer.

Then, suddenly, through a series of machinations, she understands just how ruthless the fashion world is, chucks in her job together with her ever-demanding mobile phone, which she throws into one of the fountains in the Tuileries gardens (the Paris geography is a little sketchy), realizes that she has lost her ideals and goes back to them by becoming ….a journalist. And, of course, nobody ever gets shafted in “real” journalism.

The problem with this reading, the intended one, as I suspect, is that it is absolutely impossible to take the silly, supercilious little chit seriously. Neither she, nor her hipster friends appear to have any interests beyond feeling superior to the fashion industry. Soooooooo superficial.

As against that we have two superb characters who speak for the fashion industry. There is Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley, the workaholic slave-driver and bitch-queen, who, undoubtedly, has the best lines, the best make-up and the best wardrobe. And there is Stanley Tucci’s Nigel, her second in command, the man who eventually gets shafted as Miranda fights to preserve her own job.

It is not just that they have the best lines, many of which are now being repeated by delighted viewers, they are also articulate in their understanding and defence of the fashion industry. When Andy chuckles over a couple of belts that look exactly alike to her and produces a spurious apology about not understanding “all this stuff”, she gets a withering lecture from Miranda who explains coldly and meticulously just how the creative minds of the fashion industry influence the lives even of people who are “too intellectual to care what they put on their backs”. When Andy weeps about Miranda not being nice to her, Nigel tells her in no uncertain terms how utterly useless her attitude makes her for her job and to her colleagues. Fashion journalism is highly professional and very hard work.

There is, I suspect, a real problem here. Hollywood may talk idealism but it does not really know much about it. It may decry superficiality and artifice but those are what it understands best, can analyze and recreate best. There is not a single false note about the character of Miranda or Nigel or, even the PA number 1, Emily, played excellently by a young British actress, Emily Blunt. When it comes to the idealistic hipsters, they do not come to life except, occasionally, to irritate the viewer. There are several mis-steps with them. Would a young rather impoverished couple live in Lower East Side? How does Andy manage to remember the ambassador at the grand reception, whose face Emily has momentarily forgotten? Why exactly does a would-be journalist not know the identity of the editor of one of the biggest and glossiest monthlies in New York, which publishes feature articles all the time? The last of those questions is easily answered: because she thinks it is all beneath her. But what kind of a “real” journalist will she make as she apparently does not think research is of any importance?

Most of the reviewers, who, despite their supposed cynicism, tend to accept the point of view a film is promoting, were rather disappointed by Anne Hathaway who plays Andy but, naturally enough, fell in love with Meryl Streep’s Miranda. There is nothing wrong with Ms Hathaway or, one assumes, her acting. But to be cast as the idealistic young heroine only to find that the part is really one of a real fluff-head, could be quite galling. Especially, as the film has produced an unexpected heroine: Miranda Priestley, the ever-sharp, ever-stylish, every-despotic editor of the superficial fashion magazine.

Passing of a great man

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Some of our readers might have heard the sad news of the death of Lord Harris of High Cross. Yes, yes, I know he was in his eighties but that does not alter the fact that his passing fills one with great sorrow both on the political and, in my case, personal level.

Ralph Harris was one of the people responsible for the intellectual underpinning of the Thatcherite revolution. His colleague, Arthur Seldon, died last year. (And, by a strange coincidence, I attended yesterday the memorial meeting for Sir Alfred Sherman, a somewhat more controversial figure but one whose achievements must not be overlooked. Lady Thatcher was present, looking fragile but well.) Sadly, that generation is going and we shall all be the poorer for it.

I have known Ralph since my late teens (though he actually thought he had known me as a young child) as my father attended the IEA lunches in the late sixties and early seventies, when their ideas were generally considered to be a brand of harmless lunacy at best. Even in those days Ralph cultivated his persona of the Edwardian gentleman, hats, moustaches, waistcoats and walking sticks included.

What mattered above all was not his mannerism, not even his fantastically ebullient personality – nobody could ever forget Ralph even after a brief meeting – but his hard-headed approach to Britain’s problems.

Neither he nor Arthur Seldon would have been welcomed in the wishy-washy, condescending tory-toff Conservative Party of David Cameron. They would both have been horrified to hear that a Conservative Party leader could snootily dismiss the notion of choice in education for all. I can still remember Ralph Harris’s tones when he talked about that public school boy Anthony Crosland vowing to destroy “every f***ing grammar school”. [Apologies for the implied swearing – those are the words Crosland used.]

Ralph Harris came from a working class family in north London, went to a grammar school and thence to the University of Cambridge. He knew the importance of good education for people who wanted to rise and achieve; he, as well as Arthur Seldon, knew that the working classes had been perfectly capable of looking after themselves and their families; they knew how destructive the welfare state, imposed largely by do-gooding middle class politicians, been to working class families and, beyond that, to the whole of British society.

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Death of another courageous journalist

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Well, they finally got her. Anna Politkovskaya, one of the world’s most courageous journalists, who wrote openly critical pieces about President Putin and his system, who managed to get through to Chechnya and report truthfully about the war there, who was nearly murdered when she was trying to get to Beslan to find out what was really happening in that unfortunate place, has been assassinated.

Her body was found by the lift of the apartment block she lived in, with a gun and ammunition beside it. According to Russia-IC the investigation into the murder “is being led by the General Procuracy of Russia under personal control of department’s head Yury Chayka”.

Her husband expressed the opinion that he did not think the murderers would be found, which is quite likely, unless the General Procuracy can find some little minnow in the conspiracy who can be blamed. Mr Politkovsky has also said that his wife had been receiving threats for the last two years. It is not clear, says the news agency, whether she had reported these threats to the police. I can think of several reasons why Anna Politkovskaya might not want to deal with the Russian police in this matter.

I have written before about this extraordinarily courageous woman before, mentioning the Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and the Future of the Media, which she shared with Hans-Martin Tillack, Britta Petersen and Seymour M. Hersh. Even Herr Tillack’s travails pale into insignificance (well, almost) compared to the life and death of Anna Politkovskaya. The other two recipients are alive and well with Mr Hersh being feted up and down the “drive-by media” of the United States.

There are words of horror being expressed by various journalists’ organizations but, as I have had to point out before, it is not always clear that the biggest and most important of these, the International Federation of Journalists has a clear idea of what is really going on in the world. I suggest they compare the events in Anna Politkovskaya’s life to those in Seymour M. Hersh’s. It is entirely possible that they will not be able to see the difference.

For those of us who would like to see Russia take her rightful place as one of the truly great countries in the world this assassination, coming so soon after the assassination of Andrei Kozlov, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Central Bank, who was trying to clean up the banking sector, marks another tragic and bloody step downwards for the whole country.

Cross-posted from EUReferendum

Same old, same old …

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With this posting I shall break my resolution not to write about the Conservative Party, its Boy-King leader or the preternaturally boring conference in Bournemouth. The reason is that I am a little tired of the accepted wisdom (when am I not tired of that?), which says that the Tories have no policies. They do, too, have policies.

Back in the days of the Cold War many of us grew hoarse repeating the same thing over and over again: if the Soviets say that they are at war (hot or cold) with the West and their aim is victory, then let us give them credit for telling the truth and accept that this is so. Then let us ensure that it does not happen.

If the Islamists insist that their aim is, at the very least, to destroy our culture, undermine our liberties and effectively enslave us, then let us give them credit for telling the truth and accept that this is so. Then let us ensure that it does not happen.

If the high panjandrums of the European Union insist that they want to see an integrated European state, which is run along managerial rather than political lines, then let us give them credit for telling the truth and accept that this is so. Then let us ensure that they do not succeed.

So it is with the Conservative Party. They have been shouting their policies from the rooftops (though, possibly, those windmills have been too loud).

What are those policies? Well, dear readers, to start with, a Conservative Government under Cameron would be a high-tax, high-regulation government with extra controls of the fiscal and legislative kinds imposed from an outdated understanding of environmental matters: not new technology but taxes and controls.

It will be a government that will insist on keeping health and education in its hands and try to abolish the few remaining choices (except for choices for the rich, such as … errm … Cameron, Osborn and others). They will, of course, “ensure that the money is spent in the best possible way and is directed to those who most need it” but we have heard all that before. Same old, same old. The people are not to be trusted with their own lives but to be governed, wisely or otherwise, by those child-faced politicians and the bureaucrats.

It will be a government that will veer from repressive measures against all of us in the name of the war against terror to appeasement towards all existing criminal and potentially terrorist organizations.

It will be a government that will not be able to grapple with the concept of national identity or deal with the problem of generations of youngsters who are uneducated and frustrated by the fact that they are not given any education or pointed towards any possible achievements. Be nice to everybody is not an adequate aim in life.

It will be a government that will flounder in its foreign and defence policies, making sure that they are not accused of being too American and, therefore, being members of the Anglosphere but waffling on about “not being ruled by Europe”. And, in the meantime, the country will go on drifting into an ever closer and more expensive integrated European defence structure. Then, when it is too late, they will squeal.
How do I know all this? Because, dear reader, I have been told by the Conservative leaders, the Boy-King and his acolytes. Told, loud and clear. It is time to start listening to them.

You, dear reader, may not like these policies. I certainly do not like them. But there is no point in pretending they do not exist. This is what every single person who votes Conservative in the next election will be voting for. You have been warned.

And now, that’s enough Tories. (Ed.)

(Cross-posted from EUReferendum)

Just how valuable is public opinion?

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I have a great love of war-time propaganda films, particularly British ones. I have now seen a goodly number of them either at the National Film Theatre or, back in the days I still had one of them, on the goggle box. What I have always found slightly surprising is how many of them (as well as the number of thrillers published at the time) deal with fifth columnists. Some films give the impression that the country was absolutely honeycombed with groups and individuals at all social levels who sympathized with the Nazis and worked actively towards a German victory.

Naturally, I have thought, during a war, people must be alert; there will always be traitors, particularly if the war is to a very great extent an ideological one, and all others must be careful and vigilant. But was it really sensible to propagate the idea that a large proportion of the British population was not really involved in the war effort. Quite the contrary. Surely, that was completely untrue.

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