Media

Good News Beneath the Surface

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As I noted in an earlier post, apparently some good news has been going on beneath the surface of the chatter about stem cells. That we see little information about this is irritating: the assumption appears to be that the public has a right to know the mechanics of wiretaps but little context about issues such as these – also ones on which we judge our politician’s choices.

We hope other news – about Iraq, education in America, our health, energy sources – is good. But, we don’t know. Hell, the high level of home ownership wasn’t discussed all that much, but I suspect mortgage defaults will be. I suspect some bad but more good news, like the green revolution, is taking its course while we remain oblivious. What will prove important in the future? We don’t know. It isn’t all that important, probably, that we do know most. But not knowing some stories may affect us in subtle but important ways. One such story is that of heroic self-sacrifice Michael Yon reported (audio interview).

Bad news is entertaining. We like to consider the Alps and Grand Canyon even though we know life is a good deal more like the Nebraska sandhills. A frisson of terror followed by relief that we haven’t been destroyed entertains: the reaction of an audience when the heroic, tragic hero (the scapegoat Aristotle tells us) is exiled, the reaction of the Puritans to Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom,” the reaction of the audience to Gore’s doom. We fear we are the goats but assure ourselves in the end we are sheep.

Bad news can be motivating. But bad news also leads to despair. Fearing consequences, fearing responsibility, we don’t act. We become mired in hesitations and doubts. Politicians hedge their bets. They say the surge won’t work but do not question Petraeus about the plan – preferring to say there is none. That debate, the sarcasm of the press, reinforces our sense that to be wise is to be ironic, cynical – passive. The twentieth century began with Marcher, James’s hero whose great tragedy is that he is the man to whom nothing happened because he did nothing, felt nothing, committed himself to nothing. Our politicians begin the twenty-first arguing their positions follow the polls better than do their competitors’ votes passive before the winds, two-dimensional, turning like tin roosters, weather vanes on the barn roof.

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Remembering Mancini on the Little Tube

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Well, hot women’s groups attract Lex, but here’s a cool note: V. 1, first 8 episodes of Peter Gunn. (Netflix) For those of you of a certain age or a certain temperament, this may reverberate.
In 1989, Blake Edwards tried to revive the series (with Pearl Bailey as “Mother”!); apparently it wasn’t bad, but film noir only worked in a kind of postmodernist way by then. Tonight I forced my youngest daughter to watch episodes from the old series (1958-1961) and she found herself captivated (as I knew she would be) by the music and the poetry reading in smoky bars. This seems like a foreign world to her. I try to convince her that we were cool, then – but she doesn’t believe me. Of course, we weren’t. I was younger than she is now. And she laughs at much of it – the smoking, for instance, seemed so cool and now seems so absurd.

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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.

Some Interesting Juxtapositions

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From United Press International: Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, comments on the “evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon.” (Obviously, the world now appreciates the work of Green Helmet.) Chris Warren, spokesman for the Australian Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, responds “I don’t think journalists have got it so wrong as some governments did on weapons of mass destruction.” Pajamas Media reports on the newly declassified reports: “For those keeping score, this most recent discovery raises the total number of chemical weapons found in Iraq since 2003 to more than 700.”

Gateway Pundit graphs a decline in deaths in Iraq in August. However, even hawkish reporters have found the Pentagon downbeat this week. The AP military writer, Robert Burns, summarizes the testimony:

Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report said Friday.

In a notably gloomy report to Congress, the Pentagon reported that illegal militias have become more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of both security and basic social services.

The report described a rising tide of sectarian violence, fed in part by interference from neighboring Iran and Syria and driven by a “vocal minority” of religious extremists who oppose the idea of a democratic Iraq.

While the world is a complicated place and all may be true, surely each can’t be broadly representative.