Devil wears Prada
Jul. 5th, 2012 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThis was surprisingly not terrible. Andy is a journalism graduate who gets a job for a fasion magazine. Everyone is horribly shocked that she wears generic normal clothes rather than only fasionable ones, and that she's a size six, when they're all size 0s or size 2s.
It squeezes in a reasonable number of different characters: her father, boyfriend, and small circle of friends are readily distinguishable. It passes the bechdel test several times over.
It is an example of the plot where "Plucky character is in thrall to horrible person. Trial by fire. Eventually makes good, though horrible person doesn't acknowledge it. Admires horrible person's competence. Eventually shows great loyalty to horrible person, and horrible person grudgingly acknowledges it in some backhand way, showing a heart of gold under a still-crusty exterior. Later on horrible person does something nice for them and refuses to admit it."
Except that we never get that payoff in the last character. The boss is horrible but not evil: eg. she's constantly belittling and insulting to everyone about everything, but most of the time not actively malicious. Except near the end she stabs one of her senior employees in the back (the nice one). And the nicest thing she does is to write Andy a good reference, which is honest rather than conniving, but not exactly an indictment of her character. She IS good at her job, but she IS horrible, and goes ON being horrible and never gets any commuppance, and everyone else is still screwed, even though Andy escapes and gets a job as a real reporter on the strength of her experience.
That just feels really weak.
It also made me reflect that there's a spectrum between "industries where there's a limited number of top jobs" and "industries which can absorb a large number of talents". And in one, the tale of "Super McAwesome and Extra Super McAwesome" is one of rivalry and tragedy, and in the other, the tale of "Super McAwesome and Extra Super McAwesome" can be "and they did twice as much awesome, rock on!"
Edit: Not Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway. Sorry!
It squeezes in a reasonable number of different characters: her father, boyfriend, and small circle of friends are readily distinguishable. It passes the bechdel test several times over.
It is an example of the plot where "Plucky character is in thrall to horrible person. Trial by fire. Eventually makes good, though horrible person doesn't acknowledge it. Admires horrible person's competence. Eventually shows great loyalty to horrible person, and horrible person grudgingly acknowledges it in some backhand way, showing a heart of gold under a still-crusty exterior. Later on horrible person does something nice for them and refuses to admit it."
Except that we never get that payoff in the last character. The boss is horrible but not evil: eg. she's constantly belittling and insulting to everyone about everything, but most of the time not actively malicious. Except near the end she stabs one of her senior employees in the back (the nice one). And the nicest thing she does is to write Andy a good reference, which is honest rather than conniving, but not exactly an indictment of her character. She IS good at her job, but she IS horrible, and goes ON being horrible and never gets any commuppance, and everyone else is still screwed, even though Andy escapes and gets a job as a real reporter on the strength of her experience.
That just feels really weak.
It also made me reflect that there's a spectrum between "industries where there's a limited number of top jobs" and "industries which can absorb a large number of talents". And in one, the tale of "Super McAwesome and Extra Super McAwesome" is one of rivalry and tragedy, and in the other, the tale of "Super McAwesome and Extra Super McAwesome" can be "and they did twice as much awesome, rock on!"
Edit: Not Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway. Sorry!