The Devil Wears Prada, Six Years After

KT Tunsell singing “Suddenly I see/ this is all I wanna be” while all the clackers and Anne Hathaway get ready for work at the beginning of The Devil Wears Prada is my motivational hymn. I can't help smiling, my heart warms up and I get so much determination and confidence I could stab a dictator with a stiletto. Maybe it's because the movie is about getting where you want at any cost, or because I became attached to it when I decided that following my instinct was the only way in life.

I found myself watching it again last night (in search of a motivational hymn?) and thinking about how 2006 it is. It's still charmingly timely, but there are a few things that changed in the past few years... or maybe I couldn't notice the discrepancy until I gained some real life experience.

I'm not talking about the revenge of size 6, Valentino's retirement from fashion or the end of the Harry Potter's saga; I am talking about attitudes. The Devil Wears Prada is the story of a girl, with a national prize for student journalism and some  editorial experience at a University magazine, who gets a low paid job at the most famous publication in the world. Her parents feel sorry for her, because she is late with her rent and because she doesn't get to write articles.

Pardon? Paid. Job. Well credited publication. This sounds like heaven to me! Or to thousands of other girls like me, with a Master's degree and very grim options for the future.

In 2012 you don't even look for a job that you're not going to get, you apply for one month internships or one week work experiences with only travel and lunch expenses paid. If you're lucky. And you feel very grateful if you even get one, at any publication, PR agency or crappy press office. Of course then you need a part time job to pay the rent. And anything you manage to get your hands on is temporary, like a cheap perfume. Truth is, you don't expect anything else.

When we all watched the movie the first time in 2006, we felt sorry for poor Andy crying in Nigel's office and thought it was mean of him telling her that “Andy, be serious, you're not trying. You are whining”. Then of course Andy really tries harder and gets where she didn't expect to. The question is: are we still ready to kill ourself trying? Do we still believe in goals or is this status quo turning us all in hopeless automats?

Finally, the no plan B situation. Having a plan B is handy when plan A fails, and we know life rarely goes as planned. But hasn't this cliché become a bit overrated? When asked to fetch the Harry Potter unpublished manuscript, Andy calls Christian Thomphson, who tells her to come up with a plan B and she prontly replies “It's Miranda Priestly we're talking about, there's no plan B, there's only plan A!” Andy's committment to do the impossible to succeed is a bit crazy, but definitely admirable. Are we so determinate to follow plan A, or are we too used to scroll down the alphabet till plan B, C,... Z?

We are all Andys, just in a worse economic situation. We should all fight like pirates and believe like martyrs if we are smart like her. We should be able to deal with Mirandas. Miranda Priestly might be a tough cooky, a boss from hell, the Devil wearing Prada, but what we all want is to have a boss. Or to be one, eventually.

The I Think Project VII

Mr Brainwash

In London, you might be walking towards Tottenham Court Road station on your home, and run into the Beatles looking at you from above a bandidos style handkerchief. A black wall, four coloured handkerchiefs, and four pairs of unmistakingly iconic eyes. Above them, the Queen in her best attire, holding a spray can. I could lie and say I knew exactly what that was, but I didn’t… until I got closer and read “Art Shoe Fri – Sun 1 – 7 pm Free Admission Mr Brainwash”. I turned the corner and followed Kate Moss’ portrait calling me like a siren to the entrance. It’s not until I entered the Old Sorting Office that I remembered the central page of a magazine, fluo paint, Chaplin, “Life is beautiful”…

They’re all there, from Darth Vader to Elvis and Madonna, the icons of pop culture stolen from Andy Warhol and painted over, ironically modified, used to convey messages. “Life is beautiful” “Never, never give up” “Follow your dreams” “Love is the answer” “Art is all over”…

We are familiar with Andy Warhol and his iconisation of pop culture, but Mr Brainwash pop is something else. Where Warhol celebrates, Mr Brainwash is thought provoking, he gets the public’s attention through the icon’s allure, and then he instills an idea into the familiar image. And he celebrates too.

Icons are exaggerated, overlapped, in an ironic tangle of powerful and puzzling. The Beatles use the Kiss’ makeup, and Kate Moss face smiles from a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Chaplin and Einstein share the same painting.

The Englishness of the exhibition is emphasized through national celebs, black cabs (splashed with pink), and Union Jack coated Campbell Soup cans. The UK is under the magnifier in a funny, slightly sardonic way.

My personal favs are the music black&white portraits made with vinyls. Beatles and Stones sharing a wall and facing Elvis, while Dean Martin’s version of Buonasera Signorina caresses colours, visitors and fame.

This is not a report. This is my pleasant surprise while discovering that the past is not sucking up the future, but newness can still be pursued, in art, thought and society. Ideas are not dead, brainwashed, prefab. Mr Brainwash is here to tell us that “If everybody thought the same nothing would ever change”.