The Devil Wears Prada was a masterpiece. Superb.
Smart.
Witty.
Funny.
Engaging.
Fun.
I could go on for a while about how awesome that movie is and how much I love it. However, you probably won't hear me describe it using words such as groudbreaking, orignal, etc. etc. Why? While I do love this movie, I realized while watching how recycled not only the basic story line of outsider-turned-insider-becomes-disatisfied-and-rejects-insider-status-to-go-back-to-outsider-status.
This conclusion was not seemingly random (as this post isn't either) because all through life I had lived at the juxtaposed intersection where the indidivual and creativity is celebreate but where originality, the genuine kind, is nearly non-existent. In trying to be original we in fact pull from our own beliefs, experiences, and things we've seen. In the the "Sunscreen Song," a song that is actually a graduation speech put to music, one line reads:
Be careful who advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth.
Mirando Piestly also explains this concept in what is arguabley the best line in the entire movie:
Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy sniggers because she thinks they look exactly the same] Something funny?
Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y'know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y'know, I'm still learning about all this stuff.
Miranda Priestly: This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.
Hardly anything in life is original anymore. Most ideas are simply reconstructions of ideas that have been handed down to the masses through the massive print and entertainment business. I'm not the first to write about this, I'm sure of it, however admititedly I havn't looked. S&C's lastest chapter seems to imply that everything just reaches back and uses other people's ideas for their own - the youth subculture take the fasions presented to them, dissects them, reassembles them, and then those new fasions are picked up mainstream, which causes the whole cycle to start over. I argue that while there may be tons of creativity left in the world, I'm not sure how much originality is left. Probably not much. Zip. Nata. That then leads to bigger questions - if we ran out of original ideas, when did it happen? Does this mean the end of progress for humanity?
Absolutely not.
I mean look how far reality Tv has progressed over the years as it continues it's highly creative form of entertainment...
That being said, this class that is an excercise in originality and creativity should be interesting...
shmily
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