2003-11-30 - 8:41 p.m. Other pop culture pleasures of the weekend: Saw the movie Secretary, which was really interesting and worthwhile if not great. As a Mary Gaitskill fan, I was pleased at how the film conveyed a particulary Gaitskillian earnest weirdness. Hint for DVD-watchers: skip the "making of" special feature, which will immediately make you lose respect for all the actors you just spent 90 minutes admiring. I started watching The Seventh Seal...decided to tackle it in 22-minute installments as if it were a sitcom. So far this a good strategy except without a laugh track, I'm not sure where the jokes are. I read The Devil Wears Prada. Why? I don't know, I guess I was following the read-a-trashy-book-for-Thanksgiving-weekend protocol that originated in college as a reprieve from studying and then continued into the real world as an escape from job angst. Anyway, it was a fun read with a couple good yuks and an irreverent attitude towards despotic bosses. Even more entertaining was going online afterward to read about the absolute frenzy this li'l book caused in the fashion and publishing industries. The snarling, defensive reviews that this poor first-time author got are generally not for bad writing but for having the audacity to write about a thinly-veiled Anna Wintour, queen of fashion. Some of the criticisms leveled at the author include having a "sense of entitlement," and an immature expectation that bosses should be respectful to employees. These judgments, mind you, are based on the actions and thoughts of a fictional character. First of all, fiction writers, in the free world, are allowed to write about anything they want, whether that offends you or not. Secondly, what century are we living in? It's just as easy for an employer to be humane and fair as it is for him/her to be a self-centered tyrant. When did it become common knowledge that cranky dictators deserve our respect and need to be tolerated in order for the system to work? I suspect the people who counsel the unhappily-employed to "suck it up and pay your dues" are just bitter because they made the same mistake themselves and long to justify their own misery. Thirdly...it's just a book, ya know? A light throwaway first novel that isn't harmin' anybody. The fact that the author got a big advance shouldn't figure into reviews of the work itself, although the topic keeps coming up... thoughts? (0 comments so far) previous - next blog archive contact