Commentary
Vanity Fair
- by Phyllis Fine , Staff Writer, July 11, 2008
The mag's oddness is exemplified by its July issue, with an ambitious and noteworthy project -- an oral history of the Internet -- anchored uneasily by a cover story on the most famous woman in the world (you really need to ask?). Anyway, said story comes complete with a money quote about the Jolie-Pitt love life: "I happen to be with somebody who finds pregnancy very sexy, so that makes me feel very sexy."
You can argue that Jolie herself, with her pregnancy-enhanced boobs and Mia-Farrow-type activism, is the very model of the sexy yet serious meld that Editor in Chief Graydon Carter may be aiming for.
But not every celeb is capable of giving a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, as Jolie does in the July piece. More typical is the crowd in August's "Hollywood's New Wave" cover story, whose talking points range from presidential politics to the number of shoes in their closet.
Still, that piece is sort of tongue-in-cheek, suggesting that The VF reader is not meant to take this fluff to heart. But he (and I do imagine a he -- an older, established guy -- as the VF editorial target) is devoted to the Playboy-lite starlet shots. The August cover subhead is "Gossip Girls and Superbad Boys!" -- but "Superbad" chubbo Jonah Hill doesn't get the prime real estate; "Gossip Girl"'s Blake Lively (and her panties) does.
Another aspect of this kinda-dirty-old-man target is that of jaded chronicler of the jet-set -- stuff I find excruciatingly boring. The August story on the Fiat-fortuned Agnellis is full of rich-family clichés: "Margherita's mother and three oldest children no longer speak to her." "The Agnellis are a study in dysfunction."
I can't help remembering that Carter was one of the founders of SPY, which took pleasure in skewering the rich and famous (didn't it repeat and repeat the phrase "short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump"?) -- but now he's making their concerns his own.
Still, Carter also favors substantive pieces capable of evoking sophisticated thoughts -- like Christopher Hitchens' August exercise in participatory journalism, where he gets himself waterboarded to see if it's really torture (his conclusion: yes.) Likewise, an August piece on "Who Took Down Bear Stearns?" brings some wit and suspense to what could be a dry story.
And that aforementioned Internet oral history piece is indeed impressive. While the narrators' self-promotional bias sometimes gets in the way, it also provides great color. Check out Barry Diller seemingly taking credit for the concept of online travel sales and the word "interactvity."
VF's dirty-old-man demo at least means the mag caters to the over-40 crowd in its culture coverage -- which translates to fabulous stuff you'll find nowhere else. Take "The King Of Ring-A-Ding-Ding" (from a special VF-produced edition, Movies Rock, that appeared as a supplement to various Condé Nast pubs last fall), one of the best magazine profiles I've ever read -- about Jimmy Van Heusen, Sinatra wingman and composer of songs like "Come Fly With Me." The piece offers great posthumous gossip (actress Angie Dickinson admits she bedded both men) and enough sassy details to make me fall a little in love with this talented daredevil of a ladies' man.
In fact, a historical perspective is one of VF's strong points. Almost two years ago, I watched as Jon Stewart sparred with a Magazine Publishers of America panel of magazine editors that included Carter. While Stewart said that print wasn't "driving the discourse anymore," Carter noted that "television doesn't break news," and proudly mentioned VF's exclusive on the identity of Deep Throat.
Still, for every historic breaking story, there are incidents like the Miley Cyrus photo shoot -- which of course got VF a heaping helping of publicity. Can you play it both ways? At VF, the parts ARE definitely greater than the whole.
MAG STATS
Published By: Condé Nast
Frequency: Monthly
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