Notes on the way home from watching "The Devil Wears Prada 2." I was a fresh graduate when the first one came out, and seeing the second at age 41, I felt a deep synchronicity with Andy in real-time, reflecting on my own age and the trends of the media industry as an insider.
Work is incredibly alluring, yet I felt it is an inevitably "cruel game." This cruelty has two meanings.
The Cruelty of "Knowing"
Effort, aptitude, and sense become cruelly apparent. There's a scene where Miranda says, "You can't do it. You must know that yourself." In reality, we are often the ones who know our own lack of ability best, while pretending not to. I think the first cruelty depicted is not the cruelty of "not knowing," but the cruelty of "knowing all too well." This applies not just to lack of skill, but also to dishonesty, the ego of stepping over others (which the first film focused on), and the hesitant stance of making excuses for oneself. Ultimately, the person doing it is aware. Miranda is depicted as someone whose internal awareness and external actions are perfectly integrated (except when with her partner), making her a "cruel person" without inconvenient human wavering. But perhaps it's not Miranda who is cruel, but the act of "knowing" itself.
The Cruelty of "Being Decided"
To make matters worse, there is the cruelty where winning or losing is decided entirely by the ground you stand on at the time, regardless of individual ability or goodness. At the beginning, journalists are laid off en masse, and Andy fumes, "How can such good people face this!" The film features many metaphors for "entities that don't give a damn about history or tradition in the name of rationality"โsecond-generation heirs in synthetics, nouveau riche without taste, rude consultants. It implicitly suggests that "a person's character and business success have little to do with each other." It doesn't just show the glamorous side; it portrays the reality that "you have to work to eat" and "the cruelty of business rationality rushes in regardless of your philosophy or aesthetics." This realism was good. Business turns on such friction and conflictโa world the 20-year-old Andy, who was "full of self-actualization," couldn't see.
What Stance to Take in Such a Game?
However, if we liken work to a game, one possible stance is to look down on those playing it from the outside, thinking "how foolish." This is a key point. At the start of the previous film, Andy looked at the game of working for a fashion magazine with cynical detachment. "I want to be a journalist; I won't be here forever," "It's ridiculous that billions of yen and so many people move for those clothes." She played the game while keeping her distance and acting cool.
But halfway through, driven by her competitive nature and the desire to be recognized, she decided to go all in. When you set your mind to it and immerse yourself, games are surely fun. In "2," Miranda is also depicted as someone who has occasionally thought about "getting off this game" after the fever cools. You can hear it in her line, "I wonder how you know when it's time to leave." But in the end, it's simply "I love my work." You don't have to play this game, and even if you do, you aren't obligated to pay a price or be fanatically obsessed. It's ultimately "I did it because I wanted to." As the line "You didn't want to save someone, you wanted to be saved, didn't you?" suggests, whether you play or not, and how deep you go, it's all just "doing what you wanted to do." That fact itself is somewhat cruel, I thought.
Well, it's also a cruel fact that those who act cynical can't beat those who don't. Don't be cynical about work, self.
