The Miranda Priestly Speech
Disclaimer: This post make flagrant and unaccountable use of the second person voice. I apologize in advance and assure you that I don't really mean you.
1.
I don't know to what extent The Devil Wears Prada continues to have cultural resonance. In truth, I’m not certain what resonance means anymore. Culture is in constant flux. Signposts fly by with dizzying frequency. Shifts happen on a dime. The present moment is a contradiction of endless categories and sub-categories of identity, all invisibly policed by an overarching monoculture. The gatekeepers have largely disappeared or lost their authority, but the gates remain, the bouncer’s appraising eye having been replaced by mathematical formulas and facial recognition.
The Devil Wears Prada is a movie about the world of pre-social media, print publications. It is replete with heteronormative beauty standards, enforced through body shaming and mean girl cattiness. How much resonance could it have in this current, perhaps more enlightened, moment?
At the very least, The Devil Wears Prada is an interesting artefact. The ending is especially charming, with the protagonist walking away from the heights of prestige publishing to land a job as an investigative reporter for a small newspaper, as if that were settling. This was anachronistic even for 2006. More likely, her exit op would have been public relations or law school.1 But given the contemporary state of journalism it now appears downright delusional. One wonders how the movie would have played out in the Gawker era or in the present Tik Tok moment.
To the extent that The Devil Wears Prada does have resonance, it is because of Meryl Streep and her performance of that famous monologue on the protagonist's blue sweater. Cerulean blue to be exact because the exact color matters. The speech is not in the book, which makes sense. It would not have worked the same as merely words on the page. The full effect comes from Streep’s delivery.
While writing this, it occurred to me that I knew the titular Devil's name was Miranda Priestly, but I could not recall the protagonist's name. I believe this fact is important. But I digress.
The Priestly character is based on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, whom Streep gives Clint Eastwood’s menacing whisper, along with the flair of Jocobim Mugatu and a hint of Dr. Evil, characters that respectively drew inspiration from fashion designer John Galliano and SNL producer Lorne Michaels.
In a previous essay, I noted that Streep’s performance in Don’t Look Up was constrained by playing someone as out there as Donald Trump. Anna Wintour is unlike Trump. Though famous, she retains a sense of a mystery about her. Her face and signature pageboy haircut are ubiquitous, but other than being vaguely aware that she is British, I don’t know that I would recognize her voice, much less have any clue to her overall demeanor.
As an aside, here is a clip of Tim Meadows talking about how Lorne Michaels, “had a lot of power, but the way he talked you made it seem like he didn’t have a lot of power.” I think this is also important.
2.
The sweater speech establishes the fashion industry as something that matters, something worthy of our attention. From a writer's perspective, it is a perfect moment. It shows Priestly being priestly, master of her craft. There is something deeply satisfying about watching people be good at what they do. It really is a cheat code.
Mastery aside, there are two reasons why the speech works. The first is Miranda’s gaze (i.e. Streep’s performance). For most of the movie, Priestly ignores the protagonist in increasingly interesting and sadistic ways. One telling scene is when… (I’ll just say Anne Hathaway), when Anne Hathaway gets the honor of delivering the magazine mock-up, along with Miranda’s dry cleaning, to her Upper East Side townhouse. The honor comes with a catch. Hathaway must not be seen. She must tiptoe quietly into the house, leave the book on a table and then disappear. To be seen is to fail. It’s a little on the nose, but it works.
The speech is the same. Miranda stops what she’s doing to deliver this pitch perfect speech to the protagonist (but really to us the audience). In that moment, we are seen. Again, it’s on the nose, but it works. The protagonist starts to care about fashion, only a little at first, but it’s enough because she is the kind of person who values caring and because she believes that it might lead to something better.2
If you want to understand the importance of the speech to the arc of the movie, consider that there are broadly three ways that The Devil Wears Prada could have ended. One way is that Hathaway’s character could have immediately realized she was in the wrong place and quit, but that wouldn't be much of a story.
The sweater speech keeps her (i.e. us) invested a little longer. From there, it can go two ways: she can keep grinding indefinitely or she can stick it out for a win and then quit while on top. The movie chooses the latter option and, in doing so, it gets best of both worlds. Hathaway’s character is good enough to succeed in the game, but she's smart enough and ethical enough to quit playing. This is a very satisfying ending. She even gets to have a fling with a charming stalker, who happens to have a fantastic sport coat and scarf collection.
However, notice that after the sweater speech, nothing that happens in the movie really matters, at least not from the perspective of character development. Hathaway would have been the same person had she walked away earlier, only she wouldn't have got to win. It is not as much fun to walk away from something that doesn't matter. This is the second reason that the speech works. Hathaway needs a purpose and the speech gives her one.
The speech is persuasive. It sounds like it ought to be right. But here is a question for you: if fashion is so important to this movie, why are the clothes so ridiculous? This is not to say that the costume design is bad. They hired Patricia Field who also did Sex in the City and more recently Emily in Paris. But Field is a costume designer and not a fashion designer. Why didn’t they hire someone like Tom Ford to do costume design? Ford has directed two movies and, whatever you might think about them (I like them), they look gorgeous.
The answer is that the clothes have to be high fashion enough to be aspirational, but ridiculous enough to keep the audience in on the joke. It’s not that Field is bad at what she does. She is quite good at it. But what she does is more about movie-making than it is about fashion. This is important.
3.
I have said that nothing in the movie matters after the speech, but that’s not quite true.
Much of what happens after the speech is procedural. Hathaway’s character tries harder. She fails more. She gets another pep talk from Stanley Tucci and starts to dress… differently. There is a montage. She becomes more confident in her job. She gets a compliment from Giselle.
Most importantly, Miranda begins to take even more notice of her, eventually inviting Hathaway to Paris in place of her more senior assistant, played by Emily Blunt. In Paris, Priestly even confides in Hathaway’s character about her failing marriage, a moment perhaps meant to humanize Miranda.
The movie’s climax comes after a frantic few scenes in which Hathaway finds out about a plot to oust Miranda as editor-in-chief and replace her with a younger, French-er woman. Hathaway tries to warn her, but it’s all for naught, because Miranda was two steps ahead. She manages to save her job by diverting her rival into another role, screwing over Stanley Tucci in the process. Miranda explains all of this to Hathaway in the back of Mercedes on the way to some prestigious event. At that point, Andy (Andy! Yes, that’s the character’s name). Andy decides that she has had enough. Instead of following Miranda into the clutch of flashbulbs and microphones awaiting them when the car stops, Andy simply walks away. For added effect, she tosses her blackberry into one of Paris’ scenic fountains when Miranda calls.
There is some sense in Andy not leaving until that moment, because that is when Miranda fully reveals who she is.
The sweater speech was a team speech. It was about an industry, a group of people working together to create beautiful things and put them out into the world. By the time we reach the end of the movie, Miranda is comfortable enough with Andy to let slip her real feelings in justifying the actions she took to secure her own position while selling out a loyal employee. She says quite simply, “no one can do what I can do.”
Priestly is correct. What makes someone like her successful is the single-minded will to bend everything and everyone around them (including you) to their will. Not everyone can do that. This sociopathic behavior is what makes her who she is. The clothes are an afterthought. Fashion is a means to an end.
4.
The movie’s effort to humanize Priestly is quite slim. I’m not sure it works for anyone but Andy. Mostly what gets revealed in those few scenes is that Miranda Priestly is little more than a tightly constructed series of affectations wound around a core of ‘who knows what?’
Sound like any other popular characters?
Mad Men is a very good TV show for a number of reasons, but its real genius is that it puts the sociopath at the center of the show. It focuses directly on Don Draper instead of approaching him through some side character, like Andy or Wall Street’s Bud Fox. It would have been very easy to tell Don Draper’s story from Peggy’s perspective. But Mad Men choses to make its villain the protagonist and that’s part of what makes the show so interesting.
There has been a debate around what to make of Miranda Priestly. Is she a villain? Or is she a symbol of female empowerment? Is Andy the real villain? Or is it toxic work culture? The patriarchy? Capitalism? You can go here and read these takes for yourself. I just wish to point out that they mirror a similar debate about what to make of Anna Wintour, who has faced perennial charges of racism, body shaming, elitism and the like. So much so that last year, the NYTimes asked if Anna Wintour could survive the social justice movement?
As with many contemporary debates, it is beside the point. How could a villain not be empowered? Of course, she is both. There is a whole rabid hole here that one could go down. I won’t, because the rabbit hole is a trap. But I’ll come back to that in a moment.
5.
I was most of the way though writing this essay when I realized what a debt I owe to Venkatesh Rao’s Gervais Principle, which posits that there are three main languages spoken in large organizations. The language of sociopaths, of the clueless, and of losers. Losers are the rank and file, who carry out the organizations mission. Losers are not losers in the common usage of the word, but are those who are not invested in the mission. Their motivation is purely transactional, though they can be kept interested enough through various organizational schema. The clueless are the ones who fully invest themselves into the mission. They are the aspirational classes, who buy into the schema fully and are usually the ones who enforce its rules. The clueless make very good middle managers, but not great leaders. Leadership requires the ability to inspire, to create these schemata out of whole cloth. And that requires the use of sociopathic language.
To be clear, Rao’s categories aren’t really about people. They are about different types of language and behavior. Yes, people often conform to these categories based on how often they use a specific category of language. But the categories are fluid in that people sometimes have a realization that causes them to jump from one type of behavior to another.
The sweater speech is a great example of sociopathic institutional language. The speech works on Andy because she’s a striver. But part of what makes Miranda recognize Andy’s potential was that she laughed at what the others were taking so seriously, a sign that she might not one of the clueless. The rest of her hazing can be seen as Miranda trying to figure out if Andy is going to remain a loser, go full clueless like the others, or climb up into the ranks of the sociopathic.
Once you’ve gone clueless, it’s very difficult to go back. Think of Emily Blunt’s character, suitably named Emily. Even after she has been usurped, Emily still can’t stop speaking to Andy in the language of the clueless. She can’t stop speaking down to Andy, well after it’s clear that she’s lost. This is what makes the transition out of cluelessness so difficult. Doubling down on cluelessness never helps. It just marks you as all the more clueless. The only way out is to risk being a loser. And if there is one thing the aspirational class fears, it’s being thought a loser.
6.
There is a scene early in The Devil Wears Prada where Andy, the aspiring journalist, shares a late-night meal with her boyfriend, an aspiring chef, and her best friend, who aspires to run an art gallery. Also, present is the best friend’s boyfriend, who wears a suit. The three “creatives” partake in their laments. Suit guy makes a joke about being lucky to have already found his dream job, to which Andy makes a face and says, “but you’re a corporate research analyst.”
It's a funny moment. The characters share a laugh. But in 2022, we ought to realize that the joke is on us. Journalist, chef, artist, whatever it is that you do, your first responsibility is to build and manage your online reputation on a system that mostly exists to sell ads. The algorithms have turned us all into corporate research analysts.
Part of why I won’t get into the debate about whether Wintour or Priestly are villains or heroes is because getting caught in the debate is the real trap. That’s how sociopaths get you invested in their institutional language. That is how the content gets shared and the clicks get made.
More importantly, we already know that this sort of overt sociopathic behavior is bad. Anna Wintour has been called to account. A spate of media and tech executives have been fired. Harvey Weinstein is in prison. Diversity and inclusion are the watchwords of the day. But while Miranda Priestly herself has been banished, her methods have dissolved into the ether and inform everything we do. More often than not, it’s no longer an asshole boss who makes demands of you, it’s the timeline. It’s the internet hivemind. It’s the whole system of surveillance and accountability in which we live.
It is now less about individual sociopaths then it is about a sociopathic system. It should not surprise us that a key part of Anna Wintour’s rehabilitation was turning the Met Gala into an outwardly multicultural affair, even as the event’s inner workings still resemble the kind of insular and elitist behavior that we have supposedly left behind. I can’t blame her. She does it because she can. And because no one else can do what she does.
More importantly, Wintour does it because you ask her to do it. You ask her to hold out this elitist vision draped in the sociopathic language of inclusion. You demand it. You consume it eagerly. And you come back for more.
Of course, y’all don’t have to live this way. None of us do. We can reverse course. We could decide that fashion and diversity and empowerment and black lives and queer stories all do indeed matter, but that we don't need an ecosystem of gatekeepers and tastemakers to tell us this.
We could make our own way, forge our own values. We could take risks. But chances are, you won't. Not just because you have been trained to dread risk, but because you have been trained to view passing these little tests and achieving status as a paramount value. So as long as the system keeps praising you, telling you how virtuous and privileged you are, and occasionally letting you attend a prestigious event, you will remain. You will continue to play this game. You will continue to be useful. And you will do these things, not because you approve, but because you've been convinced that it is important and that your involvement will make things better and, perhaps most importantly, because you believe when the moment comes and the devil invites you to step out of her luxury sedan and follow her up the red carpet, you will have the will to walk away. Except that when the time comes for you to decide, you’ll probably follow the devil right up the red carpet. Meryl Streep is too good of an actor and that sweater speech is just too seductive.
Or writing a fictionalized version of her 10 months at Vogue, as author Lauren Weisberger did.
These are the same thing, but that is a discussion for another day.