“The Devil” Maximizes Profits

Why Andrea Sachs needs a union.

By Ezra Klein

To be honest, my favorite moment of “The Devil Wears Prada” didn’t happen in the movie. It came at the beginning of a New York Times Style section article about the film, which kicked off with a lede recounting the visit of the heroine’s father, who “arrives in New York and pummels his daughter with questions: He wants to know why she is often stuck at the office until 2 a.m., even though she is just an assistant; why her boss calls during dinner; why, given her acceptance to Stanford University Law School, she chose to pursue a career in journalism; and why now she isn’t even doing that, because Runway magazine, where she works, isn’t, after all, The American Prospect.

As a writing fellow at The American Prospect, I was happy to see the paper of record formally declare my publication representative of all that is Boring, Serious, and Honorable in journalism. Turns out this was the Times’ invention; the movie didn’t pay us similar props, at least not by name.

Implicitly, though, the film was one long love letter to my job. The movie follows the post-graduation travails of Andrea Sachs, played by a fresh-faced and charmingly self-effacing Anne Hathaway. Sachs is your stereotypical overachiever, though one blessed with the sort of cheekbones your average valedictorian would give a GPA point for. Editor of her school paper, top graduate of Northwestern University, and accepted into Stanford Law, she decides instead to migrate to the Big Apple and make it in journalism. She’s the sort of do-gooder who probably spent college fighting the machine and, along the way, accumulated the precise sort of résumé needed to become a cog within it.

Apparently, The American Prospect was full up that year, so Sachs found herself standing in Miranda Priestly’s office. Priestly is the fictional alter ego of the notoriously tyrannical editor of Vogue, Anna Wintour. Meryl Streep inhabits her flawlessly, imbuing Priestly with a studied detachment and effortless superiority complex that seems to let her levitate a few feet above the other characters. When Sachs is first in her office and Priestly notes that she has no sense of style, her protests are cut short by a wave of Priestly’s hand and a soft reminder: “That wasn’t a question.” Ouch.

We’re supposed to believe that Sachs is a real outlier here; that she’s fat, unstylish, and inept. That would be an easier sell were she not so luminescent, so instead we have to rely on her obvious contempt for the trappings and self-importance of haute couture to signify that while she is in this world, she is not of it.

The movie’s tension comes as Sachs blurs that line between observer and participant. After a near-firing, she drops the frumpy dress she’d previously employed and emerges as a fashion plate in thigh-high boots. Rather than railing against the job’s long hours and crushing treatment, she begins to accept them, allowing work to supercede her relationships and social life. Her healthy distaste for the superficiality of the industry falls away as she invests in its goals and norms. That, of course, is Andy’s cardinal sin — taking fashion seriously.

As the New York Times story accurately recounts, the tension in “The Devil Wears Prada” stems from the mix of such grueling work with such superficial environs. While none of the demands would be seen as extraordinary in the context of a law firm or medical residency, their transposition onto fashion renders them far beyond the pale. It’s one thing to work 14 hours so Evil Multinational X can acquire Huge Tobacco Firm Y, but to do so for couture? Please.

So let me say this: Speaking as an employee of the world’s most Serious, Honorable, and Worthy journalistic outlet, nobody should work 14-hour days. Not residents, not associates, not editorial assistants. It’s proof of the American labor movement’s weakened state that so many desirable jobs are allowed to run roughshod over so many lives. But when occupational success turns on a willingness to wreck the rest of your existence, that’s a problem no matter what the perceived social worth of the undertaking. When Sachs watches Priestly crush a devoted underling and realizes she has to flee before she loses her humanity, she’s made entirely the right decision, but predicated it on entirely the wrong revelation. It wouldn’t matter whether she was working for The American Prospect — mistreatment at the workplace is a universal affront, neither mitigated nor excused by the value of the cause.

Indeed, it’s the race for these sorts of high-profile positions — the film repeatedly notes how “a million girls would kill for this job” — that has helped decimate the labor consciousness of young adults. It’s hard to expect acceptable treatment in the workplace when you’re competing for slots that come standard with an array of labor violations and unrealistic expectations. The best and the brightest spend decades in school and accumulate mountains of loans so they can pay off their debt working inhumane hours in grueling, entry-level positions. They do the work of two or three people, and they fight for that opportunity, rather than fighting to unionize, so the employer actually has to hire the needed two or three employees.

So does the devil wear Prada? I’m not sure. Nor do I care. The real problem is that the devil maximizes profits, and the angels haven’t organized.

Ezra Klein is a writing fellow at The American Prospect. He blogs at www.EzraKlein.com.

Related Stories

• Gender-Neutral Housing Comes to Princeton
• Campaign Communications Director, Repower America
• Toke Up Marijuana Laws
• Send a Health Care E-Card
• The Battle for Pittsburgh