Posted by We have all grown up idolising Miranda Priestly. Her iconic fashion, her grace and her iciness. For late millennials, we studied her, aspired to be her and vowed to use her as our Yoda to traverse the challenging waters of corporate. While not all of us planned on slamming our trench coats on the table, we did want to inherit her iciness because that was what put her on a pedestal in the sea of fashion editors.
But what happens when this very pedestal is forced to become in tune with the times, to become/appear ‘woke’? That is the fate we see for Miranda Priestly unfolding in Devil Wears Prada 2. You can forget about catching her flicking her fingers to dismiss someone or slamming her coat on that table. Those times are gone, as are the budgets in Runway’s coffers. The object was to show her as bending to the times, albeit due to economic pressure, why else would she fly economy to Milan?
I get the urge to be woke, or at least appear to be woke, for the movie to be relevant 20 years after its first release. But where David Frankel’s directorial faulters is that Miranda’s subdued nature is neither given a humorous treatment nor a sarcastic tonality. Her spitballing ‘body positivity’ is left hanging in the air like a tornado carrying around a plastic bag, because how else can the tornado emphasise that it is powerful? The character of Miranda is almost paraded as hapless, a trait never indoctrinated in her DNA. But as viewers, we are forced to believe that DNAs change in the face of paucity and HR codes of conduct.
Of course, self-doubt and confusion are allowed when the legacy you built stands to get wiped out by Tech Bros who can’t distinguish between Kendall and Candle. But why would a woman, who has built her entire persona around hiding her true feelings and moves, ever emote her doubts in public, let alone have jump scares because of a former employee? The patterns do not coordinate here.
When have human behaviours actually changed in the face of corporate codes? Don’t we all still carry out residual biases and judgements, let alone a 70-year-old fashion editor who still edits articles on pen and paper? We plaster our latent prejudices with a better conscience and awareness. For Miranda, this emotional growth seems to be amiss and unconvincing in the form presented. Her reluctant or enforced wokeness deserved better treatment. Had it been crafted deftly, it would have added a more nuanced depth to the film and a stronger closure for the fans.
At the end, one can only wonder that when the Devil is weeded and toned down to become trendy, should banality be asked to set the trend? In the age of AI, one can only keep mum.