CREDIT: 20TH CENTURY FOX
Meryl Streep puts Anne Hathaway (and the audience) in her place in The Devil Wears Prada.

In The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep plays a major executive for a fashion magazine. She employs a journalism grad played by Anne Hathaway, who needs a job to add to her resume. Hathaway's character took fashion anything but seriously, and in a tense scene, Streep explained how the industry operates, and why it is important:

“You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select that lumpy blue sweater, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.”

High Art is that created by those who transcend the middle class, like Streep's character in the movie — those who hold the reputation of being so far beyond brilliant that they cannot be fit in with the general population. They're regarded as celebrities and treated like royalty. It is suggested in many an art history explorative that High Art is the trendsetter of art — the blue sweater discoverer with a paintbrush — but I believe it to be exactly the opposite.

Rather than a pyramid structure whereby the highest paid, most celebrated determine the coming artistic trend, and then it creeping down to the broad bottom of the triangle, where you and I pick up on them and begin painting similarly, I believe it to be an inverted triangle where the rich and famous are picking up on what we do. I believe we're the trend-drivers; we, the middle class artists, are a forecast of what's to come in High Art.

Maria Abramović is a performance artist who came to prominence in the 1970s, and has been an active member of the performing arts since. She's always been known as an artist who pushes the boundaries of what performance art is, and has even dubbed herself the grandmother of performance art. What a nice gesture for her, from her, to dub herself with such high praise. But what Abramović is saying in her art isn't anything she's come up with; she just has the resources and namesake to broadcast the message to a wider audience.

In 2010, Abramović performed her work called “The Artist Is Present” at The Museum of Modern Art, North America's Mecca of fine art. In this piece, she sat completely still and silent at a chair and table, while passersby could take their turn sitting opposite of her, staring into her eyes. When you sat across from her, you looked into her eyes and her relentless stare caused discomfort: What is she thinking about me? Do I look alright? But she also appeared vacant and unfazed by the presence of the participant, which confronted our deep fear of anonymity and being ordinary. Abramović certainly created, in my opinion, a beautiful piece of conceptual art, where our discomfort with both intimacy, and lack thereof, is palpable. Beautiful, yes; innovative, no. This concept didn't come from her. It came from us. Five years ago, I sat in a training session for a leadership position at a local not-forprofit. We were being led through an exercise in which I sat across from a partner, practically touching knees, and staring into his eyes for five minutes. Five minutes. It felt like a bloody lifetime. And neither of us could just sit, relaxed without itching our noses or breaking the intimacy with a giggle. This touched on the general population's inability to be have a connection with people other than our close-knit circle we consider family. It felt ludicrous to be sitting so close to someone else who I barely knew. I wasn't trying to understand him as a man, to study his face, to feel what I think he felt. I was concentrated on if I had a booger hanging out of my nose.

Although this instance is directly relatable to Abramović's piece, there are also more subtle tones of preferred alienation in our lives. Does it make you uncomfortable when the barista looks you in the eye when he gives you your morning coffee? Do you apologize when you accidentally touch your friend's hand when walking beside them? Do you hug someone you've just been introduced to?

This topic is something that is apparent, common in our modern society, and people have been picking up on it.

In The Devil Wears Prada, the reason Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns was not because he had a stroke of genius — he did not invent cerulean — it's because he saw it somewhere while observing people, observing us. High Art is a reaction to what the famed artists, who are generally removed from what I consider to be culture (the ongoing, changing needs and desires of the population), observe. It derives is from us — those on the front lines facing the increasingly harsh reality of what we've decided it means to be human.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.