July 1998 back issues by Josh Allen |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Come on, Vogue
[partial transcript of phone interview with actress Neve Campbell, re:
Vogue magazine]
SMUG: ...so then what? You threw the jar of vaseline back in his face?
Neve Campbell: Something like that.
S: Huh. Did you call the cops?
NC: You think the cops are gonna touch Daniel [expletive] Day-Lewis? He
[expletive] runs this town.
S: True, true. You don't mess with The Foot.
NC: You bring this up every single time.
S: Lemme ask you something else. You read Vogue?
NC: Word up.
S: Do you just flip through it at top speed? Like flip-flip-flip-flip?
Like barely glancing at the pages?
NC: Oh yeah. You don't want to waste too much time with it.
S: Would you perhaps use the word "skim"?
NC: No way. Faster.
S: Now, see, yeah, anytime I see a woman reading Vogue, she's just
tearing through it, like she's looking for something in a phone book. It's
not like when I read Teen People or something and just absorb every single
word, letting it all wash over me, filling my heart with this bright white
light.
NC: Look, chum, Vogue is whole 'nother kettle of wax. It's designed to
be scanned. It's like a flip-book. I just see what catches my eye, check
out the new outfits, the color schemes. Something jolting that I could use,
that says: "Hey there." You know? "Yikes."
S: I can dig that particular scene, but some Vogue-readers look all
annoyed when they're flipping through it, like: "Oh please."
NC: Women tend to have a complex relationship with Vogue. The
[expletive] that I run with, anyway.
S: [sound of chewing] Do tell.
NC: Well, Vogue tends to avoid the quizzes and advice columns and stuff
like "Lose the hips or lose your man" like in Cosmo, but still, here's a
magazine that's full of serious babes, like impossible hardcore babes, and
it's like: "Here's another bikini you'll never be able to wear."
S: "Here's another top from Milan you can't afford."
NC: Bingo. It's like in that song "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, except
Iron Man is crushing your self-esteem.
S: C'mon, Neve. I don't see a big rich Hollywood starlet like you crying
herself to sleep, counting bulimic sheep.
NC: [8-second pause] Let's just say that my teeth are a little larger
than the national average.
S: So then why read Vogue all? If it pummels you with such trauma...
NC: For me, it's like it's pushing me to do better. It shocks me into
action. And it's instructive. Some of the articles are pretty interesting--
S: Neve, it's me you're talking to. I sat down last night and read Vogue
cover to cover and my fingers still smell like Organza by Givenchy. The
articles are there to provide a brief interruption from the ads. They're
like padding to give the thing extra heft, so you're like: "Mother of god,
look at all the content I get for three bucks!"
NC: I heard that a man was killed with one blow from the January issue.
S: If you could see my face you'd note a complete lack of surprise. Do
you want to hear my ad-to-content ratio?
NC: You make me so horny.
S: There's a grand total of --this is the Elizabeth Hurley issue, mind
you, not the Sandra Bullock one-- a grand total of 332 pages. Now, check
yourself, be seated and assume a comfortable position because out of those
332 pages, 199 are ads.
NC: Honey, that's the whole point of Vogue.
S: Oh wait, 200. I forgot the Microsoft ad on the back that says:
"You're smarter when you think."
NC: Hence the ultra-skim. It's just an onslaught of images. No one's
dying to read the book reviews or anything.
S: Yeah, that's what's funny. Vogue understands that with a glorious and
white-hot clarity. They know that no one gives two [expletive] about their
regular articles, their mainstream, general-public articles. So they get
Lolo the Trained Monkey in there to handle those. But when you get into the
beauty section, all of a sudden you're in this high-tech, astrophysics-type
realm. Check it out, here's how their dumb interview with Julia
Louis-Dreyfus ends--
NC: Who's that?
S: Elaine. The article closes with thiS: "If she were your girlfriend,
you'd always come away from lunch laughing. You'd say 'That Julia! Oh, she
made me laugh!'" OK? That sort of level.
NC: Skirting the fine, razor-sharp line between sub-moronic and
rampantly idiotic, as Jada sometimes says.
S: Total. So then we turn to the piece on self-tanning products and get
this: "New formulations incorporate AHAs (to prep the skin before color
develops), vitamins, and hydrating botanicals. The exotic scents
(ylang-ylang, neroli) added to some, however, do little to mask the 'self
tanning odor' emitted when dihydroxyacetone reacts with skin."
NC: I always thought ylang-ylang was worthless.
S: What the hell is ylang-ylang? And they don't even bother to define
AHAs, they just assume that everyone'll know.
NC: Duh, Josh, seriously.
S: It's like all the makeup ads where at the bottom it sayS: "Melanie is
wearing such-and-such" and "Christie is wearing blah-blah." It's like this
secret society.
NC: You didn't belong there. Your hair should've turned white when you
opened it up, like something out of The Craft.
S: But I'll have to admit, I got pretty turned on by being a spy in the
house of style.
NC: Oh god, here we go.
S: Hear me out. I mean, look, the thing's full of half-naked chicks.
Sometimes all-naked. They have this like 10-page bikini tutorial where all
the models are being sprayed with water. The viscous, oozing water.
Drenched. Soaked. And they're orgasmic with aquatic delight.
NC: [possible sound of flossing] Uh-huh.
S: There's also this thing, maybe it's the new trend or something, but
all of the women had their legs spread. There wasn't a single demure,
crossed-leg shot.
NC: Yeah, that's pretty mid-'98. No cleft.
S: Really? God I mean the whole thing was so primal and naughty and I
got a little embarrassed in that sort of oh-I-shouldn't-be-enjoying-this
kind of way, you know, like
oh-well-it-looks-like-the-objectification-of-women-is-once-again-getting-me-hot
type thing, but then I remembered that I wasn't the target audience. This
was nude, wet women for women.
NC: So you could enjoy it on a whole new level of non-guilt.
S: It was quite refreshing. The exploitation had a novel, exhilarating
quality about it.
NC: Maybe that's why I feel compelled to read it, too. I can get my
exploitation and low self-esteem without having it filtered through a male
perspective.
S: Ah, well, this segues nicely into my question about Wild Things.
NC: [static, garbled] Looks like we're losing the connection here.
S: Neve, you pull this every time.
NC: [dial tone]
in the junk drawer
|
|
·feature·
·net worth·
·bumping uglies·
·smoking jacket·
·ear candy·
·feed hollywood·
·target audience·
·back issues ·
·compulsion·
·posedown·
·the biswick files·
·mystery date·
·and such and such·
·blab·
·kissing booth·
·contents·
·freakshow·
·fan club·
·archive·
copyright © 1996-1998 fearless media